Fyne Times Gay and Lesbian Magazine, UK
Marlene Dietrich
Birth: December 27th 1901
Place of Birth: Berlin, Germany
Nationality: Naturalized American
Job Title: Glove Maker, Actress, Cabaret Singer
Partners: Rudole Sieber (Husband), Mercedes de Acosta (Female), Edith Piaf (Female), Tallulah Bankhead? (Female) Greta Garbo? (Female)
Died: May 6th 1992, Paris
The true sexuality of some gay greats is still uncertain, as many lived in a time when the concept of labelling a person’s sexuality was non-existent. For some, their same-sex activities were kept private and any evidence we have is purely anecdotal. In other cases, the evidence is so confused and contrived that we will never know the truth. Whether any of our Gay Greats ever actually slept, kissed or even fancied a person of the same sex is not necessarily the most important issue; their lives still shaped the gay community we see today. In choosing a particular lifestyle, they ignored taboos, dared to mention the 'unspeakable' and challenged the world's ideas about what it meant to be a 'normal' person.
Nobody could have influenced the lesbian world of today much more than Marlene Dietrich, although her sexuality is still under debate. Dietrich was not a lesbian in the conventional sense. She never admitted publicly to any affairs with women and her on-screen persona was created and manipulated beyond anything that resembled the real Dietrich. How then could an actress who never said a word about gay rights, become a world-changing force for lesbians as well as the gay community as a whole?
Maria Magdalene Dietrich was born in Berlin on 27th December 1901. Her parents were Louis Dietrich, a Police Lieutenant and Wilhelmina Felsing. From the outset, her life revolved around music and at the age of twelve she played her first public violin solo. Fittingly, she chose to wear a little boy's suit rather than a dress. Her future seemed decided but within a few years the situation would change dramatically. Both her parents died by the time she was fifteen and she also damaged her wrist in an accident, making it impossible for her to play the violin. Her future was suddenly uncertain.
Little is known about the intervening years but in 1921, the newly re-named Dietrich turned up to audition for Max Reinhardt's drama school. Reinhardt was Germany's greatest theatre director and places at his school were scarce. The young Dietrich impressed him but she wasn’t good enough to win a place at the prestigious school. Shrugging off the rejection, Dietrich decided to join the chorus line of a travelling music revue company in order to learn the trade. Two years later, she returned to Berlin and once again tried for a place at Reinhardt's academy. This time, he accepted her.
She funded her way through acting school with a few small film and theatre roles as well as working in a local glove-making factory when times were really hard. After leaving the school, some German film roles came her way and she started to make a name for herself. She married a casting director, Rudole Sieber, and had a child that she called Maria. Once again, her future seemed clear. Little did she know that it would change forever when she met the Austrian Director who had been following her German film career closely.
Dietrich, already 29 and a veteran of some 20 films, had a lucky break when she was cast in a Hollywood film directed by Josef Von Sternberg. Blue Angel, a stirring and passionate film shot entirely in Germany, was Dietrich and Sternberg's key to the big time. Realizing the alternative appeal of Dietrich, Sternberg convinced her to abandon her husband and daughter and head for the USA. Her relationship with her husband was already very shaky so Dietrich decided to leave both him and her daughter and go to Hollywood.
Before Blue Angel was released in the USA, Dietrich had already had her Hollywood debut in Morocco (1930), a film that laid down the blueprint for the androgynous allure that would forever be her trademark. Her appeal as a hermaphroditic, sexually free and exotic European woman was a gamble that paid off. One of the most famous scenes from Morocco epitomizes her carefully styled image. She appears wearing a man's tuxedo and sings to a woman, who is obviously flattered by the attention. After taking a rose from the woman's lapel, she kisses her gently on the lips, the first ever female to female kiss in film history. Audiences were equally amazed, stunned and enchanted. Here was a woman who dared to wear men's clothes and hint at a bisexual leaning whilst remaining glamorous and above all, sexy! It wasn't long before Dietrich was known ironically as the best dressed man in Hollywood.
In future film roles, she and Sternberg tried to expand on the risky gender bending antics of Morocco. She was often seen dressed in male clothing; a sailor's uniform, a white tail suit, even men's underwear and she always flashed a special smile to the female actresses on set. It was rumoured that Dietrich had a liking for both sexes and her name was linked to many famous women, from Edith Piaf to her greatest screen rival, Greta Garbo. Most of her alleged liaisons were born from gossip and gutter press rumours but the exception was her long-term affair with writer Mercedes de Acosta. They displayed their affection for one another publicly and if Dietrich truly was bisexual, then de Acosta was the female love of her life. Their 'close friendship' lasted for around ten years. Romantic notions about a liaison with Greta Garbo, although openly written about by her daughter some years after her death, are far from indisputable. Naturally everybody wanted to pair off the two beautiful women, who were also well-known rivals. In reality, who knows if there was ever anything between them? Film critics and LGBT history experts still refute many of the claims about Dietrich's sexuality and partners.
Dietrich’s finest hour came in the late thirties. When war broke out, Hitler wrote personally to Dietrich asking her to return to Germany and to become his lover. Now a naturalized American, she bravely refused his offer, despite his claims that her life could be made 'very uncomfortable' if she did so. With her daughter and estranged husband now living in America, Dietrich was confident they were safe from a Nazi attack. Her bravery went beyond the refusal of Hitler's advances; during the war years she broadcast anti-Nazi messages to the German people in her native tongue, urging them to rise up against the far right. She also entertained the troops overseas and became renowned for her cabaret songs, especially 'Falling in Love Again', which is now known as her anthem. She considered it her finest and most worthy work, a fact that was reflected when she was the first woman to be awarded with the American Medal of Freedom as well as being made a Chevalier in the French Legion of Honour.
The fifties saw a decline in her film work. She was getting older and was losing much of the sexual attraction that her fame had been built on. She split with her long-time mentor, Sternberg, who claimed she was 'nothing without him'. Maybe if the war had not placed her in such a prominent position, Sternberg may have been right. However, due to the fame she enjoyed throughout the war, she was able to launch a stunning career as the highest paid cabaret act in the world. As she grew older, the work became harder and after several falls, on stage and off, she became bedridden and frail. Forever trying to preserve the youthful image of herself in the public's mind, she refused to leave her home for the last decade of her life. She moved to a small apartment in Paris, where she allowed only her assistant to attend to her. Any other contact with the outside world was made by phone. As her condition grew ever worse, the few who remained close to her decided it was time to send her to a home. At the very moment the papers handing her over to the home were being read and signed on her behalf, Dietrich passed away.
The events of Dietrich's sex life will always be a mystery, and rightly so. While it seems, on the face of it, that she was very obviously at least bisexual if not a lesbian, doubts still ring out about how much was truth and how much was spin, created to increase her on-screen persona. Experts constantly question and doubt her homosexuality while ever new anecdotes seem to come to light. What is certain is that she was a strong woman who was not afraid to refuse Hitler and that she was determined to break social codes.
With her androgynous beauty, she attracted females and males alike and she exuded exotic passion.
Her bisexuality may simply have been a product of the rumour mill and an attempt to enhance her risk-taking image. On the other hand, she may have had other lesbian lovers that we will never know about. Either way, she broke the taboo of lesbianism and women dressing in masculine clothes forever. Dietrich created a world where women could wear what they wanted to, act how they wanted to and adore who they wanted to.
Lesbian or not, Marlene Dietrich will always count as one of history's Gay Greats.
