It’s her birthday today.
When I interviewed Dan Callahan about his book The Art of American Screen Acting, we discussed Marlene Dietrich. He has been obsessed since college, and also obsessed with trying to put her into words. What exactly is she doing. Why does she get the effects she does? HOW does she do that? Movie magic, okay. Collaboration with Josef von Sternberg, a director absolutely OBSESSED with her, obsessed to the point of emotional torture. Okay. He set her up properly so she could be perceived. But she’s DIFFERENT from other stars of her day (well, they were all different from each other. Now, so many “stars” have a sameness to them. They can interchange roles. Back in the day, though, you couldn’t put Barbara Stanwyck in a Carole Lombard vehicle. You couldn’t swap out Marlene Dietrich for Katharine Hepburn. Or Garbo.)
At any rate, I think Callahan’s chapter on Dietrich in his book is a major piece of writing, since it comes at it from a performance standpoint. He refers to her as “postmodern” – which I found fascinating and which we discussed.
Here’s our interview. It’s a doozy.
And just for fun, here she is with John Wayne. They had an affair. I mean, God, can’t you tell?
