Marlene (39 page)

I did as he suggested. As for Heidede, she was so delighted with our new arrangement, she forgot to kiss me good-bye.

I returned to America with Douglas, fretful over my daughter’s absence and the fact that my attempt to reinvent myself abroad had resulted in failure. It would take many years before I learned that my obsession with the latter was directly responsible for the former.

WITHIN WEEKS OF MY RETURN
, Paramount lined up a picture for me—a potboiler called
Angel,
in which I played a diplomat’s wife who drifts into an adulterous affair. I didn’t want to make it; I found the plot as thin as my diaphanous gowns, and reviewers duly noted that “the lugubrious story comes to a stultifying halt every time Dietrich raises her elongated eyelids.”

A few weeks after the lackluster premiere, my agent Eddie, an urbane man whose client list included other top stars, took me to lunch at the Brown Derby, that whimsical hat-shaped restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard that was considered the place to be seen.

His choice of locale was deliberate: public yet intimate, a celebrity watering hole where no one raised their voice, as I discovered after we ordered two Cobb salads. Unfolding the latest edition of the
Hollywood Reporter,
which only the previous year had lauded me as the highest-paid actress in the world, he slid it across the table.

“Now don’t get upset. You’ll see you are in excellent company.”

I looked at the article he’d circled in red. There, in type that leaped out at me like a wolf with bared fangs, I read that the Independent Theater Owners of America had published the results of their annual audience poll. Bette Davis, Rosalind Russell, and Jean Arthur were the new popular favorites. Mae West, Joan Crawford, Kate Hepburn, and the sphinx herself, Garbo, along with myself, had been deemed “box-office poison.”

I looked up in horror. “They’re encouraging the studios to stop making pictures with us.”

He nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

“You’re afraid so? Have you spoken to Paramount about it?”

He glanced around us. I knew at once that he was ascertaining whether anyone was eavesdropping, as Louella Parsons paid spies at the Brown Derby to pick up stray gossip. Then, as my chest tightened, he said quietly, “I have. They’re very apologetic but given the situation, they regretfully cannot renew your contract. As I said, you’re in good company. Garbo is there, too. This happens to some of the best talent.”

I sat immobile, stunned. I couldn’t have cared less if Garbo found herself in the same predicament; I had an expensive Swiss boarding school for my daughter, a house in Hollywood, a lifestyle to maintain. If the studio let me go, how was I going to afford it?

The waiter served the salads and asked if I wanted some grated cheese. When I failed to reply, he sniffed and retreated.

“The studio adores you,” Eddie went on. “You’re one of their favorites.
But with the state of the industry as it is, they can’t afford to keep you. They wish you all the best.”

A greeting-card sentiment, as though I’d been diagnosed with an inconvenient ailment. “All the best,” I echoed. “That’s it, after everything I’ve done for them?” My voice had grown shrill, bringing the waiter hurrying back to the table.

“Is everything to your satisfaction, Miss Dietrich?” he oozed.

“No.” I glared at him. “It most certainly is not.”

Eddie slipped the waiter a tip and sent him away. He regarded me in discomfort from across the table. “This isn’t as bad as it seems. Think of it this way: You’re now free to choose parts you want to do, not whatever the studio assigns. I’ll put together a wonderful submission packet for you and—”

I raised my hand. “No,” I whispered. “Please. No more.”

He lowered his gaze. “I am sorry, Marlene. I realize this comes as a shock, but I represent you. My job as your agent is to look after your interests—”

I couldn’t bear it. Coming abruptly to my feet, I retrieved my jacket from the coatroom and walked out into the blinding Los Angeles sunlight, calling for my car. By the time I reached my house, I was beyond tears. Beyond reason. Beyond despair.

I had fallen into an abyss of my own making.

THE STUDIO ISSUED MY FINAL PAYMENT FOR
ANGEL
. Infuriated by their abandonment, I flaunted my tarnished celebrity to the hilt, buying a new Cadillac and carrying on simultaneous affairs with Douglas, Gary, and Mercedes. My recklessness resulted in a nerve-wracking moment when, after accidentally overbooking myself, I ended up with Douglas at my door, shouting that we had reservations at the Cocoanut Grove, while Gary clambered half-dressed down the back stairs and Mercedes telephoned me in a snit because she had a salon waiting and I was nowhere in sight.

When I called her the next day to apologize, she berated me. “Really,
Marlene.
Two
men? And both such mediocre actors? I don’t know whether to be more insulted by your relish for these imbroglios or your appalling taste in dick.” She hung up on me.

Gary was more sanguine, remarking that I should hire a secretary to ensure I didn’t end up with all three of them in my bed. Douglas wept. After demanding I give up the others and hearing my predictable answer, he ended our liaison. In turn, I left my house with its empty rooms—the studio was no longer paying for it—and rented a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where I happened upon Cary Grant and Randolph Scott in the bar. They invited me to their Santa Monica cottage for coffee, after which I joined them for a walk along the beach with their terrier.

Touched by their kindness, I poured out my professional troubles. Cary shook his head sadly. “The studios own us. They control everything we do, vetting our scripts and choosing our parts, but then we get blamed when it doesn’t work out.”

Randolph took my hand, rubbing it as if I were an overwrought child. “But we think you’re divine. I’ll work with you on any picture. Just say the word.”

They were so sweet to me, and so devoted to each other, I couldn’t help but fear for them. If the studio had exiled me after a bad run, what might it do to them should the press discover that two of Hollywood’s eligible bachelors did more than share a roof? Women who lived together were seen as a sorority, inoffensive and amusing, if they were discreet. But men doing the same—I had a feeling Cary and Randolph were in for a nasty upset of their own.

Nevertheless, I was adrift, without any prospects after eight years as a star. For Christmas 1938, to celebrate the holidays and my thirty-seventh birthday, I invited all my friends over for baked ham. Afterward, we sang carols and swam naked in the pool, with Gary and me diving into the deep end, in full view of the other hotel guests, gawking at us from their balconies.

After the festivities, I knew I couldn’t go on this way, spending money I did not have. I called Eddie and gave my permission for him to submit
me for hire. I couldn’t bear to be idle another second. Without a place to go and work every day, I felt like a pariah.

“Sure thing,” he said. “But it’ll take some time. I have to negotiate terms and locate projects not yet assigned to contracted stars. I can do it, but can you manage until then?”

I looked about my bungalow, crammed with objects I couldn’t bear to part with, my German clocks and paintings, my books and Dresden china. It didn’t feel like home. My designation as box-office poison had accomplished the impossible: Dietrich the invincible, the Hollywood goddess of desire, had become an unemployed woman in a rented room.

“I think I’ll go back to Europe,” I told him. “I’ll telephone you from there.”

III

I
returned to Paris in early 1939.

Worry over the rumors of impending war was my stated excuse; it was time to bring Heidede back with me. To pave the way before my departure, I applied for U.S. citizenship, claiming my family as dependents. The Nazi journal
Der Stürmer
promptly blasted me for betraying the Third Reich once again, my years of “living among Hollywood Jews” having rendered me “entirely un-German.” I laughed off the accusation, faced with a more pressing threat: studio disinterest. Despite Eddie’s offers to lower my salary, no one wanted to hire me.

Nevertheless, Paris weaved anew her spell. Under torrential downpours, I went out to dinner and the theater with the novelist Erich Maria Remarque, whose 1929 book,
All Quiet on the Western Front,
and its film adaptation had been massive successes, but were now banned by the Nazis, as was Remarque himself. I’d met him onboard during my crossing and was drawn by his fatalistic view of Germany’s fiery course. Dour and in poor health, struggling to complete a new novel, he reminded me that as fellow Germans, we were as much scattered by Hitler as imprisoned by him, landless children forced to wander.

Remarque and I became lovers, though in truth he wasn’t very amo
rous. He had suffered injuries during the Great War that he claimed had made him impotent. He wasn’t, not entirely, but he tended to fatalism and needed some coaxing, both in and out of bed. It suited me to be seen about town with him, the German-born movie star with the celebrated exiled German novelist. I figured the press couldn’t hurt, and I had nothing better to do with my time.

One evening after I’d given him feedback on his work, I arrived back in my suite at the Ritz, where I was ringing up a tab I could not pay, to find Rudi waiting for me. As I dripped rain on the carpet, he said, “Headlines again. You and Remarque, parading all over Paris. Why? Why did you come here?”

“I came,” I said, pulling off my raincoat, “because I want to bring Heidede to America. And my parade, as you call it, is for publicity. I lost my contract. Maybe if I show I’m still newsworthy, someone will hire me. Besides,” I went on, suppressing a twinge of guilt at my self-justification, “I thought we were past all this. We’re still married. What more do you want?”

“Stop it. Stop lying to me. You only came here because at this particular moment, you have nowhere else to go.”

He spoke without malice but his words stung. Lighting a cigarette, I paced to the window, smoking furiously as I gazed upon the rain-swept Place Vendôme. “Must you think so little of me?” I said.

“I don’t. But I can expect more. You’ve cooked and cleaned for others. Everyone knows it: the movie goddess serving goulash to her lovers. Why not do it for me now? You’ve nothing left to prove. If Hollywood doesn’t want you, I do. Stay and live with me, as married people should.”

I snorted. “What about Tami? Have you asked her what she thinks about my moving in?”

“You are my wife. She has always understood that.”

I couldn’t look at him. How could I stare him in the face and admit what he clearly had not realized by now? I did care for him, more than he knew, but I found him tiresome, predictable; he was a good man who did his best and he must indeed love me to tolerate as much as he did, yet I
couldn’t imagine—indeed, had never been able to imagine—this life of compromise and bratwurst he cleaved to, this delusion that our marriage meant more than it did.

“You know I’m not made for exclusive engagements.”

He sighed. It wasn’t a sound of resignation. Rather, it was like the scrape of a dull scalpel across my back. When I finally turned around, he said, “Then why don’t you divorce me? Why insist on this charade? I love you, Marlene. I always will. But you don’t love or need me.”

“I . . .” Without warning, I felt as though the floor had cracked open under my feet. “I do love you. And I need you, in my own way. Just not as you want.”

I decided not to remind him that when we first met, I had wanted to need him. I’d wanted the security and shelter he had promised me. Only we chose another path; we put my career first. I found it demeaning that he’d reproach me now, when I was at my lowest point.

He shook his head. For an instant, I saw him as he’d been that evening at Das Silhouette, his eyes locked on mine as if I were all he could see, his hair slicked from his brow except for one careless lock. “You don’t want a divorce because I am—how do the Americans put it?” A sour smile coiled his mouth. “Your golden parachute, in case all else fails.”

I froze, my cigarette singeing my fingers. “That’s a horrible thing to say.”

His smile faded. “It is. But more than that, it’s a sad thing to say. The very saddest any person can say to another. Because I may not be here in the end. I may leave you, instead.”

“You won’t.” My retort was impetuous. “Who will pay the bills? You certainly can’t; your job here barely feeds you. And Heidede—if you divorce me, you divorce her. I am her mother. I’ll not stand for it. I will hire a hundred lawyers if need be to gain sole custody.”

I meant to be cruel. To wound. To maim. In that terrible moment, he was everyone and everything that had forsaken me. He was von Sternberg and the studio, my mother and the past. He represented everything I had fought so tenaciously to overcome.

“No.” His shoulders sagged. “You’re right. I won’t leave. But not,” he
added, as I raised my chin, “because I fear losing our daughter. I won’t leave because I understand. Growing old alone is a punishment I’d never wish on anyone—especially you.”

He turned and walked out, leaving me with ash filtering through my fingers.

The irony of it, that the one man I’d most neglected, not touched in years, could so unnervingly give voice to my deepest fear, one I’d not even recognized I harbored.

Solitude. Loneliness. An unacknowledged finale.

Where had it started? When had I started to believe that the only life worth living was one that was exalted, photographed and recorded? I could search for an answer, scavenge through memories of that little girl who lost her father too soon, the quick-witted student who hated school but was infatuated with her teacher, the ardent violinist without enough talent and the struggling cabaret performer. I had no idea. I didn’t know who I was anymore. I couldn’t reconcile the polished replica projected ten times her size on the screen with the stranger I’d become.

Who was I? What more did I want?