About book Marlene Dietrich By Her Daughter (1993)
I had to read this account of the woman seen through her daughter's eyes. I knew this was no trashy Mommie Dearest act of vengeance, having pored over mainstream reviews. I found Maria Riva's efforts commendable. Marlene was something else, onscreen and off. Imagine a night on the tiles with her, Berlin, circa 1920-something.Born in 1901 in Schöneberg, now a district of Berlin, Dietrich studied violin, becoming interested in theatre and poetry as a teenager. Her first job, in 1922, was playing violin in a pit orchestra accompanying silent films. She was fired after four weeks. She instead became a chorus girl, touring with vaudeville-style revues. Also playing small roles in dramas, she initially attracted no special attention. Her film debut comprised a bit part in The Little Napoleon (1923). By the late 1920s, Dietrich was playing sizable screen roles.In 1929 came her breakthrough role of cabaret singer Lola Lola in The Blue Angel (1930), which introduced her signature song 'Falling in Love Again'. A success, she moved to the U.S. for Paramount Pictures as a German answer to MGM's Swedish Greta Garbo. The rest, as they say, is legend.In 1999, the American Film Institute named Dietrich the ninth-greatest female star of all time. Among my favourites of her films were Witness for the Prosecution and Stage Fright. Marlene's middle years were of great interest to this baby boomer:Approached by the Nazis to return to Germany, she famously turned them down flat. Staunchly anti-Nazi, she became an American citizen in 1939. Dietrich became one of the first celebrities to raise war bonds. She toured the US for most of 1942 and 1943, reportedly selling more bonds than any other star.During 1944 and 1945, she performed for Allied troops in Algeria, Italy, Britain and France, entering Germany with Generals Gavin and Patton. When asked why she did so despite the obvious dangers, she replied, 'aus Anstand' ('out of decency').Awarded the US Medal of Freedom in 1945, she said this was her proudest accomplishment. She was also awarded the French government's Légion d'honneur for her wartime work.Dietrich performed on Broadway twice in the late 1960s, winning a special Tony Award in 1968. In 1972 she received $250,000 to film I Wish You Love, a version of her Broadway show An Evening With Marlene Dietrich, in London. Unhappy with the result, she need not have been.I have live recordings of her 1960s and 1970s concerts, and what a performer she was. She had no need to sing as such; she was simply a supreme artiste who held audiences around the planet mesmerised.In her later years, Dietrich's health declined. She survived cervical cancer and suffered from poor leg circulation. A 1973 stage fall injured her left thigh, requiring skin grafts.'Do you think this is glamorous?' she said in a 1973 interview. 'That it's a great life and that I do it for my health? Well it isn't. Maybe once, but not now.'After fracturing her right leg in 1974, her live performance career largely ended when the following year she again fell off stage, this time in Sydney, Australia, breaking her thigh.Her last film appearance was a cameo role in Just a Gigolo (1979), starring David Bowie, in which she sang the title song. That same year her autobiography, Nehmt nur mein Leben (Take Just My Life), was published.Dependent on painkillers and alcohol, Dietrich withdrew to the seclusion of her Paris apartment to spend her dotage mostly bedridden. For more than a decade she became a prolific letter-writer and phone-caller, before dying aged 90 in 1992.It is perhaps unnecessary to hear from Maria Riva about her mother's many affairs and sexual fetishes. Fortunately, this does not lower the book's tone, just pads it out needlessly. That is my only criticism.A good, solid documentation of a screen legend's ways by her frank and not at all nasty daughter.
There are great autobiographies or memoirs written by friends of celebrities that consist of personal information and small tidbits that greatly interest readers. Then there are biographies, often more informational and objective than autobiographies. This book is composed of both which makes it one of the best books about a celebrity around.Maria Riva is the daughter of legend Marlene Dietrich, an androgynous star of the 1930s, 40s, 50s, and 60s. One would believe that a daughter would be the most biased person to write a biography but this is not the case with this book. Riva shares personal information but she always cites when she does so as to not confuse fact and observation. She includes diary entries, letters from lovers, and a bevy of other sources including other acquaintances of Dietrich. She reveals things that her mother made up for the press and what her mother really thought about things like films, other stars, and sex.Riva always remains objective and portrays her mother respectably even in embarrassing or hateful situations because she is aware of the multitude of Dietrich fans. She does not praise simply to praise though; she seems to understand the adoration of the facade Marlene Dietrich showed the world. Riva talks about how she had to trick her mother into being treated for the cancer she swore she didn't have. She writes about her mother forcing her to get fitted for a diaphragm before she traveled overseas to entertain the troops during the second World War. Even when she speaks of when Dietrich told Riva's sons that their mother had stolen them from her, she does not try to persuade readers to hate her mother.This is an incredible book. Enjoy this jewel of writing.
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I'd like to spend few words about this book, because I'm appalled by Maria Riva's will to destroy the myth her mother was, and still is, by telling outrageus stories and secrets she'd better have took with her into the grave, the day she'll die. I'm not saying that Marlene was flawless, but I think the role of a biographer is that to write about a human being, about the good and the bad moments this particular human being had lived and actions made, but always with respect of the dead. There are secrets that need to remain untold, even if you, biographer/daughter/son/nephew/et caetera, have been part of, for the sake of those who love the public figure; or at least, if the urge of discrediting the famous figure is too unbearable, just to write them once in the entire book, not every other page. As I thought at the start of my reading, this book is mostly a rant about this oh-so-cruel mother who needed constant nursing throughout her entire life, a child who never grew up, this vitiated snob always craving for more fame, a crazy nymphomaniac until her very last breath. Luckily enough, I'm not part of those people that get their ideas easily changed, so my enthusiasm for Marlene Dietrich remains alive, after this torture. I'm awarding this abomination three stars just because of the magnificent cover, for a nice story that made me laugh now and then, and for Marlenah herself. Future plans: to read another biography about her, lest I live with the heavy memory of this volume for too long.
—Virginia La Dietrich
In this razor-sharp biography written by Maria Riva—Marlene Dietrich’s daughter—we are given a circumspect portrait of Dietrich’s multifaceted character. Surprisingly conventional in the domestic realm, Dietrich cooked sauerkraut and potatoes like a Prussian housewife; held a traditional (if not skewed) view of the husband as the “head of the household”; and took a hands-on, no-nonsense approach to practical matters that allowed her, for instance, to ingeniously deliver a stuck calf from its birthing mother. Yet Dietrich had affairs with hundred of famous men and some women; her magnificent, self-selected outfits were the sole glory of her many “B” movies and later dazzled the audiences who came to hear her sing. While deluding her many lovers into believing they were “hers and hers alone,” she revealed their personal foibles to her daughter Maria from a very young age, with a callous humor characteristic of “the Dietrich.” While revering her mother’s immense talents, Riva lays equally bare Dietrich’s self-serving lifestyle, her comically brutal tongue, and a nonchalant arrogance that had devastating effects on the lives of those closest to her. (Russ K., Reference)
—Evanston Public Library
While this is foremost a biography (and not a very flattering one) of Marlene Dietrich, it's also a memoir of what it's like to be the daughter of an overbearing, vain, and selfish world famous celebrity. The author, Dietrich's daughter, had an interesting life because of her mother's fame, but a very difficult one as well. I see most reviewers here on Goodreads are giving this book a better rating than I am, and I think that's probably because I'm not really the intended audience for a book like this. There was way too much description of fashion and decor for my tastes, and I didn't care for how much of the story was told through reconstructed dialog, although this technique does give the reader an idea of what it was like to be in Dietrich's presence, at least from the daughter's perspective. Still, an interesting book about a lady who was, at times, fascinating on screen but apparently very unlikeable in real life.
—Richard
