Marlene Dietrich-Large Print E

by Maria E. Riva

The riveting biography of Marlene Dietrich is told by her daughter to provide an intensely personal portrait of the life of a star. (Biography).

Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

Reviews

[Tam May · Rating 3 out of 5]

To be perfectly honest, I couldn't finish this book. The title really should have been "Marlene Dietrich And Me" because it was as much about Maria Riva as it was about Dietrich. I was expecting to read a straight-forward Dietrich biography. Instead, this reads like a horror story of emotional abuse, cruelty, narcissism, and viciousness. It's not only Dietrich herself. I was more disgusted with Sieber, a weak-willed bully who used his daughter and his mistress as pawns to compete with his movie star wife. I really feel for Riva. Her voice is sometimes very humorous but it's obvious that the constant dialogues in this book are out of her own imagination and not possibly real (which I am not necessarily against, as I believe in some poetic license). But at some point, the made-up dialogue sounded like something out of one of her mother's Pre-Code melodramas - over the top with its cruelty and intended more for shock value. I'm not saying none of the horrendous things Riva describes of her childhood happened - I am very sure they did. But at some point I felt the line between fiction and reality had been crossed. Had this been a work of fiction I would have probably understood it (although it probably wouldn't have made me continue to read it as I don't read horror stories of abuse if I can help it). But this book is intended (at least, that's what I assume, since it's under the Biography category) as a work of non-fiction so crossing that line was too much for me.