Blue Angel: The Life of Marlene Dietrich

by Donald Spoto

Acclaimed biographer Donald Spoto brings to life one of the most incandescent and elusive star to grace Hollywood, Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992). He has tapped archival materials and conducted dozens of interviews to present a life story filled with crucial new details: her hardships and struggles for recognition in 1920s Berlin; her transformation into a screen goddess; her entertainment of Allied troops during the World War II; and her stint as a nightclub singer in the 1950s. Spoto also includes accounts of her love affairs with Yul Brynner, Maurice Chevalier, Gary Cooper, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr, Eddie Fisher, general George S. Patton, Erich Maria Remarque, Frank Sinatra, and John Wayne.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Media Tie In, Film, Biography Memoir, Autobiography, History

333 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1992

About the author

A prolific and respected biographer and theologian, Donald Spoto is the author of twenty published books, among them bestselling biographies of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Alfred Hitchcock, Tennessee Williams, and Ingrid Bergman. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. Donald Spoto earned his Ph.D. in theology at Fordham University. After years as a theology professor, he turned to fulltime writing. The Hidden Jesus: A New Life, published in 1999, was hailed by the Los Angeles Times as "offering a mature faith fit for the new millennium." His successful biography of Saint Francis was published in 2002.

Reviews

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 4 out of 5]

”It is a woman’s job to sense the hungers in men and to satisfy them without, at the same time, giving so much of herself that men become bored with her. It is the same with acting. Each man or woman should be able to find in the actress the thing he or she most desires and still be left with the promise that they will find something new and exciting every time they see her again.” Marlene Dietrich


Marlene Dietrich was obsessed with lighting her whole career. She always demanded a full length mirror to be just off stage so she could check to see if the lighting was perfect.

I first saw Marlene Dietrich in the movie Morocco (1930) many, many moons ago which was exactly what Hollywood wanted me to do. The Blue Angel (1930) was held up on purpose to allow the American audience to adjust to Dietrich before they exposed them to her character Lola Lola. I watched Morrocco because of Gary Cooper. I’d just seen High Noon (1952) which is certainly one of my favorite western movies, so I watched the movie for the wrong reasons, but how wonderful it is when that happens. Recently I watched Morocco again and was captivated by the way the director Josef von Sternberg created so much mystery around the character of Amy Jolly. Dietrich would be asked to play variations of Amy Jolly/Lola Lola for the rest of her career. So what magic happened in Morocco?

”So von Sternberg and cinematographer Lee Garmes presented Dietrich as a Garbo double for her first scene in Morocco. She moves toward the camera, veled, swathed in black, enveloped in nighttime fog aboard ship. The final scene of the film perfectly reverses all that, as Dietrich moves away from us, without veil or hat, dressed all in white, bathed only by the bright sunlight in the arid desert. Between these two images occurs an almost mythic transformation”.


Dietrich with Gary Cooper in Morocco.

She became Dietrich.

Hollywood felt that The Blue Angel was just TOO risque for an American audience, so it was temporarily shelved until Morocco was released. It is interesting to see Dietrich as Lola Lola with apple cheeks and certainly more weight on her frame. She isn’t fat, but the studio thought she was, and promptly put her on a weight loss program. What emerged, as the baby fat melted away, is the sculptured features of a great star.


Dietrich in Blue Angel.

She was heralded as the next Greta Garbo an illusion to the deadpan expressions on both their faces. She didn’t mind the comparison because she respected Garbo’s work and at this point in her career she needed any help she could get to build credibility with studios and fans. Later though after she had become MARLENE DIETRICH a waiter mistook her for Garbo and she promptly left with her entourage and never returned to that restaurant.

As an offsetting story to what seems like a moment of pettiness, she was in Johannesburg in a restaurant in July of 1964 and was informed that the black company chauffeur was not going to be allowed to come in and eat because of apartheid. She threw a wonderful fit that only a movie star could properly pull off, ordered two meals, skipped the luncheon, went out to the driver, and ate her meal with him.

Dietrich came of age in 1920s Berlin where sexuality knew no limits. When she came to America, despite the moralistic leanings of that country, she brought Berlin attitudes towards sex and sexual orientation with her.

”A nonchalant approach to sex was in fact considered absolutely chic and virtually a social requirement for a grownup trying to get through the unpleasantness of every day.”

She was married to Rudy Sieber and had a child named Maria. They were the perfect Dietrich beard. To say that she was sexually free is somehow an understatement. She was bisexual. Anyone, and I mean anyone she found to be attractive she saw no reason why they shouldn’t fall into bed with one another. Marriage was not a deterrent. Lovely wives of people she met would often receive a box full of violets as an expression of Dietrich’s interest.

”These flowers were a widely understood token, since the popular German poet Stefan Georg had taken the color lavender as an emblem of homosexual love and violets as markers of its erotic expression.”

I’m sure there was bafflement and lack of understanding in many cases. Some of these “heterosexual” women did make an exception to their normal orientation for a night of passion with the famous star.

Dietrich slept with a whole host of actors. To name a few, Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Kirk Douglas, Frank Sinatra, Yul Brynner, and Burt Bacharach. Some of these men were 25 years younger than Dietrich when they took a spin between the sheets of the temptress. There is a funny scene that was set up by the director so that Dietrich could scope out Wayne before the studio would hire him to do a picture with her.

”With that wonderful floating walk Dietrich passed Wayne as if he were invisible, then paused, made a half-turn and cased him from cowlick to cowboots, then turned to me and whispered, ‘Oh Daddy, buy me that!’”

She soon became bored with Wayne and eventually dropped him all together because…he didn’t read books. Someone who was quite capable of feeding that part of her need for bookish discourse was Erich Maria Remarque who became her lover of many years. Dietrich supported the arts and sought out artists and writers whenever she could.

”When completed, her living room had bookshelves lined with titles by William James, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Faulkner and Hemingway, and the walls were adorned with original art by Cezanne, Delacroix, Utrillo and Corot.”


Erich Maria Remarque and Dietrich.

I think of myself as a man of the world, but Dietrich still managed to shock me. She was so audacious and so liberated sexually that I can’t help, but admire her freedom from social constraints. During a time when a scandal would have torpedoed her career forever she managed to juggle her preference of two male lovers and one female lover, all at once, for most of her active life. She was careful to always be photographed in a group of people if she was out with one of her lovers. In fact poor Rudy, well maybe not so poor because she kept him in style for the rest of his life, was often dragged around from nightclub to nightclub with her entourage merely to dispel rumors.

She managed her image constantly. I was also struck by the work she put into any entrance she made. She would have restaurants scouted to know how best she must arrive. When she presented an academy award at the Oscars, before she would agree, she had to know from which side of the stage she would enter from because the slit in her dress, exposing those famous legs, had to be on the audience side.

”She sauntered out with her sheath skirt slit to one knee and held 2,800 people in her instep.”

She was well into her fifties at this point.


The Dietrich legs that were once more famous than her face.

During WW2 her career took one of many downturns. She had come out against her native country and the German high command was not happy with her refusal to come home. She decided to go overseas and entertain the Allied troops as did many stars at that time who were not actively serving in the military. There is this one moment where it is dark and lights can not be found to provide a stage so a ring of tanks was formed around Dietrich and the soldiers shone their flashlights on her as she performed. I just can’t even image how etherial that must have been.

She also, between performances, balanced affairs with General George “Blood and Guts” Patton and General James “Jumping Jim” Gavin. Like in all her relationships, the potential for absolute disaster is lurking constantly, but she somehow manages to massage hurt feelings and temper bouts of jealousy without ever letting things get out of control.


Dietrich with “Blood and Guts”

As with many stars I’ve read about, Clara Bow, Greta Garbo,and Hedy Lamarr to name three others, Marlene Dietrich ended up trapped in her apartment in later years. As Hedy Lamarr stated and I’ll paraphrase here: it was so devastating to see the disappointment in people’s eyes to finally meet her and not see the beautiful movie star siren she once was. The public they once adored now has become their enemy.


Marlene Dietrich in her last performance.

Dietrich was tempted out of retirement in 1979 to sing a song in the David Bowie film Just a Gigolo. She was 78 years old. As everyone gathered to watch this legend perform, the nervousness of the audience was palatable. No one knew for sure that she could still perform. Donald Spoto chose to open his bio with this scene, and I know as I get older I’m becoming an old softy, but I had tears in my eyes. She absolutely nailed it.

She wasn’t the best singer or the best actress, but once seen she was impossible to forget. The American Film Institute in 1999 named her the 9th greatest female star of all time.

”Marlene Dietrich had to rely only on a cultivated sex appeal that was provocative but never coarse, slightly naughty but never sordid. She pleased men and women in her audience by incarnating in her roles and expressing in her songs a cynicism without acrimony--by representing the ordinary adult experience of failed romance, lost love, diminished expectations. She represented what she was--the eternal love, tenacious, proud, destined for the cycles of fierce romance and eventual disappointment, hovering too closely, nurturing too much, rejected but unbitter, ever eager for restoration to favor. But most of all, she simply endured, and all the world loves a survivor.”

I couldn’t put this book down. It was simply irresistible. Dietrich was a headline almost every minute.

I also read a book about Hedy Lamarr titled Beautiful: the Life of Hedy Lamarr by Stephen Michael Shearer. Hedy Lamarr Review with Pictures of course

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
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[Melindam · Rating 4 out of 5]

"...don't ask whom you are applauding—the legend, the performer or me," she told an audience at the Museum of Modern Art after a retrospective tribute in April 1959. "I personally liked the legend. Not that it was easy to live with, but I liked it."



You don't have to be a Marlene Dietrich fan -I have certainly never been one- or a movie buff to find her and this biography compelling. By the end, you’ll have learned not only about Dietrich herself, but also about the evolution of film and the art of image-making.

For all intents and purposes, she was a fascinating woman and so much more.

I have to say I have seen only 2 of her films, both of them in the tender age of 10-12, so obviously I was not very knowledgeable about her or the finer points of film-making and arts. The first film was Morocco and I remember asking my mum if she was for real or if she was a doll. Back then I had no idea about the special lightning she and director von Sternberg had developed just for her, but boy was it effective. It gave me the creeps. :)

The other movie was "Destry rides again", though my young self was more interested in James Stewart and I have even forgotten that it was "her" film until now. So no, not exactly a Dietrich connoisseur here.

But for some reason I had put this book on my TBR earlier and it was the right time to grab and read it. Author Donald Spoto did a thorough and thoughtful job of presenting La Dietrich in Full Panorama, while providing the necessary historical and artistic context. We follow her from her birth in 1901 (the birth year that Dietrich took quite some pains to disguise when applying for American citizenship) to her death in 1992.

We are treated to the full and intimate process of how Dietrich constructed—and tirelessly maintained—her own legend/myth, and just how much it cost her.

"...she was also imprisoned within a persona for which there was simply no replacement: in thirty years there had been only minor variations to her image as a femme fatale."

It's really sad that she was such a slave to her own image that she turned down films that could have been so much more interesting and challenging than most of the flops she agreed to appear in (there were more of those than of actual "good movies").


this dress was specially "constructed" for her together with a foam body suit underneath that kept her in her famous shape and kept up the myth of an "eternally" youthful body.

A portrait of ambition, glamour, and self-invention: I’m really glad I finally got around to reading it.

Much recommended.

[Evan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes when reading a book my brain makes connections that other readers might not--not because I'm an especial genius but because we all have different sets of experiences that remind us of seemingly disparate things.

A day after finishing Donald Spoto's biography of Marlene Dietrich and fixating on the extent to which she created and maintained a public image and self-image--even having Jean Louis and other costume designers and makeup artists encase her body in a flesh-colored, foam-rubber fake body to suggest an ageless physique under her sleek stage costumes--I could not help but be reminded of Joris-Karl Huysmanns fin de sicle masterpiece, A Rebours (Against Nature), in which the male protagonist, Des Esseintes, secludes himself to create an environment of complete aesthetic artifice. Dietrich spent an entire lifetime doing that very thing to herself, creating an artificial image so inviolate that her own sense of reality and identity become submerged into it. Once Dietrich no longer felt able maintain the artificial image of eternal youth and sexuality, she withdrew from the world. It's as if Dietrich came to believe that her value as a person and her talent had evaporated once she felt unworthy of being seen.

As the creator of an artificial image, Dietrich had it all over Lady Gaga and Madonna. Spoto's book is best when it examines how Dietrich sculpted that image, how it evolved and overtook whatever other identity she may have had. Dietrich was a force of nature, a woman of incredible discipline, and authority--steamrolling her way to fame and fortune often through sheer force of will and personality. Her singing and acting talents were limited; her legendary looks owed a great deal to creative lighting, camera angles and makeup. And for the rest of her showbiz career she often became her own director in order to sustain her "brand", telling her ostensible auteur bosses how she would be photographed and posed--or else.

In a small role, Dietrich had the most memorable line in Orson Welles' masterful 1958 movie, Touch of Evil when, in considering the checkered career of a friend-- a corrupt police detective (played by Welles) who was a hero to some and a pox on law enforcement to others--she coolly asks: "What can you say about a man? What does it matter what you say about people?"

Dietrich felt the same way about the facts when it came to herself; to her it was the fiction that mattered. This book asks: What can you say about Marlene Dietrich? Spoto, to his credit, stops short of telling us *who* Marlene Dietrich was, since in many ways she was as elusive as the blase characters who defined her screen image. All of us are contradictory and explicable, but because we don't exist in the celebrity fishbowl or attract massive attention to ourselves we somehow believe ourselves to be "normal" or average people. Dietrich was vain, sexually driven, struck by moments of humility and charity, etc.--in other words, she was what we all are, just on a grander scale.

She did manage to defy convention in ways that even today would perturb many of the insufferable prigs who'd like to make bedroom inspection mandatory for consenting adults (she was very much into casual sex with women and men, and pulled off the nearly impossible feat of remaining on friendly terms with most of her ex-lovers). She was fiercely independent in ways that earned both admiration and scorn. Dietrich's actions and motivations were contradictory, selfish and often childish. And just when you think you hate her, she does something marvelous and admirable. At the height of her beauty and popularity she was the world's most glamorous and highest-paid woman. At the same time, she loved being a traditional German hausfrau, cooking classic mittle Euro fare or scrubbing the floors for those she chose to dote over at any given moment. Dietrich's very Germanic obsession with cleanliness seemed to be another of her ways of maintaining the orderliness and artifice of her life, but also was a way of controlling others and, as Spoto suggests, was a kind of penance for some of the guilt she accumulated during her life for the casually cruel way she often treated friends and loved ones.

Along the way, there is plenty of name-dropping, and the bisexual star's bedroom partners included a gallery of lesser known women and famous men, including John Wayne, George Raft, Jean Gabin, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Erich Maria Remarque, Gary Cooper, Josef von Sternberg, John Gilbert, Clark Gable, Maurice Chevalier, Frank Sinatra, Kirk Douglas, Eddie Fisher, Mike Todd, Raf Vallone, Burt Bacharach and Yul Brynner. An affair also is alleged with General George Patton during Dietrich's admirably grueling USO stint during World War II, though at least one Patton biography I have on hand, by Stanley Hirshson, denies this.

There are some factual errors in the book, the worst being an attribution of the 1924 classic, The Last Laugh to director G.W. Pabst instead of to F.W. Murnau. For a star biographer and film expert of Spoto's calibre this seems an egregious rookie mistake. In another passage he seems to suggest that American howitzers destroyed the monastery and town of Cassino during the time Dietrich was entertaining troops in Italy. This is a woefully erroneous statement, as it was primarily bombers and a combination of weaponry that leveled the buildings.

Otherwise, Spoto has done good research, and tells us the facts of Dietrich's life, surmises about her motivations when the facts and circumstances warrant, and analyzes the films very well to show us the life-imitates-art parallels. It's a solid and very readable effort and answers probably all that I would want to know about the screen legend.

[Jennifer Nelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I felt that this started out strong, dipped a bit in the middle chapters, and picked up at the very end. I enjoyed learning about Dietrichs' early life, but found the book to be reptitious. I don't know how many times one needs to be told that Dietrich cleaned and cooked for the people in her life. My attention span is not so short that the same things have to be repeated every chapter.

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

This Autobiography was at times very dry and boring. I did enjoy the bit about early theater in Berlin in the 1920's and how things were put together. Clothing, lighting, general rehearsals and song and dance numbers were really challenging and usually heavily critiqued!

As far as Dietrich goes, though her career well outlasted Garbo's I think that seeing a few movies she was featured in (The Devil is a Woman, The Garden of Allah and Angel to name a few) Her characters were all the same person and played the same way, I guess she was popular due to her exotic nature and sultry voice but one should look at all of the box office disasters she made from '37 to 41.

This was not my favorite autobiography to date and am glad to have finished it!

[Yelena · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was truly disappointed by this work of Donald Soto. I have before read his book (non-fiction, as well) about Grace Kelly and was highly fascinated and satisfied by it. "Blue Angel", however, proved just the opposite: it circles basically around One topic of Marlene's life-her physical personal identity. All her "adventures" and escapades that are Not necessary to dwell on through out the whole of the book. It's unpleasant (I assume, for many ). Meanwhile, it ignores her generous help to the Allies Army during World War II, which mentioned quite briefly and not fully. I do not recommend this book to readers.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

"She was certainly not without minor but effective talent, but this had mainly to do with her relationship to the camera; she was no Duce, and she knew it. Dietrich was, however, absolutely sui generis, and she never indulged in the petty hypocrisies of many stars. She stamped out her own trademark, lived according to her own creeds, forged an image that was a direct reflection of her own social and sexual complexity. In important ways, therefore, she was perhaps the first triumphant example of self-promotion."

[Inunn56 · Rating 2 out of 5]

A biography of Marlene Dietrich while informative and psychologically engrossing would have been a better read with more character analysis. What was most interesting to me is how the world of entertainment cannot contain an ego the size of this woman's. In spite of the ruthless climb to the top, she was an empty vessel in the end as she sought more bizarre and painful methods of preserving her outer self.

[Jennifer Manganelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

I never realized how complicated things could be back then.
When you hear stories or see movies about the good ole days everyone seems so happy without a care in the world and they never get upset or have any problems. But let me tell you Marlene Dietrich had problems and unhappiness.
The book was a little depressing at times but hey thats real life.
I would definitely read this book again in the future!!

[Zelmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was familiar with Marlene Dietrich, but it wasn't until I learned that she had an affair with one of my favorite writers, Erich Maria Remarque. After that, I was curious about her. This was an easy and enjoyable read. I recommend it to any of her fans or anyone else who would like to learn more about her.

[Crystal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good biography. I really didn't know much about Dietrich at all. Haven't seen any of her films either. Will have to change that.

My goodness though, she sure got around. Probably slept with half of Hollywood, including John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Kirk Douglas, and Eddie Fisher just to name a few. Sheesh! haha

[Lily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tricky one! Love, love, loved reading of Marlene's gender-twisting, free spirited life. The perspective is however very clearly through the male lense, with many conclusions of the auther feeling very of its time. Would be great to see her story through a modern feminist lense, but still got a lot out of this read.

[Pixietweet Clip]

What an annoying nag the grande dame was. And yet, it's fun to read about the other players: Hemingway, Edith Piaf, John Wayne. She must have slept with half of Hollywood and then some!

[Steve Higgins · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very compelling read, a biography of Marlene Deitrich who to be fair, I didn’t know much about until this book.

Marlene was one of those people perhaps born at the wrong time. Today might be a better time for her when lifestyles of gay and lesbian people are not so much of an issue.

Marlene rose to prominence in the film world of Germany between the world wars. She was married to assisstant director Rudolf Sieber and together they had a child, Maria. The couple had what we might call an open marriage and Marlene had various partners both male and female and her husband too found himself another love. A big hit for Marlene was her performance as Lola Lola in The Blue Lamp directed by Josef Von Sternberg in 1930. Shortly afterwards Marlene and Von Sternberg moved to Hollywood and the two made a series of films for Paramount. While she was away from Germany the Nazis rose to power. Goebbels himself asked her to come back and work in German films but when she declined, the Nazi party rejected her. Marlene became a naturalised American and even entertained the troops -the allied troops during World War II.

She had affairs with both men and women and at one point even began to wear male oriented clothes and once she was denied entry into a Paris night club for wearing trousers.

She was extremely concerned with how she looked in films and always arranged with the lighting crew for a key light to illuminate her face in a particular way, many times even bypassing the director. Alfred Hitchcock for one was not amused.

When the film work fizzled out she re invented herself as a performer with a one woman show in Las Vegas. The clothes and lighting she organised herself in fact at home she even had a special key light, just she specified for her films, that she would stand under when she met journalists and even her friends.

She was always there to help her friends and still stayed close to her husband and his partner. If friends were sick or even just down, Marlene would come round and clean up and make food. She was not only a famous and beautiful star but also a proud hausfrau.

The book opens with her appearing in a short sequence in her very last film- - which starred pop star David Bowie. She performed for the camera perfectly, only one take was required, then she returned to her Paris apartment and except for hospital and doctors’ appointments, she never left again until her death in 1992.

Not the best film book I’ve ever read but still an informative and intriguing read.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not being very familiar with Marlene Dietrich the person or really her body of film work, it was interesting to see how she started out & her career grew. At times technical & repetitive (Yes, she controlled the lighting & cook and cleaned for those she cared about) it broke down her early work in great detail (sometimes too great) and explored her many varied relationships.

Alluring & beautiful, she was not incredibly talented as either an actress or a singer (at least by the authors opinion, I'll need to revisit some of her more popular works to decide!) but created a powerful mystique around herself-- that drew millions to her through the decades.

I felt that the end of the book (on her last 20 years of life) was a little rush & incomplete-- part of this may be from the fact that she was basically a recluse in failing health so there is probably little to actually discuss. But even her death was only referenced in a sentence. I should the think the end to one of the world's most famous women would have warranted more of a send off.

The book is enjoyable, but I did have to skim over certain overly technical areas or parts that were repeated for the umpteenth time. But it's a great start to learn about this fascinating woman and I will follow this up with further readings & my own film analysis.

[Helka · Rating 2 out of 5]

Marlene Dietrich’s glamour and alluring persona she had established and maintained for herself despite the tumultuous events of the 20th century is what has drawn me to this biography. I have to say that I have really struggled getting through this book despite Marlene’s fascinating life story. It is clear that that the author has put an immense amount of effort into the research for this book. However, I cannot help but feel that in his focus to pin down the facts of a woman’s life who deliberately defied the passing of time, the narration loses some of Marlene’s allure and ends up being rather dry at places.

[Jessica T. · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading Blue Angel: the Life of Marlene Dietrich, I have mixed feelings about the woman. She was a legend for her beauty but had little talent. Her work with Josef von Sternberg made her an icon but she couldn’t get passed the femme fatale image. In her later years she tried with plastic surgery and foam bodysuits to stay eternally young. She became an incorrigible drunk and was basically an unpleasant person. The biography was well written but relied (towards the end) on Noel Cowards diary. Unintentionally the biography speaks of societal pressure on women (beauty and age).

[Charlotte · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book to learn more about the artist who sang "Lili Marlene" a well known WWll song. What a magnificent women Marlene Dietrich was to appear young and beautiful until her 70's by focussing on the every tiny detail in lighting, makeup and wardrobe. She was a fashion icon of her day who had affairs with Burt Bacharat, Hemmingway, Charles Chevalle, John Wayne and General Patton just to name a view.

[HornDevil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Semikiinnostava henkilökuva saksalaissyntyisestä elokuvatähdestä. Marlenesta ei maalata mitään kiiltokuvamaista hahmoa vaan enemmän vaaka kääntyy epäimartelevuuden puolelle. Aina kirja ei jaksanut pitää otteessaan.

[whylittleolme · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this. Granted, it would be difficult to write a boring bio of Miss Dietrich. Of course the book is dripping with her seductions, bon mots, and bespoke suits, but Spoto also shows the less-than-glamorous vantage points of her life revealing her hausfrau tendencies and vulgar vanity.

[Ron Palmer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tedious! Although well-written and researched, as I’ve come to expect from a Spoto biography, after a while Ms. Dietrich’s serial bed-hopping becomes … tiresome. (Imagine how she felt!).
I lost interest halfway through, knowing what a Loong life she lived.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well written.

[Chris Shields · Rating 4 out of 5]

another superbly written biography from spoto. what to say about a life as incredible as frau Dietrich? this book compelled me to watch every movie she ever made with von Sternberg

[Penélope · Rating 5 out of 5]

Impresionante mujer tanto en lo bueno como en lo malo.