Marlene

A novel about Marlene Dietrich held a natural attraction for me, as Dietrich was one of Dolores del Río’s close friends in Hollywood. Gortner paints a vivid picture of decadence in pre-War Berlin, where Dietrich finds work in music halls. There, she meets Joseph von Sternberg, who casts her as the lead of The Blue Angel, the film that launches her career. As antisemitism grows in Germany, von Sternberg, who is Jewish, leaves for Hollywood, and Dietrich follows him. Paramount Pictures finds in her the answer to MGM’s sexy Swedish star, Greta Garbo, and casts her in one hit… show more.

Marlene Dietrich is one of the iconic figures of 20th century Hollywood—actress, singer, photographer’s dream model. She carried the exotic and scandalous and artistic aspects of Weimar Germany with her when she arrived in Hollywood, and leveraged them into stardom. But the rise of fascism and the onset of World War II put her native country in conflict with her adopted one. Gortner’s novel relies on first-person narrative to explore Dietrich’s life, professional and personal, in a revealing and moving fashion. This novel is a reminder that Golden Age Hollywood would have been a very different place without the… show more.