‘Her masculinity appeals to women and her sexuality to men’: The continuing fascination of Marlene Dietrich

It’s 90 years since the release of ‘The Blue Angel’, the film that made Dietrich an international star. But her reputation still endures while those of many of her contemporaries have long since faded, says Geoffrey Macnab

Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings in 'The Blue Angel' (Allstar/Paramount Pictures)

Speaking in the early 1980s, Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992) calculated that there had been 55 books written about her and claimed she hadn’t read any of them. “I don’t give a damn about myself,” the legendary German star told her interviewer, fellow actor Maximilian Schell, who made a very curious documentary about her, Marlene (1984).

Of course, if Dietrich really had been as unconcerned about herself as she pretended, she would never have tallied up the number of biographies that she had inspired. She cared far more about her public image than she was letting on, one reason why her reputation still endures while those of many of her contemporaries have long since faded. This year marks the 90th anniversary of Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel (1930), the film which marked her emergence as one of the most potent sex symbols or her own or any other era.

In their seven films together between 1930 and 1935, von Sternberg was the Svengali who transformed a run-of-the-mill actor and singer into a screen goddess. At least, that is how he liked to see it. Before he took Dietrich’s career in hand, he claimed in his autobiography, “she had been photographed to look like a female impersonator. There are many unflattering photographs of her pre-Blue Angel period in existence, portraying an inhibited subject almost anxious to hide.”