|
Marlene Dietrich (December 27, 1901 – May 6, 1992) was a German-born American actress, singer, and entertainer. She is regarded as being the first German actress to become successful in Hollywood.
Throughout her long career, starting as a cabaret singer, chorus girl and film actress in 1920s Berlin, Hollywood movie star in the 1930s, World War II frontline entertainer during the 1940s, and finally as an international stage show performer from the 1950s to the 1970s, Dietrich constantly re-invented herself and eventually became one of the entertainment icons of the 20th century. The American Film Institute ranked Dietrich No. 9 amongst the Greatest Female Stars of All Time.
She was born Marie Magdalene Dietrich in Schöneberg, a district of Berlin, Germany to Louis Erich Otto Dietrich and Wilhelmina Elisabeth Josephine Dietrich (née Felsing) on December 27, 1901. Dietrich had an older sister called Elisabeth. Nicknamed "Lena" within the family, she contracted her two first names to form the then-unusual name, Marlene, when she was still a teenager. Dietrich's father was an officer in the German police who served in the Franco-Prussian War. He died when Dietrich was 11, whereupon Marlene's mother married Eduard von Losch. Although it is sometimes claimed that Dietrich's birth name was the same as her stepfather's family name, von Losch never adopted the Dietrich children, and so Marlene Dietrich never had his name.
Dietrich studied the violin before starting work as a chorus girl and actress for Max Reinhardt in theater productions in Berlin and Vienna throughout the 1920s.
She made her film debut in 1923 and appeared in a significant number of movies without attracting any special attention. In 1929, though, she got the breakthrough role of Lola-Lola, a cabaret singer who causes the downfall of a hitherto respected schoolmaster, in UFA's production, The Blue Angel (1930). The film was directed by Josef von Sternberg, who thereafter took credit for having "discovered" Dietrich. The film is also noteworthy for having introduced Dietrich's signature song "Falling in Love Again".
Dietrich died peacefully of renal failure on May 6, 1992, at the age of 90 in Paris.
|
