salacious in the purest way.

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Today we’re going to be talking about none other than that goddess of

stevie Boebi: big dick energy

- thanks Stevie-

Marlene Deitrich. The Hollywood star whose career spanned nearly

eighty years

I could begin with where she was born, what her childhood was like, how she rose to fame…

but let’s be honest, we’re here for a good gossip aren’t we?

Let’s get scandalous with it!

In July 1955 the Hollywood gossip magazine Confidential audaciously printed an excessively

lubricious expose on our dear Marlene, opening:

“Marlene Dietrich and men are an old story!”

- to be fair, she wasn’t particularly bothered by rumours of any of her many affairs coming

out so it was probably ‘old news’ even before it happened. But according to Confidential

magazine, these were just a smokescreen to cover up:

“Some sprightlier capers that would have lifted the nation's eyebrows all the way up

its forehead. Because, in the millions of words that have been written about Dietrich's

dalliances, you've never, until now, read that some of them were not with men!”

Dun dun dun!

Welcome to Gay Hollywood’s worst kept secret!

... largely because no one really seemed to care enough about keeping said secret.

They were really bad at it...

I doubt any of even Confidential’s 1950s readers were that shocked, I mean- look at

her! That woman is coming to seduce you and she doesn’t care about your gender!

Marlene had built her career on enigmatic sexual ambiguity and if you’re just learning

who she is then buckle up, you’re in for a ride!

She started off as a stage and subsequently a silent film star in the 1920s in Germany

and immigrated to Hollywood in the 30s due to the success of The Blue Angel, a UFA/Paramount

Pictures production.

Her success was helped by her glamorous persona and "exotic" looks that took her to international

acclaim and becoming one of the highest-paid actresses of the era.

She starred in such hits at Shanghai Express, Desire and Morocco,

which featured the first lesbian kiss scene in a Hollywood movie…

in 1930!

So who did Confidential Magazine

think they were breaking this story to in 1955?!

A little non bawdy background:

Marie Magdalene Dietrich was born in Berlin, Germany on December 27, 1901. Her mother,

Wilhelmina, was from an affluent Berlin family who owned a jewellery and clock-making firm

whilst her father, Louis, was a police lieutenant. She had a sister, Elisabeth, who was one year

older and not a great human being.

You’ll know why by the end of the video…

Her father is said to have instilled a military work ethic in the family but he died when

young Marie was just five years old. Aged about 11, she combined her first two names

to form the name "Marlene". Dietrich attended the Auguste-Viktoria Girls' School from 1907

to 1917 where she was supposedly known for her ‘bedroom eyes’ and having affairs

with teachers-

- god damn it, Marlene, this was supposed to be the non-bawdy bit!

Although… I’m pretty sure there is only so far you can consent to a

relationship with a teacher. Just saying.

As a teenager she was interested in the violin, the theatre and poetry but injured her wrist

to the extent her dreams of being a concert violinist were over. Instead she began working

in the theatre as a chorus girl but didn’t attract any particular attention until she

landed her breakthrough film role of Lola Lola, a cabaret singer who caused the downfall

of a hitherto respectable schoolmaster.

What is it with the school…?

Nevermind.

Director Josef von Sternberg thereafter took credit for having "discovered" Marlene as

on the strength of The Blue Angel's international success, and with promotion from von Sternberg,

Marlene signed a contract with Paramount PIctures and moved to Hollywood. The studio wanted

a match to MGM’s Swedish star Greta Garbo- who is a whole video in herself.

And we’ll be hearing more about in a minute...

Dietrich starred in six films directed by von Sternberg at Paramount between 1930 and

1935 and they worked together to craft her image as a glamorous and mysterious femme

fatale. In perhaps their most famous collaboration, the affore-mentioned Morocco, Marlene again

played a cabaret singer and the film is best remembered for its most provocative sequence

in which she performs a song dressed in a man's white tie and kisses another woman.

The film earned Dietrich her only Academy Award nomination.

So, yes, adding a little rainbow to your film has always brought it Oscars attention.

Marlene was well known in Hollywood for her gender norm-bashing: she dressed in men’s

suits, notably hats and tails.

What a look!

And we all know women in suits look amazing.

Yes, I did just insert a picture of my wife in a suit into this video.

Tell me it doesn't relate. You can’t!

Also: you’re welcome.

She’s a gift to the world.

In an interview with The Observer in 1960, Marlene said, "I dress for the image.

Not for myself, not for the public, not for fashion, not for men. If I dressed for myself

I wouldn't bother at all. Clothes bore me. I'd wear jeans. I adore jeans. I get them

in a public store – men's, of course; I can't wear women's trousers. But I dress for

the profession."

That is probably relatable to everyone who is not me, because I refuse to believe in

jeans.

- What even is denim...?

From the early 1950s until the mid-1970s Dietrich worked almost exclusively as a cabaret artist,

performing live in large theatres in major cities worldwide. She would often perform

the first part of her show in one of her body-hugging dresses and then change to a top hat and tails

for the second half of the performance. So for the second half of the show she would

sing songs usually associated with male singers.

Not at all lady-loving(!)

What secret did you think you were uncovering, Confidential?!

According to Diana McLellan, author of the 2000 book, The Girls: Sappho Goes to Hollywood

(which, yes, I have read all of): 'Lesbian affairs, it was widely felt, were good for

you. They expanded your emotional range, nurtured your amour propre, kept your skin clear and

your eyes bright, burnished your acting skills, and even... exerted a powerful androgynous

magnetism through the camera's lens, attracting the unwitting desires of both men and women

in the audience through the dim, smoky air of the movie house.’

Sign me up!

Marlene’s rather open approach to sexuality is probably due to her native city of Berlin

which had already established itself as a crucible for gay identity by the time of her

birth. The first gay magazine, Der Eigene

Pronunciation buchered

Translated The Self-Owning, had been published there

five years earlier; the following year, the physician Magnus Hirschfeld

Pronunciation

founded the Scientific-

Humanitarian Committee, the first gay rights organisation.

The Berlin that Marlene lived in after the first world war and before going to America

was under the culturally progressive (and a little decadent) Weimar Republic. This was

the first time Germany had been a Republic and they were trying a few new ideas like

social welfare reforms, employment rights and taking care of their disabled people.

During the 20s and 30s, gay and lesbian love achieved an extraordinary level of visibility

in popular culture. One film, Mädchen in Uniform,

Uh... punctuation

about a 14-year-old school girl who

falls in love with her teacher-

- why is it always a teacher?

Even had the protagonist declare: “What you call sin, I call the great spirit of love,

which takes a thousand forms!”

Unsurprisingly, Marlene had a lot of fun.

Look at her. She knows fun.

She started out as a chorus girl in a vaudeville troupe while also enrolling at Turkish prizefighter

boxers gym, which opened to women in the 1920s. Of course.

Her first stage success, the musical comedy It's In The Air, opened in Berlin in 1927;

Dietrich sang a song called My Best Girl Friend to her co-star Margot Lion, while they both

sported corsages of violets.

(which is a secret symbol of lesbianism)

Around this time she met the wonderful Greta Garbo and they had a love affair that essentially

ruined Greta’s heart forever and thus when they both landed in Hollywood years later

they flat out refused to acknowledge the other’s existence and denied any claims of having

met each other ever. Even when they shared lovers.

Ice Queens be icy.

More on that if I make a Garbo video though.

Throughout her career, Dietrich had an unending string of affairs, some short-lived, some

lasting decades. They often overlapped and were almost all known to her husband, to whom

she was in the habit of passing the love letters from her men, sometimes with biting comments.

Her affairs that we know of included… wait for it:

Gary Cooper, John Gilbert, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., James Stewart, Erich Maria Remarque,

Mercedes de Acosta, Ginette Spanier, Yul Brynner, Errol Flynn, George Bernard Shaw, John F.

Kennedy, Joe Kennedy, Michael Todd, Michael Wilding, John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Frank Sinatra

and potentially Edith Piaf but lesbians can just be friends with other lesbians too. It

doesn’t have to be sexual.

In that one very specific case. Because she was super sexual with her other lesbian friends!

She used the term “sewing circle” to refer to “the underground, closeted lesbian and

bisexual film actresses and their relationships in Hollywood” during the golden age from

the 1910s to the 1950s” according to Alex Madsen in the book The Sewing Circle: Hollywood’s

Greatest Secret: Female Stars Who Loved Other Women.

I’m sold. Just from the title, I’m sold.

Women in the Sewing Circle included:

Ann Warner, wife of one of the Warner Brothers, Lili Damita, wife of Errol Flynn, Claudette

Colbert and Dolores del Rio who Marlene thought was the most beautiful woman in the world

The Sewing Circle would meet at one another's houses for 'lunch, conversation and possibilities'...

but, like Tallulah Bankhead, you’d be kicked out for making eyes at Greta Garbo.

You had to pick one or the other!

Now… I know I normally tell you that we can’t be 100% sure about historical queerness

unless it’s directly written about by the person in question but…

Yeah, we’re in the clear on this one.

Marlene did have a husband and they did have a child. She just didn’t live with him or

go near him after a few years. She never divorced him however and instead maintained him and

his mistress on a nice little ranch. And that, friends, is what we call a ‘lavender marriage’

Side note: a ‘lavender marriage’ is a male-female marriage undertaken as a marriage

of convenience to conceal the sexual orientation of one or both partners- either homosexuality

or bisexuality.

- or pansexuality. But they didn’t have that word.

The term dates from the early 20th century and is usually used to characterise marriages

of celebrities, most often in the Hollywood film industry although it’s actually a British

term from the 1890s because we associated lavender with homosexuality.

Like the violets from earlier.

I love purple flowers. Don’t hate it.

Don't hate it.

Marlene’s daughter, Maria Riva, published a tell-all memoir about her mother in 1992,

(which was immediately dubbed Mommie Queerest). In her book, Riva wrote that Dietrich weaponised

sex in her affairs with men: 'She didn't actually care much for 'it' - rather, it was a way

of controlling and manipulating them.' Her affairs with women, on the other hand, were

very warm: 'She actually enjoyed the sex, and the relationships were much more satisfying

for her.'

Things you wish you didn’t know about your mum.

Numerous commentators have called her ‘bisexual’ but people at the time thought that she was

just… not straight.

“Not particularly bothered by gender, thanks”

But that’s probably a bit long to put on a flag.

If you’re at this point thinking ‘wow, she sounds cool.’ well hold on to your seats

because we’re about to bring in some Nazis!

During the 1930s Adolf Hitler came to prominence, becoming ruler of Marlene’s native Germany.

Recognising Box Office Gold when he saw it- and the chance for some good PR- he attempted

to lure her back to Germany, offering that she could star in all the movies of her choice.

Instead she remounced her German citizenship, filed for US citizenship, sold war bonds,

gave anti-Nazi radio broadcasts in German and helped people escape the Holocaust for

life in America.

The Nazis banned all of her films.

I doubt she cared.

Marlene didn’t just sit in safety, she went to the front lines to boost troop morale,

performing for half a million allied troops across North Africa and Western Europe. When

asked why she had done this, in spite of the obvious danger of being within a few kilometres

of German lines, she replied,

"out of decency".

Austrian-American filmmaker Billy Wilder

later said that she was on the front lines more than Eisenhower.

For her humanitarian work during the war, she received several honors from the United