Berlin Year Zero: The Making of The Blue Angel

John Baxter
Wars will wash over us . . . bombs will fall . . . all civilization will crumble . . . but not yet, please . . . wait, wait . . . whats the hurry? Let us be happy . . . give us our moment. Ninotchka, screenplay by Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett and Walter Reisch, from a story by Melchior Lengyel

Occasionally, a film becomes emblematic of its historical moment. Josef von Sternbergs 1929 Der Blaue Engel/The Blue Angel was in production at the exact instant Wall Street crashed, but in Berlin the disaster went unremarked by a bewitched director interested only in his new star and lover, a hitherto obscure actress named Marlene Dietrich. He left us with a snapshot of Europe at the instant when Germanys Weimar Republic, culturally the richest of the century, finally expired. Within a few months, power would pass to the National Socialist Party, the leader of which, Adolf Hitler, numbered The Blue Angel among his favorite films. References to The Blue Angel appear in every film history. Almost invariably we are told that, in 1929, Emil Jannings, Germanys most famous actor, persuaded Universum Film Ag (UFA), Europes largest film studio, to invite the Vienna-born von Sternberg, with whom he had worked during a spell in Hollywood, to come to Berlin and direct his first talking film. The truth is more complex, and more strange.

This article will be included in John Baxters forthcoming biography of Josef von Sternberg, to be published by the University Press of Kentucky. Framework 51, No. 1, Spring 2010, pp. 164189. Copyright 2010 Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201-1309.

The Making of The Blue Angel To make a sound film in Berlin in 1929 was anything but simple. Germans pioneered sound recording as they did photography, and companies like Tobis-Klangfilm controlled major patents. So, however, did the U.S. company General Electric, which forbade the use of its technology in German theaters. Not until June 1929 did a U.S. sound-on-film talkie, The Singing Fool, play in Berlin, and then only after earlier releases were cancelled in legal wrangles. Up to the last minute, it hadnt been certain the film would open, and critics had to fight for tickets at the first screenings with members of the public. In September 1929, when UFA unveiled the Tonkreuz (Sound Cross) complex at its Neubablesberg studios, with four giant sound stages radiating from a central hub, nobody was sure what films would be made there, and whether they would be suitable for export to countries using General Electric equipment. With this doubt went a general hostility toward Hollywood productions, particularly if they featured German artists who had been lured there by high American salaries. For an actor like Emil Jannings to return and make a talking film in Germany was an act freighted with social, political, cultural, and financial significance. Early in 1929, UFA, gambling that writing talent would be needed more than ever in sound films, hired Germanys most commercially successful screenwriter, Robert Liebmann. As its dramaturg, a resident scenarist and consultant, he received 2,500 Reichmarks (about US$500) a week, with a further 10,000 RM (US$2000) for each of five original screenplays. In May, popular playwright Carl Zuckmayer also came on salary, with an agreement to provide three screenplays. Meanwhile, UFAs former production manager, Erich Pommer, fired after Fritz Langs science fiction epic Metropolis (DE, 1926) went disastrously over budget, bargained his way back into the company by negotiating the return of Emil Jannings to Germany. UFA secured Janningss services from November 1929 to February 1930 for $60,000. In a carefully timed arrival, the actor returned to Berlin on May 15, the day before it was announced that he had won a Best Actor Academy Award for Victor Flemings The Way of All Flesh (US, 1926) and The Last Command (US, 1927), directed by von Sternberg. At the same time, UFA revealed he would make his first sound film at the end of the year, from an original screenplay by Zuckmayer. On May 31, Janningss next-to-last Hollywood film, the disappointing Street of Sin, based on a story by von Sternberg, opened at one of Berlins most prestigious cinemas, the Palast am Zoo. Three weeks later, on June 21, writer Karl Vollmoeller also returned to Berlin from Hollywood, where he lived part of the year, and where he had worked on the subtitles and advertising of the German version of von Sternbergs first sound film, the crime drama Thunderbolt, retitled Sie nannten ihn Thunderbolt/They Called Him Thunderbolt. The creative team was in place that would bring von Sternbergs The Blue Angel to the screenexcept that neither von Sternberg nor The Blue Angel had yet been mentioned. Instead, everyone favored a film about Rasputin, directed by Ernst Lubitsch.

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John Baxter In choosing as a subject the illiterate Russian monk who bamboozled the czar and his family, only to be murdered by resentful courtiers, Pommer and his colleagues were conscious of UFAs owner, the right-wing communications magnate Alfred Hugenberg. He had bought the bankrupt studio in 1927 and since used it to produce cheerful musicals and stories of aristocratic heroism, suggesting a vision of what Germany had been before the onset of Weimar socialism and might be again. The royalist, conservative Rasputin looked certain to please him. Though he was independently wealthy and hardly needed the money, Vollmoeller agreed to write Rasputin for 23,000 RM (US$4500), plus a further 3,000 RM (US$600) to open up Palazzo Vendramin, his home on the Grand Canal in Venice, where Richard Wagner lived and died. To direct, the unanimous choice was Ernst Lubitsch, who had been in Hollywood since 1923 and was well established at Paramount, which also had von Sternberg under contract. E. H. Correll, a member of the UFA board, was delegated to offer him $60,000 to return to Berlin and be reunited with the actor whom he had directed in so many of his early successes. But Lubitsch refused. Within the Paramount hierarchy, he was rising faster than he could ever hope to do in Germany. His career embodied a common gibe about Europeans in Hollywood. If you begin a production with just one Hungarian, very quickly you have nothing but Hungarians. But if you start with only Germans, soon there is just one. Only when Lubitsch definitively refused did Jannings and Pommer suggest von Sternbergwho, in an added plus, came cheaper. While Pommer and Vollmoeller negotiated with von Sternberg, Jannings mulled over the role of Rasputin and discussed it with his wife, actress Gussi Holl, who enjoyed a veto on all his career decisions. When he got back to Pommer, it was with a blank refusal. Rasputin was nothing but a villain. Where, he demanded, was the downfall, the humiliation, the histrionics his fans expected after films like Murnaus The Last Laugh (DE, 1924) and The Way of All Flesh? Moreover, this was dangerous ground, since the Yousopovs were still alive and socially prominent in Paris, with powerful friends. Vollmoellers Rasputin would have followed a similar story line to Rasputin and the Empress, the version made by MGM in 1932, in which Rasputin is assassinated not for reasons of political expediency or court intrigue but because he has raped the beautiful Irina Yousopov. Following the 1932 film, the Yousopovs successfully sued MGM for libel in both Britain and the United States. Scenes were cut or rewritten, and forever after Hollywood films carried a disclaimer stating that all characters are fictional, and any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Either Jannings or Vollmoeller then suggested reviving a project that Jannings had once discussed with G. W. Pabst. The novel Professor Unrat, oder Das Ende eines Tyrannen/Professor Garbage, or The End of a Tyrant , written by Heinrich Mann, elder brother of the more famous Thomas, dated back to 1905. Its main character, Immanuel Raat, is a reclusive, widowed professor of

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The Making of The Blue Angel English in the Baltic port of Lubeck. He is nicknamed Unrat garbageby his students, particularly the precocious seventeen-year-old Lohmann, who is enamored of Rosa Frohlich, a barefoot dancer appearing at a local dive, The Blue Angel. Raat visits the place, meaning to warn her off, but instead falls under her spell. After squandering all his money on her, he is dismissed from the school and they marry. Persuaded by her cronies, he turns their home into a club, where, under the guise of attending lectures, clients can gamble and consort with whores. To Raats perverse satisfaction, several of his former persecutors become clients and are ruined. Its only when Raat discovers Rosa in bed with Lohmann that he snaps, first trying to strangle his former student, then stealing his wallet. As he flees through the streets, people abuse and insult him. He is arrested and carted off in the municipal paddy wagonlike a load of garbage. Von Sternberg could hardly refuse UFA, since his Hollywood future looked bleak. His last four films, including The Last Command and Thunderbolt, had all flopped at the box office. All the same, he bargained Pommer up to $40,000 from his first offer of $30,000. The deal also came with strings, attached by Paramount, to whom he remained under contract. For every

Figure 1. Emil Jannings as Rath tries to teach student Ertzum (Karl Balhus) how to pronounce the word the.

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John Baxter week he remained in Germany past January 14, 1930, payment penalties came into force. Since The Blue Angel didnt premiere until April 1, its total cost would soar to 2,000,000 RM (US$400,000), making it, despite its small scale, more expensive even than Metropolis. When von Sternberg and his wife Riza stepped off the train at Berlins Zoo station on August 16, 1929, to be greeted formally by Jannings and Pommer, the director felt he was entering a new and better world. He said as much to the press: Its as if I went to sleep in Hollywood and woke up in heaven. Despite its apparent spontaneity, their arrival, like that of Jannings on the eve of his Academy Award, was stage-managed. They had already been in Europe for weeks. After visiting Vienna, they went to St. Moritz in Switzerland, where Jannings was dieting off the flab accumulated during his stay in California. Pommer, Zuckmayer, Vollmoeller, and Liebmann joined them. Von Sternberg confirmed his agreement to shoot the Mann story, already discussed before he left Hollywood. He also suggested a new structure and a different titlenot Professor Unrat but the name of the cabaret where his downfall begins, Der Blaue EngelThe Blue Angel. At his suggestion, enthusiastically seconded by Jannings, they would film only the first half of the book, the better to concentrate on the degradation of Janningss character, and also to exploit the barroom setting that had served him so well in his most successful silent film, Docks of New York (US, 1929). In the new version, Raat, renamed Rath, confiscates a postcard of Rosa Frohlich (now Lola-Lola) from a student, visits The Blue Angel, and is bewitched. He and Lola-Lola marry, but instead of staying in Lubeck and setting up a brothel and casino, as in the novel, she continues touring with Rath as a member of the troupe, playing the stooge in comedy skits, and selling postcards of LolaLola to the punters who come to leer. After being humiliated when the show once again plays Der Blaue Engel and then seeing Lola-Lola cuckold him with a new lover, the strongman Mazeppa, he smashes her dressing room in a fury, then flees through town to the school where he formerly taught, and dies clutching his old desk. The script was almost entirely by Carl Zuckmayer, who had a track record of successful plays. Liebmann wrote some dialogue and the lyrics for the songs. In the German version, he is listed separately from the others, and for Drehbuch (shooting script) alone: a lesser credit. The acknowledgment to Vollmoeller was likewise, according to Zuckmayer, a courtesy.
Vollmoeller wrote not a line. He was our contact man with Hollywood. It was he who inspired von Sternberg to come to Berlin, and convinced UFA that von Sternberg was the only masterful director of our film. He took part in our sessions with Pommer, Jannings, von Sternberg, and I, and acted as a kind of interpreter, since none of us spoke correct English at the time and von Sternberg did not like to remember his German descent. Before von Sternberg arrived in Europe, I had written a basic dialogue treatment which laid the groundwork of the shooting and contained the construction and all-important

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situations of the film, including most of the dialogue. . . . The end of the film, in which the professor is shown utterly defeated, and returns, a broken man, to his old schoolroom, was von Sternbergs own invention, but I introduced the character of Lola-Lolas lover Mazeppa to give a chance in movies to my old friend Hans Albers.

Once all were agreed, UFA closed the deal with Mann for a mere 25,000 RM (US$5000) with an additional 10,000 RM (US$2000) if the English version opened in New York. The terms were announced on August 23, only a week after von Sternberg arrived in Berlinclear indication that negotiations had been in progress for some time. The von Sternbergs took a suite at Berlins most luxurious hotel, the Adlon, for a few weeks, until theater director Erwin Piscator left for Moscow to make a film and they rented his apartment. Riza received a hint of the bohemian life that awaited her when, rearranging the cushions on the couch, she found a hypodermic syringe. Release of von Sternbergs most recent films had been delayed pending his arrival in Berlin. When The Drag Net (US, 1928), as Politzei, opened at the UFA Palast, he appeared at the premiere and made a short speech. However, Herbert Ihering of the Berliner Borsen-Courier articulated the general opinion when he dismissed the film as tear-jerking, hypocritical nonsense. Reviews were kinder to The Docks of New York on September 20, praising its manipulation of lighting and dcor, only possible in a big studio. Rudolf Arnheim, the critic most respected by intellectuals, rated the film as another big step in cinemas progress away from reporting and towards a world of its own. The words encouraged von Sternberg, since Der Blaue Engel could hardly have been more remote from contemporary events. In the summer of 1929, Germany, politically and artistically, was in ferment. Two years before, the Nazis had staged their first Nuremberg rally. The Weimar Republic, hothouse of so much progress in society and the arts, was crumbling, and with it the security of the Jewish-Socialist elite on which its artistic community depended. Even so, Berlin clung to its position as the center of theater and cinema. With Erwin Piscator, Bertolt Brecht, and Max Reinhardt all active in theater production, the works of Kleist, Buchner, Wedekind, and Holderlin were receiving a posthumous appreciation. Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein was there in 1929, and he and von Sternberg met often. Only a few people sensed that all this would soon be swept away. One was Reinhardt. After the parties at his Leopoldskron palace that ended the annual Salzburg festivals, he invited a few friends to stay until dawn. Zuckmayer recalled, Once, at a late hour, I heard Reinhardt say almost with satisfaction. The nicest part of these festival summers is that each one may be the last. After a pause, he added, You can feel the taste of transitoriness on your tongue. With Pommer confined to bed with a broken ankle, the task of interviewing potential Lola-Lolas fell to von Sternberg. It proved more difficult

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John Baxter than he anticipated. Some candidates had good voices but thick legs. Others spoke fine German but bad English. Most troublingly, many could not sing. Nobody had given much thought to the songs in Der Blaue Engel. This was a drama, and it was assumed any music would be incidental, as it had been in Thunderbolt. Had Jannings remained the center of the story, that would have been true. But von Sternbergs attention dwelt increasingly on the role of Lola-Lola, who was no longer a barefoot dancer but a singer. The only musician associated with the production was Friedrich Hollander, who had been employed as accompanist by an actress trying out for the role. Though well known around Berlin as a composer of popular songs and conductor of the jazz group Weintraub-Syncopators, Hollander shared the general ignorance about film music but was willing to learn. He became attached to the production, along with another pop songwriter, Peter Kreuder, who acted as arranger. Hollander suggested that Pommer and von Sternberg consider Lucie Mannheim for Lola-Lola. An accomplished singer in operetta, she was fluent in English; she later played the murdered spy Annabella Smith in Hitchcocks The 39 Steps (GB, 1935). Von Sternberg would have preferred Brigitte Helm, the slinky femme fatale of Alraune (DE, 1928) and LAtlantide (FR, 1928), who also embodied the robot woman in Metropolis, but she was too busy and expensive. Riza suggested Hollywood actress Phyllis Haver, but von Sternberg never forgave her for once dismissing him with a sneer as Big Brain. Nor could she speak German, any more than two other candidates, Louise Brooks and Gloria Swanson. (Brooks, no fan of Dietrich, later called her a galloping cow.) Heinrich Mann, backed by Pommer, proposed his mistress, Trude Hesterberg. Out of deference, she was the first to be interviewedand ignominiously rejected. Von Sternberg called her, sarcastically, a stately and dignified elderly German lady. (She was either thirty-two or thirtyeight, depending on which biography you believe, and admittedly a little plump.) With the deadline pressing, Pommer insisted on a decision. John Kahan, Pommers assistant, claims that at this point the moderately well known Kathe Haack was signed. Haack had high cheekbones and large, expressive eyes. Her stage training gave her a strong voice. The official record does not refer to her, nor does von Sternberg, but he mentions none of the other candidates by name either. On September 5, six weeks before shooting began, a musical comedy by Mischa Spoliansky and Georg Kaiser, Zwei Krawatten (Two Bow Ties), opened in Berlin. Typical of the twenties, it mixed international high society, jazz, sex, crime, and a fantasy United States. Jean, waiter at a ball in Berlin, accepts 1000RM (US$200) to exchange his uniform, including black bow tie, for the evening clothes and white tie of a fleeing gangster. In the jacket pocket is a raffle ticket, the prize of which is a cruise to the United States. He wins and so can pursue the American heiress Mabel, with whom he is infatuated. Inconveniently, his fiance Trude is also on board the same liner.

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The Making of The Blue Angel After various American adventures, Jean renounces Mabel and returns to Trudeto find she had inherited a fortune of her own. Von Sternberg visited the show, which featured two performers already cast for Der Blaue Engel, Hans Albers as Jean and Rosa Valetti as Mabels rich aunt, Mrs. Robinson. (In the film, they play Mazeppa, the strong man, and Frau Kiepert, wife of impresario Kurt Gerron.) From seats in the front row, von Sternberg had ample opportunity to appreciate both. However, according to legend, he didnt notice eitheronly Marlene Dietrich, who played Mabel. She had only one line, May I invite you all to dine with me this evening? but her legs featured prominently. As Dietrich described the moment in her autobiography, the Leonardo da Vinci of the camera scrutinised the programme with his eagle eye, found my name, stood up and left the theatre. . . . From that moment on, von Sternberg had only one idea in his head: to take me away from the stage and make a movie actress out of me, to Pygmalionize me. Riza von Sternberg says they went backstage, where von Sternberg told Dietrich to contact him next day at UFA. None of this is true. Dietrich denies the story of coming backstage, and there are persistent and credible indications from a number of sources that, when von Sternberg saw Zwei Krawatten, he had already decided on Dietrich. He had certainly seen her before, in a photographsent by her agent, Max Pick. Among the scores of head shots from hopefuls, hers intrigued him enough to ask Kahan about her. Der popo ist nicht schlecht, he replied, aber brauchen wir nicht auch ein Gesicht? (The ass isnt bad, but wont we also need a face?) But she made sufficient impression for him to mention her to Leni Riefenstahl as a possible Lola-Lola before any official announcement of her casting. Riefenstahl, despite her claims of being a front runner for the role, was never seriously consideredthough not for want of trying. She had begun her theatrical career as a dancer, turned actress in the mountaineering dramas of Arnold Fanck, but in 1929 had not yet taken up directing and become Hitlers favorite filmmaker. Unable to sing and speaking only a little English, she was determined to compete for Lola-Lola. In her version of events, she gate-crashed UFAscarcely necessary, since one of her ex-lovers, Hans Schneeberger, was co-cinematographer on Der Blaue Engel. Bluffing her way into von Sternbergs office, she charmed him by praising The Docks of New York. Supposedly flattered, he agreed to have dinner with her at the Hotel Bristol, where, over roast beef, he extolled Dietrich, with whom he was obviously smitten. Her pride wounded, Riefenstahl agreed that Dietrich, whom she knew slightlythey lived in the same apartment buildingwould be an excellent Lola-Lola. However, by the time her memoirs appeared in 1987, her part in his choice had swelled until it was she who suggested Dietrich, and, moreover, advised von Sternberg on how to direct her. After the war, facing a tribunal to decide on her eligibility for de-Nazification, Riefenstahl even

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John Baxter cited her supposed intimacy with von Sternberg as proof that some of her best friends were Jews. Screenwriter Walter Reisch also claimed that von Sternberg knew of Dietrich well before Zwei Krawatten even that they had met when, en route to St. Moritz and the meeting with Jannings, the von Sternbergs attended one of Max Reinhardts post-festival parties in the Schloss Leopoldskron at Salzburg. This was circumstantially possible, since the festival took place in August, just before they arrived in Berlin. According to Reisch, Dietrich was also present that night and, with considerable forethought, had brought her musical saw. She had been taught to play by another lover, Igo Sym; the saw even bore a plaque inscribed Igo, Vienna, 1927. To coax a tune with a violin bow, one spreads ones legs and bends the saw against one thigha perfect pretext for displaying the players legs, as Dietrich knew when she mastered this unlikely instrument. In Reischs story, she demonstrated her expertise at Leopoldskron by playing Toscellis Serenade, and von Sternberg was beguiled. In her own annotated copy of a biography, Dietrich specifically denies the incident; nor is it mentioned by either von Sternberg or Reinhardt in their memoirs or diaries. However, the events surrounding Der Blaue Engel are so riddled with improbability that one cannot rule it out. More plausible indicators point to the influence on her casting of Karl Vollmoeller. Vollmoeller liked always to have nice girls around him, said John Kahan. He was a millionaire, because his family owned [Vollmoeller Textil AG], one of the biggest factories making winter underwear for men. Gottfried Reinhardt, son of Max, penned a sneering portrait of the playboy playwright, who
according to the acid chitchat, was so adept at arriving in the right place at the right time that, one day, as he drove his car through the side of the Brandenburg Gate leading from Berlins center to the West End for a party, he saw himself driving through the opposite side leading from the West End to his lavish apartments in Berlins Pariser Platz for one of his exclusive after-dinner orgies. In his pied--terre on Pariss Place Vendme and in his summer residence on the Canale Grande . . . there were always swarms of young female careerists dancing attendance on him, setting their hopes on his constant rendezvous and transactions with the powers-that-be in the theatre, films and the haute vole. Many climbs to fame (Marlene Dietrich for one) gave proof that the young ladies did not dance for naught.

After 1919, Vollmoeller spent part of each year in Hollywood. He was instrumental in bringing German artists to the United States and finding work for American performers in Europe. Emil Jannings owed his Paramount contract partly to Vollmoeller. Ernst Lubitsch, William Dieterle, and cinematographer/director Karl Freund were hired at his urging. He also helped attractive and exotic African American and Asian artists like Josephine Baker, Katherine Dunham, and Anna May Wong to find work in Germany.

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The Making of The Blue Angel His part in Dietrichs casting for Lola-Lola is corroborated by Ruth Landshoff-Yorck, a long-time mistress who knew von Sternberg and had acted with Dietrich in Vienna. Vollmoeller urged her to recommend Dietrich and persuade von Sternberg to see Zwei Krawatten. John Kahan confirms his role:
He did not first go to see Zwei Krawattenthat was later. One day, Liebmann, Pommer, von Sternberg and myself were discussing certain things, when suddenly from the reception a man came in and said, There is a young lady. She has a letter from Dr. Vollmoeller for Mr. Pommer. Vollmoeller had given Dietrich a letter of introduction, asking Pommer to give her some small part in the picture. And when Dietrich entered the door, von Sternberg jumped up and said Erich, this is Lola! He smelt it, instinctively; this was how his mind worked.

People who quibble about how Dietrich came to UFA are unanimous about her reception, which she described as ice-cold. Twenty-eight years old, and with a small daughter in tow, she was married to Rudolf Sieber, a lowly stage manager for actor Harry Piel. Sieber, who had his own mistress, Tamara Tami Mutel, turned a blind eye to her numerous liaisons, since it was mainly through these that she had gained work in stage revues and the occasional film. The actor Willy Forst, whom she had met shooting Caf Elektric in 1927, was particularly influential. In short, she embodied every clich of the casting couch. When her name came up, Pommer is said to have shouted, Not that whore!

Figure 2. Marlene Dietrich with her husband, Rudi Sieber, and their daughter Heidede, later Maria, and Josef von Sternberg. Los Angeles, August 1930.

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John Baxter Dietrichs strong Berlin accent matched a crude manner. Riefenstahl described seeing her, while drinking in a caf with actress friends, demand, Why does a woman always have to have beautiful breasts? Her bosom can sag a little, cant it? At this, she lifted one out for their startled inspection. (Her breasts were small and soft, a fault she corrected by having tape loops sewn into her dresses for extra support, so this is one Riefenstahl story that rings true.) She spoke adequate English, but her singing voice hovered between a growl and a purr, with no upper register. An awkwardly shaped nose complicated photography. Someone more rational than von Sternberg would have bowed to the logic of these objections, but his stubbornness always increased in proportion to resistance. The more Pommer argued against using her, the more he flew into a rage, finally blustering, If thats how things are, Ill go back to the United States! Changing tack, Pommer said, But Jo, what about the contract with Kathe Haack? She could sue. Talk to her, pay her off, von Sternberg replied. It will be worth it. So Pommer, said John Kahan, rang Kathe Haack, who was a very nice, decent girl. She didnt sue; she resigned and accepted her fee. Reluctantly, Pommer set up a screen test for Dietrich, but he took the precaution of filming one with Lucie Mannheim on the same day. In each case, Hollander accompanied them on the piano. (Dietrich rejects as ridiculous the story that American comic Buster Keaton was present during auditions, though he may have visited the set later.) Dietrichs test has survived, revealing that, of her later mystery and appeal, little was immediately evident. At the start, von Sternberg tells her off camera, in German, Go slowly, take your time. After turning her face left and right to show both profiles, Dietrich, lighted cigarette in hand and leaning on the end of the upright piano, sings repeatedly, and in her approximate English, the chorus of Youre the Cream in My Coffee, the Buddy DeSylva/Lew Brown/Ray Henderson song made popular by Ruth Etting. As she does so, she continues smoking, ashing the cigarette, and arguing in German with the unseen Hollander. After a couple of repetitions, she tells him, This is supposed to be music, right? (Its been suggested this represents genuine anger on her part, and that Hollander didnt know the songhardly likely, given his accomplishment as a composer, and the simplicity of the tune, of which she never sings more than four bars.) After more byplay with the cigarette, she repeats the verse, then snaps at Hollander, You call that piano playing? Im supposed to sing that junk? Later, she thumps a fist on the piano and says, Good God, it doesnt go that way! Dont you get it? Following this, she climbs on the piano, crosses her legs, adjusts her skirt to show them off, and sings, also in German, Why Cry? a torch song by Peter Kreuder with the lyrics Why cry when you leave someone? / Theres someone else waiting at the next corner.

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The Making of The Blue Angel Next day, the production office unanimously judged Mannheim the obvious choice. Only von Sternberg disagreed. In the end, it was not he nor even Pommer who decided, but Emil Jannings and studio owner Alfred Hugenberg. Jannings welcomed the casting of an unknownand, moreover, one with a bad reputation, and no beauty besides. It gave him more space to shine. As for Hugenberg, he belatedly realized that the author of Professor Unrat was not the great Thomas Mann but his much less eminent brother. Unable to halt the production, he insisted that the film in no way represent Rath as successful or emblematic of German values. Fortunately, von Sternbergs changes neutralized the novels political subtext. Rath, instead of turning the tables on his tormentors, remained pathetic to the end, a victim of sexual obsession, for which society could hardly be blamed. As for the object of his lust, the trashier, in Hugenbergs eyes, the better. In October, UFA signed Dietrich to a one-picture contract for a perfunctory 20,000 RM (US$4000), increasing to 25,000 RM (US$5000) if the film proved good enough for U.S. release. It is hard to say who was the more surprisedDietrich or her friends in Berlins acting community. The night she signed, she is reputed to have visited two theatrical hangouts, the gay club Silhouette and the bar of the Eden Hotel, and bragged to everyone, Youve always said I couldnt act. Unconvinced, her colleagues responded, You still cant! With Lola-Lola now a singer, Hollander was hired to provide her songs, with Kreuder as orchestrator, and to lead the Weintraub-Syncopators as the Blaue Engels house band. (After the film, he exploited his celebrity by opening his own cabaret, the TingelTangel, where the Syncopators remained in residence for as long as Hitler allowed Jewish artists to perform in Berlin.) Meanwhile, von Sternberg and his editor S. K. Sam Winston, whom he had brought with him from Hollywood, coached Dietrich in English. The contribution of Winston to von Sternbergs career deserves to be better appreciated. In addition to editing both the German and English versions of Der Blaue Engel, as well as Morocco, The Scarlet Empress, The Devil Is a Woman, and The Shanghai Gesture (all US, 1930, 1934, 1935, and 1941), he remained at UFA from 1930 to 1933, supervising the dubbing of Paramounts films into German. The painter George Grosz, an acquaintance of von Sternberg, watched the two men at work in the cutting room. Both of them wore berets and thick woollen scarves around their necks, as if they were coldwhich, in December, and being used to California, they probably were. He compared them to a sorcerer and his apprentice in a fable by Grimm since they communicated by means of incomprehensible whistles, as if they were birds. Grosz even suggests, whimsically, that perhaps Winston was descended from a canary. He could well have been, for all we know of this shadowy but important figure, since, not surprisingly, he receives no mention in von Sternbergs memoirs.

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Falling in Love Again

In my films, Marlene is not herself. I am Marlene. She knows that better than anyone. Josef von Sternberg

On October 29, the U.S. stock market crashed, and the Great Depression began. By December, Nazi party membership would swell to 178,000. If von Sternberg or Dietrich noticed, neither said so. Something more important was taking place. One was falling in love and the other was letting him. It was not love in any conventional sense. Because of a disordered childhood during which he was beaten by a tyrannical father and deserted by his mother, von Sternberg had complex emotional needs, hints of which appear in his films. Mothers and fathers are brutal and remote, protective, but also vengeful, ready even to kill a child if thwarted. Children are precociously knowing and sexual, with a barely concealed strain of sadism. Women appear as birds; lovely feathered things, high-flying, unattainable, alien. Von Sternberg was soon disappearing for long periods. Riza, a former unsuccessful actress, didnt immediately notice, since she was enjoying her own small celebrity, being interviewed and photographed for fashion spreads in magazines like Die Dame. Once she realized the extent of von Sternbergs infatuation, the arguments began. In one of them, she asked why he didnt divorce her and marry his discovery. Von Sternberg replied, unexpectedly, Id as soon share a telephone booth with a cobra. And yet he couldnt stay away. Dietrichs capacity to annihilate him was among her greatest attractions. On the set, he was her master, but in the bedroom, she held him in the palm of her hand. In the first flush of their affair, von Sternberg and Dietrich, according to Riza, fornicated on a tiger skin in a bedroom with a mirrored ceilinga detail no doubt supplied by him. The image flirts with Elinor Glyn, and yet who is to say they didnt? Von Sternberg was a closet masochist and role player, Dietrich a promiscuous bisexual with a flair for cross-dressing and a taste for figures of authority. Sex between them was always going to be what the Surrealists called convulsiveas beautiful, in Lautremonts phrase, as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table. Complementary freaks, they would transit the cinema landscape for the next decade, discarding in their wake a succession of enigmatically gorgeous objects; stillborn children of a marriage solemnized at the very moment the world came crashing down; a love affair consummated in Armageddon. The screenwriter Frederica Sagor, a friend of Riza von Sternberg but not of her husband or Dietrich, shrewdly assessed their attraction:
Von Sternbergs sexual weakness was something that she, in her sophistication and worldly outlook on life, could handily take care of. And she did. To Dietrich,

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it did not matter if the attraction was man or woman. She was cognizant of all the ways of making love and enjoying sex. . . . The once-unknown bit player became . . . a sex symbol, with her husky voice, her languid eyes, her calculatedly sexy carriage, and responses so eloquently studied that they became an art form. Like Greta Garbo . . . Dietrich was a good and fast study. She worked hard to achieve her stardom. She was no accident. She had what it takes.

Nobody fully apprehended the extent of the global catastrophe that would follow the Wall Street crash, but von Sternberg tried to insulate Dietrich from its effects by urging Paramounts studio manager B. P. Schulberg to offer her a long-term deal and bring her to the United States. She could, he suggested, be the answer to Garbo whom Paramount had long been seeking. While the filming of The Blue Angel was in full swing, wrote Dietrich in her memoirs, von Sternberg brought an American to the studioB. P. Schulberg, the general manager of Paramount Studios. Thats not quite true. Schulberg did come to Berlin on October 20, but with much more on his mind than meeting an unknown, untried actress. When the stock market crashed, all German loans were cancelled, destroying Hollywoods financial arrangement with UFA. Der Blaue Engel would be one of the last productions released under the ParUfaMet agreement, in which Paramount and MGM underwrote UFA in return for the pick of its talent. With the sound patent conflict not yet solved, influential people in the German film business were actively resisting the release of U.S. films, including many Paramount productions. George Bancroft, the burly gangster star of von Sternbergs films Underworld, The Drag Net, The Docks of New York, and Thunderbolt (all US, 1927, 1928, and 1929), had been sent to Berlin on a charm offensive. He attracted approving press coverage with his habit of sluicing down a few pints of beer for breakfast. Seizing the opportunity, a brewery hired Bancroft and Jannings for an advertising film. Sergei Eisenstein, glad of any paying work for himself and his associates, Grigori Alexandrov and cameraman Eduard Tisse, helped make it. To Schulberg, all those matters took precedence. Dietrich continued, He offered me a seven-year contract in Hollywood. I wouldnt like to go away, I answered very politely. I would like to stay here with my family. He was just as polite and then disappeared again. Von Sternberg had made him come over from America to show him some scenes from the film. Again, this distorts the facts. Schulberg visited the set, as did Bancroft (chiding von Sternberg for not having been at the railway station to greet him), and all attended a special screening of Underworld on November 2. But Schulberg could not have viewed scenes from Der Blaue Engel, since it only began shooting two days after he arrived. And until von Sternberg proved he could work some magic with this unpromising unknown, there would be no contract. As Schulbergs presence proved, putting half the world between himself and Hollywood didnt remove von Sternberg from the domination of the

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John Baxter front office. Driving him to UFAs Potsdam studios on his first day, Pommer asked what he planned to shoot that day. When he said he wasnt sure, the producer demanded he inform him each morning of his exact schedule. What might have seemed a shrewd strategy, given von Sternbergs history of multiple takes, backfired when von Sternberg told him that, if this was the case, Pommer could turn the car around and return him to his apartment. Pommer capitulated. (It was an idiotic argument. Since von Sternberg filmed chronologically, he spent the first days shooting the models of Lubeck with which the film opens. But von Sternberg liked to goad, and Pommer, fretting at the threat of overruns, was a perfect victim.) In creating Der Blaue Engel, von Sternberg ignored contemporary Germany. No automobiles appear, no radios or cinemas, and the lamps that hang in almost every shot burn oil or gas. Except for Rath peeling leaves from a calendar that begins at 1923 and ends on 1929, it reflects the Europe in which he grew up. Lola-Lola too derives from a different era. Having never met a woman like her, he fabricated her character from writers and artists who had, in particular Frank Wedekind. Lola-Lola derived from Lulu of Wedekinds plays Fruhlings Erwachen/Springs Awakening (1891) and Die Buchse der Pandora/Pandoras Box (1904). Like Lola-Lola, Lulu is a dancer who so fascinates an older man that he sacrifices his reputation for her. Past and future lovers surround her as they do Lola-Lola, and Wedekind even has his heroine appear at a ball in male evening dress to tantalize a lesbian countess. Wedekind, like von Sternberg, saw himself in his own plays, and sometimes acted in them. One line of Die Buchse der Pandora applies particularly to von Sternbergs relationship with Dietrich. Ive noticed, the young author says to Lulu, a curious affinity between sensuality and artistic creation. I can either exploit you artistically, or I can love you. And he immediately begins to make love to her. For Dietrichs look, von Sternberg also returned to the nineteenth century. No two people agree about the source of her actual costumes. They are sometimes attributed to the obscure Tihamer Varady, who created wardrobes for only three films in his brief career, and to the unknown Karl-Ludwig Holub. Neither receives screen credit, and its evident that their work closely followed von Sternbergs ideas. Seen from the front, he told Dietrich, you should bring to mind Flicien Rops; from the rear, Toulouse-Lautrec. Belgian eroticist Rops enjoyed a vogue in France and Germany in the 1880s, but in 1930 it was known mainly to connoisseurs, so von Sternberg felt free to plunder. In particular he adopted Ropss figure of a small-breasted woman, naked but for black stockings, fancy garters, and an elaborate head-dress, sometimes incorporating a male hat. Salacious cherubs often surround his women. In Der Blaue Engel, one such creature clasps Lolas leg in the poster used to advertise the show. A line of grotesque cardboard cherubs also hangs over her head as she sings, while others decorate the edge of the stage. Its they who give the bar its name.

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The Making of The Blue Angel From one of the films first shots, of a shop girl admiring a poster of LolaLola stuck to the window, then imitating her arrogant hands-on-hips pose, von Sternberg encourages us to think of Dietrich as two-dimensional; a moving photograph, our private dirty picture. For earlier films, he had glued pin-ups to walls, scribbled them with chalked messages, and filled sets with streamers, nets, or veils. Now, away from home, and in love for the first time, he indulged himself like a toddler with a box of crayons. Every flat surface is textured, cluttered, busy. He encrusts Lolas dressing room with old posters, crowds the bar and the poky rooms backstage with screens, hanging costumes, stacked chairs, nets, and mirrors. Because none of these details appear in the original set drawings by Otto Hunte, we know he added them himself. Der Blaue Engel is von Sternbergs first film as diorama. The dead space between camera and subject, and between subject and background, comes alive. People and objects pass before our eyes and under our noses, while, behind the supposed subject of interest, others flow by, often in the opposite direction. In an early scene of a girl unloading geese in a market square, he places her in the middle distance, filling the foreground with shadowy baskets and bales, outlining her against a shimmering background. Raths entries into the cabaret are bravura exercises in technique, with Jannings ducking under low lintels, groping through nets, fumbling with doors, climbing stairs, emerging on a balcony, and perching there, flanked by proprietor Kiepert and a nude female torso, the other customers gawking up as he stares transfixed at Lola-Lola, isolated as on a slide between dangling props and the dcor. Rath and Lola-Lola are filmed across a dressing table crowded with cosmetic bottles or over the shoulders of their wedding guests. Though UFAs stages were no smaller than those of Paramount, von Sternberg rendered them as cramped, almost stifling. Yet we dont yearn to escape. Rather, we shove aside the crumpled underwear, slump into the chair, and snuggle down into its perfumed intimacy. Few important characters in cinema are developed as perfunctorily as Lola-Lola. We know nothing about her, not even her real name nor where she comes fromwhich, as with all whores, is the way we prefer it. Von Sternberg doesnt even try our patience with the clich Whats a nice girl like you doing in a place like this? She isnt nice, and shes exactly where she belongs. Who can imagine Lola-Lola outside the boudoir? In discarding the last half of Manns book, he frees us of the necessity to try. We see and share what he saw in Dietrichhis own lusts, reflected back from that prostitutes face that tells us anythings possible, liebchen, if the money is right; a face all the more alluring for our knowledge that nothing to which it is party will leave a mark. There is something both contented and demented in her narcissism, wrote Roger Ebert. Perfectly made up and exquisitely lighted, she poses for us in von Sternbergs close-ups, regarding us with contemptuous passivity while we commit sins of thought by contemplating sins of deed. At the end of Der Blaue Engel, we feel we are leaving a brothel. We retain only the fantasya

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Figure 3. Rath (Emil Jannings), putting on his clown makeup, is confronted by Lola-Lola (Marlene Dietrich) and her new lover, Mazeppa, the strong man (Hans Albers). The posters decorating the walls are typical of von Sternbergs additions to Otto Huntes original decor.

puff of cheap face powder, the memory of a crushed pair of panties on the floor, a few songs, raucous or huskily provocative, that survive more in echo than expression. One final glimpse, of Lola-Lola astride a chair, half singing, half speaking und sonst gar nichtsand nothing moreis an irrevocable curtain, with no hope of an encore. At that moment, our time is up, and, for us, she ceases to exist, as we cease to exist for her. Cinematographer Lee Garmes takes credit for creating the Dietrich face on her first American film, Morocco, but in Der Blaue Engel, we see it already emerging, an evolution from what von Sternberg learned with his first teacher, the French director Maurice Tourneurthat light should appear to fall from a single source. By placing a lamp close to her face and above it, cameraman Gunther Rittau forced the cheekbones out of her chubbiness and deepened her eyes. A second lamp, at a distance but at eye level, spotlighted the face, isolating it from the cluttered dcor, defining her as the center of every shot. Von Sternberg is supposed to have painted a line of white

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The Making of The Blue Angel greasepaint down her nose to diminish its apparent size, but Dietrich specifically denies this, and indeed there would have been no need. He simply added an additional lamp, letting the three discs of light overlap in the center of her face, overexposing the nose and blurring it with light. To make this appear realistic, he placed Lola next to lamps and gas flames. Hardly a shot didnt have a lamp hanging a few inches from her head. Der Blaue Engel started shooting on November 4, 1929. As well as working chronologically, von Sternberg insisted on keeping all sets standing, in case he needed to re-shoota system he would use again on I, Claudius (GB, 1936), with just as much inconvenience to the studio, since it blocked those stages for other films. Dietrich claims in her memoirs that four cameras ran simultaneously, but this can hardly be true. In Hollywood, on silents, directors often shot with two cameras, side by side, to provide an identical negative for the films European version. This was impractical on a sound film. Not only was the camera heavily blimped to mute the sound of its motor; space had to be found for the recordist in his insulated booth, as large as two telephone kiosks. For shots without sound, von Sternberg may occasionally have used two cameras, but for sound sequences he rolled only one, and shot the English and German versions on alternate daysan added complication for the technicians and Pommer, but a boon for the actors, who often fluffed or mispronounced their English lines. The need for both English and German versions posed special problems. Not all the actors spoke English, and, of those who did, some did so better than others. Several shots were deleted or altered on this account, so that the English version, as well as differing often in camera angle and action, runs twelve minutes shorter. Further complicating things, von Sternberg decided that, as far as possible, the use of English, like his use of sound, should be realistic. People dont speak English unless dictated to do so by the plot. Jannings, as a teacher of English, addresses his students in English during lessons, but among themselves they speak German. Kiepert, the cabaret manager, makes an announcement in English, but the cabaret performers speak German, as does the drunken sea captain who lurches backstage and gets into a fight with Rath. When it comes to Lola-Lola, von Sternberg could imagine only one reason for her to speak English; its her native tongue. When Rath talks to her in German, she says, in English, You must talk to me in my own language. The fact that she does so with a German accent simply adds to her mystery. When Dietrich struggled with a word, von Sternberg reassured her that, if necessary, Riza could stand off-camera and speak the English dialogue while she mimed ita technique Alfred Hitchcock used on Blackmail (GB, 1929), where Joan Barrys voice replaced that of the heavily accented Anny Ondra. (He had seen its effectiveness on September 9, when both silent and sound versions of Blackmail screened at UFA.) In the event, Riza was never needed. If a line did give Dietrich trouble, von Sternberg changed it or dropped it

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John Baxter altogether, telling her, as he often did performers on his films, Oh, just say something more or less the same. Max Reinhardt visited the set. So did Eisenstein, for whom von Sternberg screened some rushes. He took each scene about twenty times, said the Russian, no slouch himself at multiple takes. Their former mutual admiration had deteriorated with the latters fortunes. In his diaries, Eisenstein, while denying his own well-documented homosexuality, claimed that von Sternberg had similar tendencies, which he exercised in Berlin during the shooting of Der Blaue Engel. He has a predilection for well-built males, he alleged, and even stayed at the Hercules Hotela reference to the Hotel Herkules-Haus adjacent to Berlins Herkulesbrcke or Hercules Bridge, near Nollendorfplatz, then as now a center of the Berlin gay scene. (Christopher Isherwood lived at Nollendorfstrae 17 while he wrote the Berlin Stories that became the basis of the play I Am a Camera and the musical Cabaret.) While Eisenstein scholar Ronald Bergan agrees that this curious statement . . . seems to be completely unfounded, he doesnt exclude the possibility that von Sternberg may have been tempted to experiment by the heady atmosphere of the last days of the Weimar Republic [which] was penetrating everybodys psyche. Nobody else ever suggested von Sternberg was bisexual, but its odd that Eisenstein should be so specific about a well-known gay hangout. Other visitors to the set included an attractive Russian migr sculptor, Dora Gordine, who became a friend in Hollywood, and the artist George Grosz, whom von Sternberg had met already, in the studio of Rudolf Belling, where the sculptor was creating his portrait bust, later cast in bronze. They met once more at dinner with the dealer Alfred Flechtheim, inspiring Grosz to devote part of his memoirs to Svengali Joe, as a Berlin journalist christened him. When Belling asked at the dinner if film directing was well paid, von Sternberg replied, I dont really earn a great deal; not quite three times as much as the President of the United States. Grosz was less impressed by the figure than the fact that, as he dropped his bombshell, he didnt even look up to see the effect. Suddenly this quiet-spoken little man became interesting. Following her claim that she suggested Dietrich for Lola-Lola, Leni Riefenstahl elaborated on her involvement in the film. By the time she got around to writing her memoirs in old age, she had, in imagination, taken center stage:
Von Sternberg brought me to the [Blue Angel] studio every day, until it got too much for Marlene. I liked her a lot. I idolised her. She was exceptional but very jealous. One day, we had quite a row in the studio. She started it. There was the famous scene where she sits on a barrel and sings Falling in Love Again. She started behaving very crudely to try and make me leave in disgust. Von Sternberg noticed and stepped in, but she said shed leave the film if I came to the studio again.

Nobody else ever remarked on this incident, and we can almost certainly attribute it to Riefenstahls tireless capacity for reinvention. The day before

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The Making of The Blue Angel shooting ended on January 22, 1930, Sidney Kent, in charge of sales for Paramounts east coast division, viewed a rough cut in Berlin and cabled Jesse Lasky, Shes sensational. Sign her up. On January 29, Dietrich received a cable from Schulberg:
Have Pleasure To Invite You To Join Brilliant Roster Of Players At Paramount Publix Stop Offer You Seven Year Contract Beginning At Five Hundred Dollars Per Week Escalating To Three Thousand Five Hundred Per Week in Seventh Year Congratulations . . .

Von Sternberg urged her to accept. Five hundred dollars was paltry, but contracts were renegotiated as a matter of course. Dietrich temporized. She resented the self-congratulatory tone of brilliant roster of players and the assumption of acceptance implied in Congratulations. She also had other commitmentsto UFA, to the theater company that did Zwei Krawatten, and to her husband and child. (It was also rumored that she procrastinated intentionally, hoping to be cast in G. W. Pabsts Buchse der Pandora. One anecdote places her in Pabsts office, ready to sign, when the call comes, offering Louise Brooks. A nice story, but impossible; Buchse der Pandora was shot before Der Blaue Engel. It opened on January 30, 1930, while the latter was still filming.) A compromise evolved. Paramount would import Dietrich for two films only, but at $1,250 a week. For the moment, her husband Rudolf Rudi Sieber and their little girl Heidede would remain behind in Berlin. Though Der Blaue Engel delighted the public, three of the people most involved in the film detested it. Jannings, as expected, reacted badly to the von Sternberg/Dietrich affair, doing all he could to rupture their rapport, throwing tantrums, and threatening to walk out (though its probably not true, as suggested by some, that he tried to strangle her during a fight scene.) It particularly incensed him that, when Rath, crazed with jealousy, wrecks Lolas dressing room, von Sternberg lingered on the expressions of those who watched, ignoring Jannings completely. A similar scene in Variete (DE, 1925), where he destroyed a caf on hearing of his wifes infidelity, had been that films high point, and the actor felt von Sternberg robbed him of a great moment. Thereafter, he would insist on approving the final cut of his films, with disastrous results. Alfred Hugenberg also found the film distasteful. Suspecting the character of Rath satirized him, he raged at Pommer for having created a parody of the German bourgeoisie, though the cost of the production made it impossible to delay release. Most incensed of all, Riza von Sternberg sailed for the United States and sued for divorce, with additional suits against Dietrich for libel and alienation of affections. Heinrich Mann, presumed to be resentful of how von Sternberg discarded Trude Hesterberg, was quoted as complaining that Miss Dietrichs naked thighs dominated the film. Stung by this, Dietrich penned a long comment on the endpapers of her own copy of the novel. In it, she called the author

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Figure 4. Cant help it. The final image of Marlene Dietrich as Lola-Lola.

a sad man living in the shadow of his famous, highly talented brother. He had a rare stream of contentment when his book . . . was chosen by Mr. von Sternberg. . . . He felt very honored and grateful to Mr. von Sternberg and gave him plein pouvoir [full power] to make all the changes he wanted to make. Character

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and story changes. I never saw him after the film . . . but I heard he was not the least upset regarding the drastic changes his book suffered in the version that made the film a classic.

Though Lola-Lolas songs would be one of the films most memorable features, they came almost as an afterthought and were dashed off in only a few days. Skillfully, Hollander exploited the deficiencies of Dietrichs voice, basing them on her two best notes, with many words in a husky sprechgesang half-spoken, half-sung. This also suited primitive recording systems which favored a low, even tone. As he had stressed in making Thunderbolt, von Sternberg, rather than imposing an orchestral score, preferred music to arise naturally from the action. The theatrical background made Der Blaue Engel ideal to demonstrate this, but he found other pretexts as well. Throughout the film, he cuts to an elaborate clock with a set of figures that emerge when it strikes. As the statuettes pass in procession, the chimes play Ub immer Treu und Redlichkeit, an old tune praising loyalty and honesty. Its the first piece of music heard in the film, and at the end, as the camera lingers on the dead Rath, we hear it again. Hollander endorsed von Sternbergs concept, preferring it to the tradition of operetta, where all action stopped while the cast burst into song. He also enjoyed working to a deadline. Our measure of time has changed, he wrote just after working on Der Blaue Engel. The musical collaborator in a film should be constantly present during its shooting. . . . Collaboration at speed means that a suggestion is sketched out on the piano, gets the directors approval, making sure that image and sound harmonize; the instrumentation is sketched out too, then tried out with the orchestra and recorded on the sound trackall this in half a day. A forgetful eccentric, given to mismatched socks and odd shoes, Hollander worked best while sitting on the lavatory, with music paper pinned to the back of the door. This technique produced his most famous composition, the song known in English as Falling in Love Again. No such song was originally included, von Sternberg feeling that the raucous They Call Me Naughty Lola would be enough to beguile the vulnerable Rath. Once his view of her softened, however, he demanded something more tender. Challenged to write a love song for a woman who didnt believe in love, Hollander retired to the toilet and emerged with a rueful waltz to which Liebmann added lyrics that celebrate the satisfactions of uncomplicated lust.
Ich bin von Kopf bis Fu Auf Liebe eingestellt, Denn das ist meine Welt. Und sonst gar nichts. Das ist, was soll ich machen, Meine Natur, Ich kann halt lieben nur Und sonst gar nichts.

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John Baxter Literally translated, this means:

From head to foot, Im made for sex, Because this is my world. Otherwise, theres nothing. This is what I must do My nature. I can only have sex. Otherwise, theres nothing.

As she sings von Kopf bis Fu, Lola-Lola makes an all-encompassing gesture with her hand that takes in her whole body, frankly offering it to anyone confident or rich enough to claim it. Her frankness leaches all sentiment from the song. Like another great ballad of prostitution, Cole Porters Love for Sale, it leaves no room for romance. Unfortunately, the English lyrics give a very different impression. Hurriedly composed by Sammy Lerner, a Romanian best known for the theme to the cartoon series Popeye, The Sailor Man, they neutralize Liebmanns Dionysian statement. As the first song Rath hears from LolaLola, they should implicitly warn him and the rest of us what to expect from her. In English, however, they become apologetic:
Falling in love again Never wanted to. What am I to do? Cant help it.

Both Dietrich and Hollander detested the sweetening of its Berlin astringency. But the damage was done, and for the rest of her career she would be shackled to lyrics that said precisely the opposite of what the song intended. In the claustrophobic world of Berlin theater, two such publicity-conscious women as Riefenstahl and Dietrich could hardly have avoided bumping into one another; as noted, they even lived in the same apartment building. Inevitably, they became competitors for the limelight, with Dietrich usually winning. In 1928, at the Reiman Arts School Ball, Dietrich, who arrived arrogantly smoking a cigarette in a trendy little pipe that held it vertical, let herself be steered by photographer Alfred Eisenstadt next to Anna May Wong, the lovely California-born Chinese actress whom von Sternberg would direct in Shanghai Express, and who had become a cult figure in Berlin after having been imported at the insistence of Karl Vollmoeller. Then he cajoled Riefenstahl into joining them. Eisenstadts two photographs of the trio, arms around one another in false bonhomie, are the only evidence of what is believed to be, despite claims by Riefenstahl, the last meeting between her and Dietrich. Once Riefenstahl embraced National Socialism, Dietrich shunned her, just as she resented Dietrich displacing her as the centurys most famous German woman.

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The Making of The Blue Angel Even though she was booked to sail on the liner Bremen the next day, Dietrich had no intention of missing the premiere of Der Blaue Engel . Peter Kreuder in his memoirs claims that von Sternberg, before he left, hired a claque of fifty people to interrupt the premiere with applause. In addition, Kreuder says, he ordered fifteen seconds of blank film spliced in following Falling in Love Again, inviting an ovation without risk of interrupting the film. Kreuder is notoriously unreliable and repudiated almost entirely by Dietrich. However, the opera claque was a Berlin institution, rented out to provide applause for any event from a film premiere to a fashion show. Also, the blank-film trick resembles its practice of forcing an encore, in which members rushed the stage at the end of an aria and threw bouquets, distracting the conductor, and allowing time for a spontaneous ovation. Such was the call for seats on the first day of screening that the film played four times, the stars making personal appearances at the afternoon press show and the gala evening premiere. While waiting to go on, they remained backstage in the Green Room. Kreuder arrived halfway through the press show, to be instantly attacked by Jannings about the blank film. When he refused to remove it, Jannings, he said, knocked him down. But no amount of violence could arrest Dietrichs progress. Addressing the audience that night in her white evening gown and fur wrap, she looked every inch a star. I dont leave Berlin lightly, she told them. First, because Berlin is my home. Second, because Berlin is . . . Berlin. Though I shouldnt say it, I am a little afraid of Hollywood. She had no reason to fear the reaction that night. It was such a powerful stark tragedy, one critic wrote, that several seconds elapsed before the audience broke into enthusiastic applause. As for her Hollywood debut, she revealed in her speech that it would be in the film version of Amy Jolly, Die Frau au Marrakesch, an obscure autobiographical novel by Benno Vigny, one-time Foreign Legionnairethe film that would become Morocco (US, 1930). Since she was going straight from the theater to the boat train, her luggage was already packed and all thirty-six pieces loaded onto a truck waiting at the stage door. It had to push through the mobs that gathered around the cinemathough it strains credulity to believe, as Kreuder claims, that he played an upright piano on the back of the truck while Dietrich and Willy Forst danced the Charleston and tossed champagne glasses to the crowd. Forst and the actor Francis Lederer did accompany her on the train to Bremerhaven, along with Resi, her dresser from Der Blaue Engel, who would become her maid. Though nobody else mentions it, her husband was apparently also present, since Dietrich has written in her personal copy of one biography, und Rudi? But the failure to note his presence is understandable. From that moment, Dietrich was entirely her own woman. In a bizarre postscript to the story of The Blue Angel, Dietrich traveled to Europe from the United States in the summer of 1936 with her husband and daughter, intending to spend time with her family in Germany.

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John Baxter Before doing so, she visited the German embassy in Paris to renew her passport. The ambassador, Count von Welczeck, handed her a personal letter from a high-ranking Nazi. She later told the FBI it was from Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitlers former roving representative and ambassador to Great Britain. A more likely candidate, however, is Josef Goebbels, Reichminister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Having heard of von Sternbergs plans to leave Hollywood and make films in Europe with her, the German government urged Dietrich to return and become the reigning queen of the German film industry. (As a Jew, von Sternberg was not included in the invitation.) Though Der Blaue Engel was banned for public screening because of its Jewish connections, Hitler admired it and owned a private copy that he would screen at the slightest excuse. French diplomats complained of being forced to sit through four hours of Dietrich, including Der Blaue Engel, during which they were forbidden to speak or even smoke. The letter shook Dietrich, as she later explained to the FBI. Her reaction was described by an interviewing officer in a report to director J. Edgar Hoover, dated July 12, 1942:
In an interview with Dietrich in the early part of 1941 . . . she stated that in 1936 she was in Paris, at which time von Ribbentrop attempted to get her to return to Germany to make a picture there. However, she refused to do this, even though von Ribbentrops request was made on behalf of Adolf Hitler. Dietrich said that after von Ribbentrops messenger left her, she debated with herself for two hours whether she should call Hitler directly, telling him that she would go to Germany to visit him, and then, when she arrived there, make some plan to kill him. She described Hitler as being not a normal human being mentally, and described his evident feeling for her as he has a tick for me. [Its possible this is a mistranslation of Der hat ja einen Tick! meaning Hes really off his rocker.]

Though the homicidal impulse passed, the warning made her prudent. Sailing for the United States on the liner France on September 20, she declined, in the words of one report, to comment on her reported refusal to return to Germany and to confine her motion picture work to its studios. The report continued, It is regarded as significant . . . that Miss Dietrich was returning on a French ship, after having come to Europe on a German liner, and that she did not ever cross the frontier into Germany during her three months vacation abroad. Once back in California, she applied for U.S. citizenship. And what if she had followed her impulse, made the phone call, and been welcomed into the presence of the Fuhrer? Could she have gone through with her plan to murder him, knowing it would lead to her certain death? How ironic that World War II might have been averted because of von Sternbergs eagerness to show off Dietrichs legs.

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The Making of The Blue Angel John Baxters books on the cinema include biographies of Federico Fellini, Luis Buuel, Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Ken Russell, and Robert De Niro, monographs on John Ford, King Vidor, and Josef von Sternberg, and various genre studies, including The Hollywood Exiles, The Gangster Film, The Australian Cinema, Science Fiction in the Cinema, Hollywood in the Thirties, and Hollywood in the Sixties. He lives in Paris.

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