Raymond Stanley's Show Buzz

Dietrich down under

Of all the Hollywood stars to visit Australia to perform, possibly none made the impact that Marlene Dietrich did.  She was brought out by impresario Kenn Brodziak, a Lew Grade look-a-like.  I was privileged to meet the star on several occasions, and learned direct from Brodziak some of her eccentricities.

It was in October 1965 that she first arrived to perform her one-woman show in Melbourne and Sydney.  The star made the 19-hour flight from Los Angeles alone;  her maid had come on ahead.  The plane touched down in Sydney and she was the last passenger to leave the aircraft.  She stood in the doorway, posing for pictures, and shook hands with crew and hostesses before walking down the gangway, smiling and waving to the crowd of fans.

A fellow passenger told a reporter:  “We sat just across the aisle from her on the plane and all she seemed to do was to keep changing her clothes!”

Whilst waiting for the plane to take her to Melbourne, where she was to open her one-woman show, Dietrich stood at the door of the V.I.P. lounge and answered a few questions.

“Why are you still working?”

“For money.”

“How long do you intend to keep going?”

“How long do you?”

“Well, I’m 21!”, replied the reporter.

Dietrich arrived at her Melbourne hotel soon after mid-day and, after a brief visit to her suite, went straight to a rehearsal with the orchestra at the Princess Theatre.

Four hours after her arrival Dietrich gave a press conference, reports of which made front page news around the country.  Admitting she had not slept for two days, the star seemed rather aloof, but very chic and elegant, attired in a white brocade suit with a blouse and collar of navy blue.

“Photographers first before any questions”, she murmured in a husky, slightly accented voice.  Only the click of cameras and flashlights could be heard for the next few minutes as she posed in sitting and standing positions.  Finally an expression of impatience came over her face.

“That’s enough!  If you don’t stop we’ll be here until Christmas!”  Then came the questions, which she answered briefly.  Was she a dotting grandmother?  What did she think of modern youth?  She admitted she loved cooking, did her own hair using curling irons, and Paris was her favourite city.  Cary Grant her favourite actor.
  
Asked if she was a sex goddess, she replied:  “No, that is something the
historians have made up.  When I was making films I was not known as a sex goddess.  This has happened only in the past 20 years.  It is part of the myth.”

There were more questions about her grandchildren and similar subjects.
“I've had enough of this”, she said.  “Isn’t SOMEONE going to ask me about my profession?”

“Were you disturbed when asked to get into a monkey suit?” someone asked, referring to her film Blonde Venus.

 “I was asked to do all kinds of crazy things in those days.”  Did she believe that the reason for her continued fame was a myth developed over the years since the thirties?

“No.  Many young people are coming to see my shows”.  Asked if she had a sense of humour, Dietrich said she hoped so - otherwise she would not be there.

She said she adored the Beatles, and considered women were most interesting after the age of 30.  Asked if she was wearing a hair-piece, she quickly responded with:  “Are you?”

Were her legs insured?  “No, they have never been.  That is another myth.”  She revealed that Witness For The Prosecution was her favourite film, that Charles Laughton taught her to speak the cockney for it, and she possessed the same sense of humour as its director, Billy Wilder.

Her knowledge of lighting and presentation, she admitted, she had learned from director Joseph von Sternberg.  Unlike other directors he had not planned his films in advance, but had improvised as they went along.  Hitchcock she enjoyed working with because he knew what he wanted.

Someone asked if she had ever met Greta Garbo.  Yes, she had.  It was after the war - at Clifton Webb’s house - and they had only exchanged a few words.  But she couldn’t believe she was meeting Garbo actually speaking to her - after seeing her in all those films.  It was like meeting a legend face to face.  Which is exactly what most people present were feeling about Dietrich at that moment!

Following my usual practice when promised an exclusive interview, I had not asked questions at the conference.  Why put ideas into other people’s heads?  That evening Kenn Brodziak rang me.

“Marlene wants to know why the man from Variety wasn’t present at her press conference.”

“But I was.  How would she know me?”

“Yes”, murmured Brodziak, obviously in agreement, “but already I’ve learned not to argue with her when she says something.  Now, you’ve got your tickets for the first night haven’t you?”

“Yes”.

“Well, you’re to come backstage afterwards to meet Marlene”.

Between the press conference and the opening performance Dietrich had nine hours of rehearsal with the orchestra.  At the final rehearsal, on the day of the opening, according to Kenn Brodziak, the star never ceased to complain.  Everything seemed to be wrong - the lights, sound, music - just about everything.  At 4 p.m. she said:  “It’s terrible.  Everything’s wrong.  I’m going.  You’ll have to fix it.”  And left the theatre.

There was dead silence and everyone seemed panic-stricken - except Brodziak.  “We’re going to do nothing”, he said firmly, “she’s too much of a perfectionist.  If anything was wrong she wouldn’t have left the theatre.”

The theatre staff had orders, presumably emanating from Dietrich herself, that the stage was to be washed every afternoon at approximately four o’clock, and damp wash only to take place immediately the curtain fell on the first half each night.

The first night audience was as ‘dressy’ as a city like Melbourne, with its snob values, can muster.  Furs and jewellery abounded and most of he men in the stalls seemed to be wearing black ties.

For my own thoughts on that opening performance, I can do no better than repeat what I wrote for Variety  which duly appeared under the heading: ‘Marlene Dietrich Wows ‘Em In Her Down Under Debut’:

Marlene Dietrich can now add Australia to the list of the many countries she has conquered.  However,  there was a certain amount of mutual hesitancy about the initial meeting.  On one side the audience was seeing a living legend in person, and an international star was entertaining in a country she had never before visited.  Could she live up to the legend?  Would they fully appreciate the subtleties of her art?

It wasn’t until Miss Dietrich’s fourth song, ‘The Boys In The Back Room’, that both were sure of themselves.  But from then on there was top rapport.  The applause was no longer for a legend - it was for one of the world’s great artists.
As song followed song, most of them familiar through recordings, the applause grew.  Patrons gained a 3-D impression, lacking in the disks, by seeing and being moved by Dietrich the actress.

The polish and perfection of her entire act, calculated as it might be, was a lesson in artistry.  Probably her rendering of ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone?’, with its dramatic lighting effect concentrating upon her face, produced the most applause.
Curtain time found the ovation as great, perhaps  greater, than that accorded Joan Sutherland in her recent Melbourne season.  Bouquet followed bouquet..... flower after flower was thrown onto the stage, Miss Dietrich herself, gracefully and sexily, slipped in and out of the curtain like a yo-yo.

The lights went up but the audience - most of them standing - refused to leave .  Still Miss Dietrich  appeared on and off stage, and by now to a steady rhythmic handclapping and stamping of feet.  Her conquest Down Under was complete. 

Later, on the stage of the theatre, I was one of a handful of people clustered around the star:  three members of the management;  journalist Charles Higham who later wrote a biography of Dietrich;  and Sybil Thorndike’s son, John Casson, and his wife.

Dietrich seemed to be as excited as a young girl.  “They liked me... they liked me,” she kept repeating, twirling around.  “They were so quick.  In England I have to say each joke slowly for them to get the point.  Here they laughed much quicker.  Usually I find only the Americans are as quick as that”.

Higham quizzed her about her screen test for The Blue Angel.  Was it true it was now in Russia?

“Yes”, she murmured.  “Wouldn’t it be amusing to see it again?”  In a tiny voice she began crooning ‘You’re the Cream in My Coffee’, apparently mimicking her screen test.

Two days after the opening night I had a call from Malcolm Cooke, who was
 acting as tour manager to the star.  Miss Dietrich had requested that I had supper with her after her performance that night! 

Later Kenn  rang me.  “I know you’re going to have supper with Marlene tonight.  I want her relaxed.  She doesn’t like talking about her films.  This won’t be your interview with her.”

Backstage at the theatre I waited for the star.  Eventually, dressed in a camel-haired coat, she came along, accompanied by her musical director, William Blezard.  She seemed annoyed about something, muttering to Blezard, and giving me bare acknowledgment.  As she neared the stage door she buttoned her coat up to the top.  Outside was a crowd of about 200 fans, cheering and clamouring for her autograph.  Smiling, she signed books, programmes and scraps of paper, and distributed photographs, all the time moving towards her chauffeur-driven car.

Dietrich and Blezard sat in the back, I in front with the driver.  No sooner was the car out of sight of the theatre than she undid her coat and discarded it, revealing a two-piece check suit.  Driving along with the star and noticing how people in other cars would recognise her and wave and smile, and observing her doing likewise automatically in return, one had an idea what it was like to be Marlene Dietrich.

My recollections of the conversation in the car are hazy.  There was some mention of the song ‘Black Market’, which she seemed to have little memory of, and I reminded her she had sung it in A Foreign Affair.  She said some people thought she was Jewish and, whilst she had the greatest admiration for that race, it was not so.

It was past closing time at the suburban restaurant to which we went, but they had remained open specially and the manager stood around, proud to have such a distinguished patron.  Obviously alerted to the BYO (bring your own) rules prevailing at the time for restaurants without liquor licenses, Dietrich had brought along a bottle of red wine.

Over supper she relaxed and we chatted amicably.  I had well in mind Brodziak’s hint to refrain from talking about Hollywood and her films.  She queried me about Australia and Aborigines, spoke of her recent English tour, and quite naturally frequently referred to her daughter as Maria.

It very much seemed to me that the lady lacked humour.  Yet at one point she related how there had been a knock at her hotel suite door and she was sure it was her mail.  “Leave it outside”, she had called out and, practically in her birthday
 suit, had opened the door, bent down to pick up what she had presumed would be letters, to be confronted by two large male boots and, looking up, found herself gazing at a security man, checking that all was in order!

I attended another performance of her show and again met her backstage and finally, after the matinee on her last day, did a taped interview with her.  She admitted it was difficult finding songs to sing.   “I look for the words first and secondly for the music, because I need the words to mean something.”

She stressed that she never did her act automatically.  “It must be very good if one can do that.  I can’t.  There are many many people who can perform not thinking of what they’re doing and still do it.  I have never learned that and I don’t think I want to learn it.  I always sing the way I think the song should be sung.”

Did she ever have regrets that her career took the path it did and she went into films, that she didn’t remain on the stage?

“No.  I don’t first of all believe in having regrets, because one never knows what would have happened.  I took what came in its stride.  Also, I was not successful in the theatre.  I mean, I had no position in the theatre when I made my first film.  Therefore it wasn’t difficult to leave it, because I was just in a theatre school and had no experience on the stage.  So I can’t say that it was difficult for me to give up something.  I had nothing to give up at all”.

Dietrich said she was interested in theatre and went to see other people’s shows.  British theatre in particular appealed to her.  She liked the plays of John Osborne very much, and British actors.

“I love the way they play together.  There is no ‘star’ of the show, like you have very often in American theatre.  In England they all play together.  Even if the greatest names are in the same cast, then they all play together.  They don’t behave like stars on the stage.  And I have great respect for that.”

Did she then consider British theatre was better than American?

“For my tastes, yes.  First of all they speak a beautiful English and they all have learned their trade, and in America very often you have talents that have never trained or anything.  They might be good in one part, but they still have no experience.  In America you can become, on the stage overnight, a big star without having learned anything at all.  And in the British theatre I think it shows how these people have been trained before they are allowed  to play an important part”.

Was she fond of Shakespeare?  “Yes....  I am, but I wouldn’t travel far you know to see rather Shakespeare than a contemporary play.  But I loved Gielgud when he came to New York and did his one-man show - it was just beautiful.  And I went there almost every night.”

In Sydney there was one young journalist, Hugh Curnow, who managed to slip under Dietrich’s guard.  He had sought an interview and she apparently took such a liking to him that they saw much of each other in her final days in Australia.  Before leaving the country she telephoned his boss and obtained special leave for him to go overseas with her and assist in writing her memoirs.  Leaving behind a wife and children, Curnow accompanied the star to America, Hollywood and finally Paris, where for a period he lived with her.

Marlene Dietrich returned to Australia in 1968, again for Brodziak, where she appeared at the Adelaide Festival of the Arts and also in another Melbourne season.

Before leaving her home in Paris, she was bombarding Malcolm Cooke with endless queries about her forthcoming tour.  Paramount on her mind was an Adelaide press conference arranged a few days before the Festival’s opening.

On February 5 she was writing:  “I am seeing the Press only for Mr. Brodziak, to sell tickets.  Otherwise I would avoid the Press altogether”.

On February 11:  “... try .... to invite the Music Critics so that we have some intelligent questions and not the banalities.”

Cooke had written asking for a private interview to be set up with a ‘distinguished journalist’ from one of Melbourne’s leading dailies.

On February 22 she was asking why, if he was really a distinguished journalist, and if the paper was devoting ‘maximum coverage to the arts’, would he not be present at her press conference?

“What more important Theatrical Personality is present in Australia at that time????”, she asked.  “I want to stress the point right now  that with the schedule as it is, with more matinees  than I have ever agreed to play in my life, I will be unable to give private interviews while in Adelaide.”

On arrival Down Under on this occasion Dietrich was subjected to Customs officers searching every item of her luggage.  She spent some 40 minutes going through Customs, which upset her.

She later was quoted as saying:  “I was charming and nice and suddenly they said:  ‘Do you have any marijuana or heroin?’  I thought it was an insult.  I know it is against the law.  They even had to search my handbag.  I have been in many movies where I have carried microfilm in my boots or in my heels, but I certainly would not put it in my handbag.

The Adelaide press conference did not receive such vast countrywide coverage as had her 1965 one, but she was most affable.  Out of it came one memorable quote:  “The public usually confuses an actress with the parts she plays.  In my case it is not so good.  I usually play whores.”

Hugh Curnow was due to attend the Melbourne opening night.  During the day he had been assigned to cover an oil rig discovery off the coast of Victoria.  Whilst there a helicopter flew in to take press pictures and somehow the oil rig on which Curnow and other journalists were standing swayed and struck one of the helicopter’s blades and he was decapitated.

It was Kenn Brodziak who broke the news to Dietrich in her hotel suite.  She did not say anything, but went very silent.  Her first night performance in Melbourne was nowhere as good as it had been in Adelaide.

Brodziak had many anecdotes about Dietrich.  Before her first tour he checked with people who had presented her in the past and was told she was not really difficult but demanded perfection.

“There are certain things you don’t do”, he was told.  “Don’t ever argue with her.  If it’s green and she says it’s red, well you just agree with her, and if it’s Tuesday and she says it’s Wednesday, don’t disagree with her.  But she’ll always do the job for you, and she’s fine.”  Brodziak discovered this to be perfectly true.  The secret was to put everything in writing.

Dietrich was fond of writing notes.  These would be on odd scraps of paper and backs of envelopes, often in red or green ink, sometimes in capital letters.  Many would be slipped under the door of Cooke’s hotel room during the night.

“It is 5 a.m.”, read one.  “Please don’t leave for the office without calling me.”

“Who is going to throw small bouquets onto the stage??”
“Where is the ‘Party?”
“Where do I get a Horn (aboriginal)?  Has holes on sides.”
Then one, which one can only imagine the circumstances in which it was written:  “Can you get rid of her nicely?”

The reports about Dietrich complaining about everything proved to be only too true, but Brodziak found out how to handle her.

“She’d say:  ‘Oh, the lights were bad tonight, the sound wasn’t right, the music was terrible.’  It’d be one or the other.  So I’d always get in first.  ‘Beautiful performance Marlene, but what about the lighting?’  “The lighting - that was all right, but what about the music?”  So the next night I’d say:  ‘Lovely show, but the music wasn't right”  ‘The music was perfect, but what about the sound!’’

He had this type of repartee with her.  She would say:  “You know the sound wasn’t good, I know the sound wasn’t good, but they don’t know the sound wasn’t good.  We’re in Idiotsville!”

However, she would always do the job, relax after a show and have little dinner parties, where she would be the hostess and entertain people she liked - generally the staff, or her co-artists, or co-musicians, and some of the management.

She suffered badly from insomnia on the first tour, but by the time of the second visit it was her impresario who was experiencing sleeplessness and Dietrich believed she had found a cure:  she brought with her a supply of suppositories, which were French and unobtainable in Australia.  Giving some to Brodziak, who found they worked, she promised on her departure to give him the balance.  This she did, with the note:  “Here are the little articles of joy!  Hope you sleep soundly”.  As she remarked:  “If everyone took these there’d be fewer suicides.”

An incident which occurred on the final night in Sydney displayed another side of the star.  A party was planned for her.  However, as Dietrich was leaving the stage door a woman in the crowd surrounding it fainted.  According to Brodziak Dietrich cried out:  “Bring some champagne!”  and then “Send for an ambulance”.  She then insisted on the woman getting into the back of her chauffeur-driven car with her and taking the woman to her home.

Some hours later Dietrich appeared at the party.  “I had to go with her”, she explained.  “I went to her home.  We sat in the kitchen and had cups of tea.  A very nice person.  She just got excited.  I’ve sent her all my flowers.”

Her musical director, William Blezard, usually accompanied Joyce Grenfell.  Dietrich would call him “Paganini”.  Always generous, she would buy tickets for her shows to give to friends - she would never accept complimentaries.  Then she would say:  “Don’t put them there;  they’re behind Paganini, who waves his arms so much.  If they're watching his arms, they're not watching me.”

Brodziak, a noted gourmet, warmed to the star when he found they had a lot in common in this department, and the two would talk much about food.  When in Adelaide they discussed kidneys in champagne, and she promised that when they reached Melbourne she would come and cook some for him.  He thought no more about this and, when Curnow’s bizarre death occurred, was sure it would be off.  However, Dietrich had not forgotten.

She gave instructions about what kidneys to buy and told him to invite who he liked.  “I’ll bring the champagne because I have to get the bubbles out of it.”

She arrived with her own carving knife.  “I  know you bachelors don’t have sharp carving knives, so I’ve brought my own.  Now, I’m not sitting down with you.  I’ll do all the preparations, all the cooking and I’ll serve, but I will not sit down.”  And that is exactly what happened.

If anyone had a button off a coat, Dietrich would insist on sewing it on for them.  And she always seemed to have a cure for everything.  For instance when, in the lobby of her Adelaide hotel, she noticed a man walking down the stairs twitching his eye, she promptly declared: “I’ve got a cure for that!”

Whilst in Melbourne on her second tour a television special was made of her concert.  [Dietrich biographers seem unaware of this, always dating a later London concert as her first for TV!)  One day at rehearsal she was annoyed about the placement of the lights and asked Brodziak to have the technicians move one of them.  When  asked which light, she said:  “The one next to the green curtains.”  He looked at the curtains, which were red, and realised that she must be colour blind.

She had first approval on the TV special and, along with Brodziak and Cooke, went to a special screening of it, where she acted in an extraordinary manner.  As soon as it began she asked in a loud voice:  “Who is that woman on the screen?  What’s she singing?  Look at her hair!  She’s so fat.”

Brodziak thought they were in trouble, that she would insist on the concert being filmed again, or else cancel everything.  Instead she nudged him in the ribs, leaned towards him and, imitating a gangster’s moll, said:  “Say kid, let’s take the money and run!”  Standing up she quickly announced: “I approve!”, and scurried out of the room, quickly followed by Brodziak and Cooke.

Frequently when entertaining she instructed Cooke to pay the bill and debit her account.  On one occasion she said: “Malcolm, I don’t think you tipped that man enough.  How much did you tip?”  Cooke told her and she said: “That’s not enough, from me they expect more.”

According to Kenn Brodziak, Dietrich always insisted upon personally acknowledging the many fan letters she received.  She would cut off the address and signature on each letter and paste them onto an envelope to be mailed to the individual concerned.

On one occasion, after she had given a wonderful performance, by way of thanks Brodziak had hugged her as she came off the stage and later told me it was just like hugging ‘a bag of bones’, so thin was she.

Marlene Dietrich made a third Australian tour in 1975.  This time she did not come for Brodziak, who thought the box office would not sustain a third tour with what was virtually the same programme, and ultimately was proved right.  There was no animosity between the two.  Indeed they had dinner together and the friendship and mutual regard was as warm as ever.

At a performance in Sydney, making her entrance, she fell backwards, breaking a femur in her left leg.  A brief appearance in the film Just A Gigolo in l978 and her show business career was over.  She died in Paris in 1992.