the making of the blue angel

7/27/2019 The Making of the Blue Angel

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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 andWalter Reisch, from a story by Melchior Lengyel

Occasionally, a film becomes emblematic of its historical moment. Josefvon Sternbergs 1929 Der Blaue Engel/The Blue Angelwas in production at theexact instant Wall Street crashed, but in Berlin the disaster went unremarkedby a bewitched director interested only in his new star and lover, a hithertoobscure actress named Marlene Dietrich. He left us with a snapshot of Europeat the instant when Germanys Weimar Republic, culturally the richest ofthe century, finally expired. Within a few months, power would pass to theNational Socialist Party, the leader of which, Adolf Hitler, numbered The BlueAngelamong his favorite films.

References to The Blue Angelappear in every film history. Almost invari-ably we are told that, in 1929, Emil Jannings, Germanys most famous actor,persuaded Universum Film Ag (UFA), Europes largest film studio, to invitethe Vienna-born von Sternberg, with whom he had worked during a spell inHollywood, to come to Berlin and direct his first talking film. The truth ismore complex, and more strange.

Berlin Year Zero:The Making ofThe Blue Angel

John Baxter

This article will be included in John Baxters forthcoming biographyof Josef vonSternberg,to be published by the University Press of Kentucky.


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The Making of The Blue AngelTo make a sound film in Berlin in 1929 was anything but simple. Ger-

mans pioneered sound recording as they did photography, and companieslike Tobis-Klangfilm controlled major patents. So, however, did the U.S.company General Electric, which forbade the use of its technology in Ger-man theaters. Not until June 1929 did a U.S. sound-on-film talkie, The SingingFool, play in Berlin, and then only after earlier releases were cancelled in legalwrangles. 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 thepublic. In September 1929, when UFA unveiled the Tonkreuz (Sound Cross)complex at its Neubablesberg studios, with four giant sound stages radiatingfrom a central hub, nobody was sure what films would be made there, andwhether they would be suitable for export to countries using General Elec-

tric equipment. With this doubt went a general hostility toward Hollywoodproductions, particularly if they featured German artists who had been luredthere by high American salaries. For an actor like Emil Jannings to returnand make a talking film in Germany was an act freighted with social, politi-cal, cultural, and financial significance.

Early in 1929, UFA, gambling that writing talent would be needed morethan ever in sound films, hired Germanys most commercially successfulscreenwriter, Robert Liebmann. As its dramaturg, a resident scenarist andconsultant, 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 agreementto 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 com-pany by negotiating the return of Emil Jannings to Germany. UFA securedJanningss services from November 1929 to February 1930 for $60,000.

In a carefully timed arrival, the actor returned to Berlin on May 15, theday 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 hewould make his first sound film at the end of the year, from an original screen-play by Zuckmayer. On May 31, Janningss next-to-last Hollywood film, thedisappointingStreet of Sin, based on a story by von Sternberg, opened at oneof Berlins most prestigious cinemas, the Palast am Zoo. Three weeks later,on June 21, writer Karl Vollmoeller alsoreturned to Berlin from Hollywood,where he lived part of the year, and where he had worked on the subtitles andadvertising of the German version of von Sternbergs first sound film, the

crime dramaThunderbolt, retitled Sie nannten ihn Thunderbolt/They Called HimThunderbolt. The creative team was in place that would bring von SternbergsThe Blue Angel to the screenexcept that neither von Sternberg nor The Blue


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In choosing as a subject the illiterate Russian monk who bamboozledthe czar and his family, only to be murdered by resentful courtiers, Pommerand his colleagues were conscious of UFAs owner, the right-wing communi-cations magnate Alfred Hugenberg. He had bought the bankrupt studio in1927 and since used it to produce cheerful musicals and stories of aristocraticheroism, suggesting a vision of what Germany had been before the onset ofWeimar socialism and might be again. The royalist, conservative Rasputinlooked certain to please him.

Though he was independently wealthy and hardly needed the money,Vollmoeller agreed to write Rasputinfor 23,000 RM (US$4500), plus a fur-ther 3,000 RM (US$600) to open up Palazzo Vendramin, his home on theGrand Canal in Venice, where Richard Wagner lived and died. To direct,

the unanimous choice was Ernst Lubitsch, who had been in Hollywood since1923 and was well established at Paramount, which also had von Sternbergunder contract. E. H. Correll, a member of the UFA board, was delegated tooffer him $60,000 to return to Berlin and be reunited with the actor whom hehad directed in so many of his early successes. But Lubitsch refused. Withinthe Paramount hierarchy, he was rising faster than he could ever hope to doin Germany. His career embodied a common gibe about Europeans in Holly-wood. If you begin a production with just one Hungarian, very quickly youhave nothing but Hungarians. But if you start with only Germans, soon there

is just one. Only when Lubitsch definitively refused did Jannings and Pom-mer suggest von Sternbergwho, in an added plus, came cheaper.While Pommer and Vollmoeller negotiated with von Sternberg, Jan-

nings mulled over the role of Rasputin and discussed it with his wife, actressGussi Holl, who enjoyed a veto on all his career decisions. When he got backto Pommer, it was with a blank refusal. Rasputin was nothing but a villain.Where, he demanded, was the downfall, the humiliation, the histrionics hisfans expected after films like Murnaus The Last Laugh(DE, 1924) and TheWay of All Flesh? Moreover, this was dangerous ground, since the Yousopovs

were still alive and socially prominent in Paris, with powerful friends. Voll-moellers Rasputinwould have followed a similar story line to Rasputin andthe Empress, the version made by MGM in 1932, in which Rasputin is assassi-nated not for reasons of political expediency or court intrigue but because hehas raped the beautiful Irina Yousopov. Following the 1932 film, the Youso-povs successfully sued MGM for libel in both Britain and the United States.Scenes were cut or rewritten, and forever after Hollywood films carriedadisclaimerstating thatall charactersare fictional,and anyresemblance toreal people,living ordead, ispurely coincidental.

EitherJannings orVollmoeller thensuggested revivinga projectthat Jan-ningshad oncediscussed withG. W.Pabst. Thenovel Professor Unrat,oderDas Ende eines Tyrannen/Professor Garbage or The End of a Tyrant written by


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The Making of The Blue AngelEnglish in the Baltic port of Lubeck. He is nicknamed Unratgarbagebyhis students, particularly the precocious seventeen-year-old Lohmann, whois 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 insteadfalls under her spell. After squandering all his money on her, he is dismissedfrom the school and they marry. Persuaded by her cronies, he turns theirhome into a club, where, under the guise of attending lectures, clients cangamble and consort with whores. To Raats perverse satisfaction, several ofhis former persecutors become clients and are ruined. Its only when Raatdiscovers Rosa in bed with Lohmann that he snaps, first trying to stranglehis 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 futurelooked bleak. His last four films, includingThe Last Commandand Thunder-bolt, had all f lopped at the box office. All the same, he bargained Pommer upto $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


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week he remained in Germany past January 14, 1930, payment penaltiescame into force. Since The Blue Angeldidnt premiere until April 1, its totalcost would soar to 2,000,000 RM (US$400,000), making it, despite its smallscale, more expensive even than Metropolis.

When von Sternberg and his wife Riza stepped off the train at BerlinsZoo station on August 16, 1929, to be greeted formally by Jannings and Pom-mer, the director felt he was entering a new and better world. He said as muchto 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 theeve of his Academy Award, was stage-managed. They had already been inEurope for weeks. After visiting Vienna, they went to St. Moritz in Switzer-land, 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, alreadydiscussed before he left Hollywood. He also suggested a new structure and adifferent titlenotProfessor Unratbut the name of the cabaret where his down-fall begins, Der Blaue EngelThe Blue Angel.

At his suggestion, enthusiastically seconded by Jannings, they would filmonly the first half of the book, the better to concentrate on the degradation ofJanningss character, and also to exploit the barroom setting that had servedhim 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. Heand Lola-Lola marry, but instead of staying in Lubeck and setting up a brotheland casino, as in the novel, she continues touring with Rath as a member ofthe troupe, playing the stooge in comedy skits, and selling postcards of Lola-Lola to the punters who come to leer. After being humiliated when the showonce again plays Der Blaue Engel and then seeing Lola-Lola cuckold himwith a new lover, the strongman Mazeppa, he smashes her dressing room in afury, 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 trackrecord of successful plays. Liebmann wrote some dialogue and the lyrics forthe songs. In the German version, he is listed separately from the others, andfor Drehbuch(shooting script) alone: a lesser credit. The acknowledgment toVollmoeller was likewise, according to Zuckmayer, a courtesy.

Vollmoeller wrote not a line. He was our contact man with Hollywood. It washe who inspired von Sternberg to come to Berlin, and convinced UFA thatvon 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 ofinterpreter, since none of us spoke correct English at the time and von Stern-b did t lik t b hi G d t B f St b


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The Making of The Blue Angelsituations 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 introducedthe 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 25,000RM (US$5000) with an additional 10,000 RM (US$2000) if the English ver-sion opened in New York. The terms were announced on August 23, only aweek after von Sternberg arrived in Berlinclear indication that negotiationshad 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 Moscowto make a film and they rented his apartment. Riza received a hint of thebohemian 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 pendinghis arrival in Berlin. When The Drag Net(US, 1928), as Politzei, opened at theUFA Palast, he appeared at the premiere and made a short speech. However,Herbert Ihering of the Berliner Borsen-Courierarticulated the general opinionwhen he dismissed the film as tear-jerking, hypocritical nonsense. Reviews

were kinder to The Docks of New Yorkon September 20, praising its manipula-tion of lighting and dcor, only possible in a big studio. Rudolf Arnheim, thecritic most respected by intellectuals, rated the film as another big step incinemas progress away from reporting and towards a world of its own.

The words encouraged von Sternberg, since Der Blaue Engelcould hardlyhave been more remote from contemporary events. In the summer of 1929,Germany, politically and artistically, was in ferment. Two years before, theNazis had staged their first Nuremberg rally. The Weimar Republic, hot-house 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 communitydepended. Even so, Berlin clung to its position as the center of theater andcinema. With Erwin Piscator, Bertolt Brecht, and Max Reinhardt all activein theater production, the works of Kleist, Buchner, Wedekind, and Holderlinwere receiving a posthumous appreciation. Soviet director Sergei Eisensteinwas there in 1929, and he and von Sternberg met often. Only a few peoplesensed that all this would soon be swept away. One was Reinhardt. After theparties 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 partof these festival summers is that each one may be the last. After a pause, headded You can feel the taste of transitoriness on your tongue


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than he anticipated. Some candidates had good voices but thick legs. Othersspoke fine German but bad English. Most troublingly, many could not sing.Nobody had given much thought to the songs in Der Blaue Engel. This wasa drama, and it was assumed any music would be incidental, as it had beenin Thunderbolt. Had Jannings remained the center of the story, that wouldhave been true. But von Sternbergs attention dwelt increasingly on the role ofLola-Lola, who was no longer a barefoot dancer but a singer.

The only musician associated with the production was Friedrich Hol-lander, who had been employed as accompanist by an actress trying out forthe role. Though well known around Berlin as a composer of popular songsand conductor of the jazz group Weintraub-Syncopators, Hollander sharedthe 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 Sternbergconsider Lucie Mannheim for Lola-Lola. An accomplished singer in operetta,she was fluent in English; she later played the murdered spy Annabella Smithin Hitchcocks The 39 Steps(GB, 1935). Von Sternberg would have preferredBrigitte Helm, the slinky femme fataleofAlraune(DE, 1928)and LAtlantide(FR, 1928), who also embodied the robot woman in Metropolis, but she was toobusy and expensive.

Riza suggested Hollywood actress Phyllis Haver, but von Sternberg

never forgave her for once dismissing him with a sneer as Big Brain. Norcould she speak German, any more than two other candidates, LouiseBrooks and Gloria Swanson. (Brooks, no fan of Dietrich, later called her agalloping cow.) Heinrich Mann, backed by Pommer, proposed his mistress,Trude Hesterberg. Out of deference, she was the first to be interviewedandignominiously rejected. Von Sternberg called her, sarcastically, a statelyand dignified elderly German lady. (She was either thirty-two or thirty-eight, depending on which biography you believe, and admittedly a littleplump.) With the deadline pressing, Pommer insisted on a decision. John

Kahan, Pommers assistant, claims that at this point the moderately wellknown Kathe Haack was signed. Haack had high cheekbones and large,expressive eyes. Her stage training gave her a strong voice. The officialrecord does not refer to her, nor does von Sternberg, but he mentions noneof the other candidates by name either.

On September 5, six weeks before shooting began, a musical comedyby 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 bowtie, for the evening clothes and white tie of a fleeing gangster. In the jacketpocket is a raffle ticket the prize of which is a cruise to the United States


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The Making of The Blue AngelAfter various American adventures, Jean renounces Mabel and returns toTrudeto find she had inherited a fortune of her own.

Von Sternberg visited the show, which featured two performers alreadycast for Der Blaue Engel, Hans Albers as Jean and Rosa Valetti as Mabels richaunt, Mrs. Robinson. (In the film, they play Mazeppa, the strong man, andFrau Kiepert, wife of impresario Kurt Gerron.) From seats in the front row,von Sternberg had ample opportunity to appreciate both. However, accord-ing to legend, he didnt notice eitheronly Marlene Dietrich, who playedMabel. She had only one line, May I invite you all to dine with me this eve-ning? but her legs featured prominently.

As Dietrich described the moment in her autobiography, the Leonardoda 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 Stern-berg had only one idea in his head: to take me away from the stage and makea movie actress out of me, to Pygmalionize me. Riza von Sternberg saysthey went backstage, where von Sternberg told Dietrich to contact him nextday 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 sourcesthat, when von Sternberg saw Zwei Krawatten, he had already decidedon Dietrich. He had certainly seen her before, in a photographsent by

her agent, Max Pick. Among the scores of head shots from hopefuls, hersintrigued him enough to ask Kahan about her. Der popo ist nicht schlecht,hereplied, aber brauchen wir nicht auch ein Gesicht?(The ass isnt bad, butwont we also need a face?) But she made sufficient impression for him tomention her to Leni Riefenstahl as a possible Lola-Lola before any officialannouncement of her casting.

Riefenstahl, despite her claims of being a front runner for the role, wasnever seriously consideredthough not for want of trying. She had begun hertheatrical career as a dancer, turned actress in the mountaineering dramas

of Arnold Fanck, but in 1929 had not yet taken up directing and becomeHitlers favorite filmmaker. Unable to sing and speaking only a little Eng-lish, she was determined to compete for Lola-Lola. In her version of events,she gate-crashed UFAscarcely necessary, since one of her ex-lovers, HansSchneeberger, was co-cinematographer on Der Blaue Engel. Bluffing her wayinto von Sternbergs office, she charmed him by praisingThe Docks of NewYork. Supposedly flattered, he agreed to have dinner with her at the HotelBristol, where, over roast beef, he extolled Dietrich, with whom he was obvi-ously smitten. Her pride wounded, Riefenstahl agreed that Dietrich, whom

she knew slightlythey lived in the same apartment buildingwould be anexcellent Lola-Lola. However, by the time her memoirs appeared in 1987, herpart in his choice had swelled until it was she who suggested Dietrich and


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cited her supposed intimacy with von Sternberg as proof that some of herbest friends were Jews.

Screenwriter Walter Reisch also claimed that von Sternberg knew ofDietrich well before Zwei Krawatteneven that they had met when, en routeto St. Moritz and the meeting with Jannings, the von Sternbergs attendedone of Max Reinhardts post-festival parties in the Schloss Leopoldskron atSalzburg. This was circumstantially possible, since the festival took place inAugust, just before they arrived in Berlin. According to Reisch, Dietrich wasalso present that night and, with considerable forethought, had brought hermusical saw. She had been taught to play by another lover, Igo Sym; the saweven bore a plaque inscribed Igo, Vienna, 1927. To coax a tune with a violinbow, one spreads ones legs and bends the saw against one thigha perfect

pretext for displaying the players legs, as Dietrich knew when she masteredthis unlikely instrument. In Reischs story, she demonstrated her expertise atLeopoldskron by playing Toscellis Serenade, and von Sternberg was beguiled.In her own annotated copy of a biography, Dietrich specifically denies theincident; nor is it mentioned by either von Sternberg or Reinhardt in theirmemoirs or diaries. However, the events surroundingDer Blaue Engelare soriddled with improbability that one cannot rule it out.

More plausible indicators point to the influence on her casting of KarlVollmoeller. Vollmoeller liked always to have nice girls around him, said

John Kahan. He was a millionaire, because his family owned [VollmoellerTextil AG], one of the biggest factories making winter underwear for men.Gottfried Reinhardt, son of Max, penned a sneering portrait of the playboyplaywright, who

according to the acid chitchat, was so adept at arriving in the right place at theright time that, one day, as he drove his car through the side of the Branden-burg Gate leading from Berlins center to the West End for a party, he saw him-self driving through the opposite side leading from the West End to his lavishapartments 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 onthe Canale Grande . . . there were always swarms of young female careeristsdancing attendance on him, setting their hopes on his constant rendezvous andtransactions 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 youngladies did not dance for naught.

After 1919, Vollmoeller spent part of each year in Hollywood. He wasinstrumental in bringing German artists to the United States and finding

work for American performers in Europe. Emil Jannings owed his Paramountcontract partly to Vollmoeller. Ernst Lubitsch, William Dieterle, and cine-matographer/director Karl Freund were hired at his urging He also helped


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The Making of The Blue AngelHis part in Dietrichs casting for Lola-Lola is corroborated by Ruth Land-

shoff-Yorck, a long-time mistress who knew von Sternberg and had actedwith Dietrich in Vienna. Vollmoeller urged her to recommend Dietrich andpersuade 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 sud-denly 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 givenDietrich a letter of introduction, asking Pommer to give her some small partin the picture. And when Dietrich entered the door, von Sternberg jumpedup and said Erich, this is Lola! He smelt it, instinctively; this was how hismind worked.

People who quibble about how Dietrich came to UFA are unanimousabout her reception, which she described as ice-cold. Twenty-eight yearsold, and with a small daughter in tow, she was married to Rudolf Sieber, alowly stage manager for actor Harry Piel. Sieber, who had his own mistress,Tamara Tami Mutel, turned a blind eye to her numerous liaisons, sinceit was mainly through these that she had gained work in stage revues andthe occasional film. The actor Willy Forst, whom she had met shootingCafElektricin 1927, was particularly influential. In short, she embodied every

clich of the casting couch. When her name came up, Pommer is said to haveshouted, Not that whore!


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Dietrichs strong Berlin accent matched a crude manner. Riefenstahldescribed seeing her, while drinking in a caf with actress friends, demand,Why does a woman always have to have beautiful breasts? Her bosom cansag a little, cant it? At this, she lifted one out for their startled inspection. (Herbreasts weresmall and soft, a fault she corrected by having tape loops sewninto her dresses for extra support, so this is one Riefenstahl story that ringstrue.) She spoke adequate English, but her singing voice hovered between agrowl and a purr, with no upper register. An awkwardly shaped nose compli-cated photography. Someone more rational than von Sternberg would havebowed to the logic of these objections, but his stubbornness always increasedin proportion to resistance. The more Pommer argued against using her, themore 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 withKathe 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 pre-

caution 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 offcamera, in German, Go slowly, take your time. After turning her face leftand right to show both profiles, Dietrich, lighted cigarette in hand and lean-ing on the end of the upright piano, sings repeatedly, and in her approximateEnglish, the chorus ofYoure the Cream in My Coffee, the Buddy DeSylva/LewBrown/Ray Henderson song made popular by Ruth Etting. As she does so,

she continues smoking, ashing the cigarette, and arguing in German with theunseen Hollander. After a couple of repetitions, she tells him, This is sup-posed to be music, right? (Its been suggested this represents genuine angeron her part, and that Hollander didnt know the songhardly likely, givenhis accomplishment as a composer, and the simplicity of the tune, of whichshe 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 andsays, 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, andsings, also in German, Why Cry?a torch song by Peter Kreuder with thelyrics Why cry when you leave someone? / Theres someone else waiting at


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The Making of The Blue AngelNext day, the production office unanimously judged Mannheim the

obvious choice. Only von Sternberg disagreed. In the end, it was not henor even Pommer who decided, but Emil Jannings and studio owner AlfredHugenberg. Jannings welcomed the casting of an unknownand, moreover,one with a bad reputation, and no beauty besides. It gave him more spaceto shine. As for Hugenberg, he belatedly realized that the author ofProfessorUnratwas not the great Thomas Mann but his much less eminent brother.Unable to halt the production, he insisted that the film in no way repre-sent Rath as successful or emblematic of German values. Fortunately, vonSternbergs changes neutralized the novels political subtext. Rath, insteadof turning the tables on his tormentors, remained pathetic to the end, a vic-tim 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 per-functory 20,000 RM (US$4000), increasing to 25,000 RM (US$5000) ifthe film proved good enough for U.S. release. It is hard to say who wasthe more surprisedDietrich or her friends in Berlins acting community.The night she signed, she is reputed to have visited two theatrical hang-outs, the gay club Silhouette and the bar of the Eden Hotel, and bragged toeveryone, Youve always said I couldnt act. Unconvinced, her colleaguesresponded, You stillcant!

With Lola-Lola now a singer, Hollander was hired to provide her songs,with Kreuder as orchestrator, and to lead the Weintraub-Syncopators asthe Blaue Engels house band. (After the film, he exploited his celebrityby opening his own cabaret, the TingelTangel, where the Syncopatorsremained in residence for as long as Hitler allowed Jewish artists to performin Berlin.) Meanwhile, von Sternberg and his editor S. K. Sam Winston,whom he had brought with him from Hollywood, coached Dietrich in Eng-lish. The contribution of Winston to von Sternbergs career deserves to bebetter appreciated. In addition to editing both the German and English

versions ofDer Blaue Engel, as well as Morocco, The Scarlet Empress, The DevilIs 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 Para-mounts films into German. The painter George Grosz, an acquaintance ofvon Sternberg, watched the two men at work in the cutting room. Both ofthem wore berets and thick woollen scarves around their necks, as if theywere coldwhich, in December, and being used to California, they prob-ably were. He compared them to a sorcerer and his apprentice in a fable byGrimm since they communicated by means of incomprehensible whistles,

as if they were birds. Grosz even suggests, whimsically, that perhaps Win-ston was descended from a canary. He could well have been, for all we knowof this shadowy but important figure since not surprisingly he receives no


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Falling in Love Again

In my films, Marlene is not herself. Iam Marlene. She knows that betterthan anyone.

Josef von Sternberg

On October 29, the U.S. stock market crashed, and the Great Depressionbegan. By December, Nazi party membership would swell to 178,000. If vonSternberg or Dietrich noticed, neither said so. Something more importantwas taking place. One was falling in love and the other was letting him. It wasnot love in any conventional sense. Because of a disordered childhood dur-ing which he was beaten by a tyrannical father and deserted by his mother,

von Sternberg had complex emotional needs, hints of which appear in hisfilms. Mothers and fathers are brutal and remote, protective, but also venge-ful, ready even to kill a child if thwarted. Children are precociously knowingand 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 formerunsuccessful actress, didnt immediately notice, since she was enjoying herown small celebrity, being interviewed and photographed for fashion spreadsin magazines like Die Dame. Once she realized the extent of von Sternbergs

infatuation, the arguments began. In one of them, she asked why he didntdivorce her and marry his discovery. Von Sternberg replied, unexpectedly,Id as soon share a telephone booth with a cobra. And yet he couldnt stayaway. Dietrichs capacity to annihilate him was among her greatest attrac-tions. On the set, he was her master, but in the bedroom, she held him in thepalm of her hand.

In the first flush of their affair, von Sternberg and Dietrich, according toRiza, fornicated on a tiger skin in a bedroom with a mirrored ceilinga detailno 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 tastefor figures of authority. Sex between them was always going to be what theSurrealists called convulsiveas beautiful, in Lautremonts phrase, asthe chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissectingtable. Complementary freaks, they would transit the cinema landscape forthe next decade, discarding in their wake a succession of enigmatically gor-geous objects; stillborn children of a marriage solemnized at the very momentthe world came crashing down; a love affair consummated in Armageddon.

The screenwriter Frederica Sagor, a friend of Riza von Sternberg but notof her husband or Dietrich, shrewdly assessed their attraction:


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The Making of The Blue Angelit did not matter if the attraction was man or woman. She was cognizant of allthe ways of making love and enjoying sex. . . . The once-unknown bit playerbecame . . . a sex symbol, with her husky voice, her languid eyes, her calcula-tedly 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 hardto achieve her stardom. She was no accident. She had what it takes.

Nobody fully apprehended the extent of the global catastrophe that wouldfollow the Wall Street crash, but von Sternberg tried to insulate Dietrich fromits effects by urging Paramounts studio manager B. P. Schulberg to offer her along-term deal and bring her to the United States. She could, he suggested, bethe answer to Garbo whom Paramount had long been seeking.

While the filming ofThe Blue Angelwas in full swing, wrote Dietrichin 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 hismind than meeting an unknown, untried actress. When the stock marketcrashed, all German loans were cancelled, destroying Hollywoods financialarrangement with UFA. Der Blaue Engelwould be one of the last productionsreleased under the ParUfaMet agreement, in which Paramount and MGMunderwrote UFA in return for the pick of its talent. With the sound patent

conflict not yet solved, influential people in the German film business wereactively resisting the release of U.S. films, including many Paramount pro-ductions. George Bancroft, the burly gangster star of von Sternbergs filmsUnderworld, 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 attractedapproving press coverage with his habit of sluicing down a few pints of beerfor breakfast. Seizing the opportunity, a brewery hired Bancroft and Janningsfor an advertising film. Sergei Eisenstein, glad of any paying work for him-self 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 herewith my family. He was just as polite and then disappeared again. Von Stern-berg had made him come over from America to show him some scenes fromthe film. Again, this distorts the facts. Schulberg visited the set, as did Ban-croft (chiding von Sternberg for not having been at the railway station to greethim), and all attended a special screening ofUnderworldon November 2. ButSchulberg could not have viewed scenes from Der Blaue Engel, since it only

began shooting two days after he arrived. And until von Sternberg proved hecould work some magic with this unpromising unknown, there would be nocontract


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John Baxter

front office. Driving him to UFAs Potsdam studios on his first day, Pom-mer 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 ofmultiple takes, backfired when von Sternberg told him that, if this was thecase, Pommer could turn the car around and return him to his apartment.Pommer capitulated. (It was an idiotic argument. Since von Sternberg filmedchronologically, he spent the first days shooting the models of Lubeck withwhich the film opens. But von Sternberg liked to goad, and Pommer, frettingat the threat of overruns, was a perfect victim.)

In creatingDer Blaue Engel, von Sternberg ignored contemporary Ger-many. No automobiles appear, no radios or cinemas, and the lamps that

hang in almost every shot burn oil or gas. Except for Rath peeling leavesfrom a calendar that begins at 1923 and ends on 1929, it reflects the Europein which he grew up. Lola-Lola too derives from a different era. Havingnever met a woman like her, he fabricated her character from writers andartists who had, in particular Frank Wedekind. Lola-Lola derived fromLulu of Wedekinds plays Fruhlings Erwachen/Springs Awakening(1891) andDie Buchse der Pandora/Pandoras Box(1904). Like Lola-Lola, Lulu is a dancerwho so fascinates an older man that he sacrifices his reputation for her. Pastand 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 lesbiancountess. Wedekind, like von Sternberg, saw himself in his own plays, andsometimes acted in them. One line ofDie Buchse der Pandoraapplies par-ticularly to von Sternbergs relationship with Dietrich. Ive noticed, theyoung author says to Lulu, a curious aff inity between sensuality and artis-tic creation. I can either exploit you artistically, or I can love you. And heimmediately begins to make love to her.

For Dietrichs look, von Sternberg also returned to the nineteenth cen-tury. No two people agree about the source of her actual costumes. They

are sometimes attributed to the obscure Tihamer Varady, who created ward-robes for only three films in his brief career, and to the unknown Karl-LudwigHolub. Neither receives screen credit, and its evident that their work closelyfollowed von Sternbergs ideas. Seen from the front, he told Dietrich, youshould bring to mind Flicien Rops; from the rear, Toulouse-Lautrec. Bel-gian eroticist Rops enjoyed a vogue in France and Germany in the 1880s, butin 1930 it was known mainly to connoisseurs, so von Sternberg felt free toplunder. 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 hiswomen. In Der Blaue Engel, one such creature clasps Lolas leg in the posterused to advertise the show A line of grotesque cardboard cherubs also hangs


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The Making of The Blue AngelFrom one of the films first shots, of a shop girl admiring a poster of Lola-

Lola stuck to the window, then imitating her arrogant hands-on-hips pose,von Sternberg encourages us to think of Dietrich as two-dimensional; a mov-ing photograph, our private dirty picture. For earlier films, he had gluedpin-ups to walls, scribbled them with chalked messages, and filled sets withstreamers, 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 surfaceistextured, cluttered, busy. He encrusts Lolas dressing room with old posters,crowds the bar and the poky rooms backstage with screens, hanging cos-tumes, stacked chairs, nets, and mirrors. Because none of these details appearin the original set drawings by Otto Hunte, we know he added them himself.

Der Blaue Engelis von Sternbergs first film as diorama. The dead space

between camera and subject, and between subject and background, comesalive. People and objects pass before our eyes and under our noses, while,behind the supposed subject of interest, others flow by, often in the oppo-site 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 shadowybaskets and bales, outlining her against a shimmering background. Rathsentries into the cabaret are bravura exercises in technique, with Janningsducking under low lintels, groping through nets, fumbling with doors, climb-ing stairs, emerging on a balcony, and perching there, flanked by proprietor

Kiepert and a nude female torso, the other customers gawking up as he starestransfixed at Lola-Lola, isolated as on a slide between dangling props and thedcor. Rath and Lola-Lola are filmed across a dressing table crowded withcosmetic bottles or over the shoulders of their wedding guests. Though UFAsstages were no smaller than those of Paramount, von Sternberg renderedthem as cramped, almost stifling. Yet we dont yearn to escape. Rather, weshove aside the crumpled underwear, slump into the chair, and snuggle downinto 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 whereshe comes fromwhich, as with all whores, is the way we prefer it. Von Stern-berg doesnt even try our patience with the clich Whats a nice girl like youdoing 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 halfof Manns book, he frees us of the necessity to try. We see and share what hesaw in Dietrichhis own lusts, reflected back from that prostitutes face thattells us anythings possible, liebchen, if the money is right; a face all the morealluring for our knowledge that nothing to which it is party will leave a mark.

There is something both contented and demented in her narcissism, wroteRoger Ebert. Perfectly made up and exquisitely lighted, she poses for us invon Sternbergs close-ups regarding us with contemptuous passivity while


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John Baxter

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 echothan expression. One final glimpse, of Lola-Lola astride a chair, half singing,half speaking und sonst gar nichtsand nothing moreis an irrevocable cur-tain, 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 Dietrichface on her first American film, Morocco, but in Der Blaue Engel, we see italready emerging, an evolution from what von Sternberg learned with hisfirst teacher, the French director Maurice Tourneurthat light should appear

to fall from a single source. By placing a lamp close to her face and aboveit, cameraman Gunther Rittau forced the cheekbones out of her chubbinessand deepened her eyes A second lamp at a distance but at eye level spot-

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


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The Making of The Blue Angelgreasepaint down her nose to diminish its apparent size, but Dietrich spe-cifically denies this, and indeed there would have been no need. He simplyadded an additional lamp, letting the three discs of light overlap in the centerof her face, overexposing the nose and blurring it with light. To make thisappear realistic, he placed Lola next to lamps and gas flames. Hardly a shotdidnt have a lamp hanging a few inches from her head.

Der Blaue Engelstarted shooting on November 4, 1929. As well as work-ing chronologically, von Sternberg insisted on keeping all sets standing, incase 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 thosestages for other films. Dietrich claims in her memoirs that four cameras ransimultaneously, but this can hardly be true. In Hollywood, on silents, direc-

tors often shot with two cameras, side by side, to provide an identical negativefor the films European version. This was impractical on a sound film. Notonly was the camera heavily blimped to mute the sound of its motor; spacehad to be found for the recordist in his insulated booth, as large as two tele-phone kiosks. For shots without sound, von Sternberg may occasionally haveused two cameras, but for sound sequences he rolled only one, and shot theEnglish and German versions on alternate daysan added complication forthe technicians and Pommer, but a boon for the actors, who often fluffed ormispronounced their English lines.

The need for both English and German versions posed special prob-lems. Not all the actors spoke English, and, of those who did, some did sobetter than others. Several shots were deleted or altered on this account,so that the English version, as well as differing often in camera angle andaction, runs twelve minutes shorter. Further complicating things, von Stern-berg 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 bythe plot. Jannings, as a teacher of English, addresses his students in Eng-lish during lessons, but among themselves they speak German. Kiepert,

the cabaret manager, makes an announcement in English, but the cabaretperformers speak German, as does the drunken sea captain who lurchesbackstage and gets into a fight with Rath. When it comes to Lola-Lola, vonSternberg could imagine only one reason for her to speak English; its hernative 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 aGerman accent simply adds to her mystery.

When Dietrich struggled with a word, von Sternberg reassured her that, ifnecessary, 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


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John Baxter

altogether, telling her, as he often did performers on his films, Oh, just saysomething more or less the same.

Max Reinhardt visited the set. So did Eisenstein, for whom von Sternbergscreened some rushes. He took each scene about twenty times, said the Rus-sian, no slouch himself at multiple takes. Their former mutual admiration haddeteriorated with the latters fortunes. In his diaries, Eisenstein, while deny-ing his own well-documented homosexuality, claimed that von Sternberghad similar tendencies, which he exercised in Berlin during the shooting ofDer Blaue Engel. He has a predilection for well-built males, he alleged, andeven stayed at the Hercules Hotela reference to the Hotel Herkules-Hausadjacent 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 Storiesthat became the basisof the play I Am a Cameraand the musical Cabaret.) While Eisenstein scholarRonald Bergan agrees that this curious statement . . . seems to be completelyunfounded, he doesnt exclude the possibility that von Sternberg may havebeen tempted to experiment by the heady atmosphere of the last days of theWeimar Republic [which] was penetrating everybodys psyche. Nobody elseever suggested von Sternberg was bisexual, but its odd that Eisenstein shouldbe 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 GeorgeGrosz, whom von Sternberg had met already, in the studio of Rudolf Belling,where the sculptor was creating his portrait bust, later cast in bronze. Theymet once more at dinner with the dealer Alfred Flechtheim, inspiring Groszto devote part of his memoirs to Svengali Joe, as a Berlin journalist chris-tened 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 asmuch as the President of the United States. Grosz was less impressed by thefigure 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 Riefen-stahl elaborated on her involvement in the film. By the time she got around towriting 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 toomuch for Marlene. I liked her a lot. I idolised her. She was exceptional butvery jealous. One day, we had quite a row in the studio. She started it. Therewas 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 tothe studio again.


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The Making of The Blue Angelshooting ended on January 22, 1930, Sidney Kent, in charge of sales for Para-mounts east coast division, viewed a rough cut in Berlin and cabled JesseLasky, Shes sensational. Sign her up. On January 29, Dietrich received acable from Schulberg:

Have Pleasure To Invite You To Join Brilliant Roster Of Players At ParamountPublix Stop Offer You Seven Year Contract Beginning At Five Hundred DollarsPer Week Escalating To Three Thousand Five Hundred Per Week in Seventh YearCongratulations . . .

Von Sternberg urged her to accept. Five hundred dollars was paltry, butcontracts were renegotiated as a matter of course. Dietrich temporized. Sheresented the self-congratulatory tone of brilliant roster of players and theassumption of acceptance implied in Congratulations. She also had othercommitmentsto UFA, to the theater company that did Zwei Krawatten, andto her husband and child. (It was also rumored that she procrastinated inten-tionally, hoping to be cast in G. W. Pabsts Buchse der Pandora. One anecdoteplaces her in Pabsts office, ready to sign, when the call comes, offering LouiseBrooks. A nice story, but impossible; Buchse der Pandorawas shot before DerBlaue 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 andtheir little girl Heidede would remain behind in Berlin.

Though Der Blaue Engeldelighted the public, three of the people mostinvolved in the film detested it. Jannings, as expected, reacted badly to thevon Sternberg/Dietrich affair, doing all he could to rupture their rapport,throwing tantrums, and threatening to walk out (though its probably nottrue, as suggested by some, that he tried to strangle her during a fight scene.)It particularly incensed him that, when Rath, crazed with jealousy, wrecksLolas dressing room, von Sternberg lingered on the expressions of thosewho watched, ignoring Jannings completely. A similar scene in Variete(DE,1925), where he destroyed a caf on hearing of his wifes infidelity, had beenthat films high point, and the actor felt von Sternberg robbed him of a greatmoment. Thereafter,he would insist on approving the final cut of his films,with disastrous results. Alfred Hugenberg also found the film distasteful. Sus-pecting the character of Rath satirized him, he raged at Pommer for havingcreated a parody of the German bourgeoisie, though the cost of the produc-tion made it impossible to delay release. Most incensed of all, Riza von Stern-berg sailed for the United States and sued for divorce, with additional suitsagainst Dietrich for libel and alienation of affections.

Heinrich Mann, presumed to be resentful of how von Sternberg discardedTrude Hesterberg, was quoted as complaining that Miss Dietrichs naked


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John Baxter

a sad man living in the shadow of his famous, highly talented brother. He hada rare stream of contentment when his book was chosen by Mr von Stern-

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


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The Making of The Blue Angeland story changes. I never saw him after the film . . . but I heard he was not theleast upset regarding the drastic changes his book suffered in the version thatmade the film a classic.

Though Lola-Lolas songs would be one of the films most memorablefeatures, they came almost as an afterthought and were dashed off in only afew days. Skillfully, Hollander exploited the deficiencies of Dietrichs voice,basing them on her two best notes, with many words in a husky sprechgesanghalf-spoken, half-sung. This also suited primitive recording systems whichfavored a low, even tone. As he had stressed in making Thunderbolt, vonSternberg, rather than imposing an orchestral score, preferred music to arisenaturally from the action. The theatrical background made Der Blaue Engelideal 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 whenit strikes. As the statuettes pass in procession, the chimes play Ub immer Treuund Redlichkeit, an old tune praising loyalty and honesty. Its the first pieceof music heard in the film, and at the end, as the camera lingers on the deadRath, we hear it again.

Hollander endorsed von Sternbergs concept, preferring it to the tradi-tion of operetta, where all action stopped while the cast burst into song. Healso enjoyed working to a deadline. Our measure of time has changed, hewrote just after working on Der Blaue Engel. The musical collaborator in a

film should be constantly present during its shooting. . . . Collaboration atspeed means that a suggestion is sketched out on the piano, gets the directorsapproval, making sure that image and sound harmonize; the instrumenta-tion is sketched out too, then tried out with the orchestra and recorded on thesound trackall this in half a day.

A forgetful eccentric, given to mismatched socks and odd shoes, Hol-lander worked best while sitting on the lavatory, with music paper pinned tothe 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 MeNaughty Lolawould be enough to beguile the vulnerable Rath. Once hisview of her softened, however, he demanded something more tender. Chal-lenged to write a love song for a woman who didnt believe in love, Hollanderretired to the toilet and emerged with a rueful waltz to which Liebmannadded lyrics that celebrate the satisfactions of uncomplicated lust.

Ich bin von Kopf bis FuAuf Liebe eingestellt, Denn das ist meine Welt.

Und sonst gar nichts.Das ist, was soll ich machen,Meine Natur


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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 doMy nature.I can only have sex.Otherwise, theres nothing.

As she sings von Kopf bis Fu,Lola-Lola makes an all-encompassing gesturewith her hand that takes in her whole body, frankly offering it to anyone con-

fident or rich enough to claim it. Her frankness leaches all sentiment from thesong. Like another great ballad of prostitution, Cole Porters Love for Sale,itleaves no room for romance. Unfortunately, the English lyrics give a very dif-ferent impression. Hurriedly composed by Sammy Lerner, a Romanian bestknown for the theme to the cartoon series Popeye, The Sailor Man, they neutral-ize Liebmanns Dionysian statement. As the first song Rath hears from Lola-Lola, they should implicitly warn him and the rest of us what to expect fromher. In English, however, they become apologetic:

Falling in love againNever 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 shackledto 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 intoone another; as noted, they even lived in the same apartment building. Inevi-tably, they became competitors for the limelight, with Dietrich usually win-ning. In 1928, at the Reiman Arts School Ball, Dietrich, who arrived arrogantlysmoking a cigarette in a trendy little pipe that held it vertical, let herself besteered by photographer Alfred Eisenstadt next to Anna May Wong, the lovelyCalifornia-born Chinese actress whom von Sternberg would direct in ShanghaiExpress, and who had become a cult figure in Berlin after having been importedat the insistence of Karl Vollmoeller. Then he cajoled Riefenstahl into join-

ing them. Eisenstadts two photographs of the trio, arms around one anotherin false bonhomie, are the only evidence of what is believed to be, despiteclaims by Riefenstahl the last meeting between her and Dietrich Once Riefen-


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The Making of The Blue AngelEven though she was booked to sail on the liner Brementhe next day,

Dietrich had no intention of missing the premiere ofDerBlaue Engel. PeterKreuder in his memoirs claims that von Sternberg, before he left, hired aclaqueof fifty people to interrupt the premiere with applause. In addition,Kreuder says, he ordered fifteen seconds of blank film spliced in followingFalling in Love Again,inviting an ovation without risk of interrupting thefilm. Kreuder is notoriously unreliable and repudiated almost entirely byDietrich. However, the opera claquewas a Berlin institution, rented out toprovide 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 whichmembers rushed the stage at the end of an aria and threw bouquets, distract-ing the conductor, and allowing time for a spontaneous ovation.

Such was the call for seats on the first day of screening that the film playedfour times, the stars making personal appearances at the afternoon press showand the gala evening premiere. While waiting to go on, they remained back-stage in the Green Room. Kreuder arrived halfway through the press show,to be instantly attacked by Jannings about the blank film. When he refused toremove it, Jannings, he said, knocked him down.

But no amount of violence could arrest Dietrichs progress. Addressingthe audience that night in her white evening gown and fur wrap, she lookedevery inch a star. I dont leave Berlin lightly, she told them. First, because

Berlin is my home. Second, because Berlin is . . . Berlin. Though I shouldntsay it, I am a little afraid of Hollywood. She had no reason to fear the reactionthat night. It was such a powerful stark tragedy, one critic wrote, that sev-eral seconds elapsed before the audience broke into enthusiastic applause.As for her Hollywood debut, she revealed in her speech that it would be in thefilm version ofAmy Jolly, Die Frau au Marrakesch, an obscure autobiographicalnovel by Benno Vigny, one-time Foreign Legionnairethe film that wouldbecome 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 thestage door. It had to push through the mobs that gathered around the cine-mathough it strains credulity to believe, as Kreuder claims, that he played anupright piano on the back of the truck while Dietrich and Willy Forst dancedthe Charleston and tossed champagne glasses to the crowd. Forst and theactor Francis Lederer did accompany her on the train to Bremerhaven, alongwith 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


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John Baxter

Before doing so, she visited the German embassy in Paris to renew herpassport. The ambassador, Count von Welczeck, handed her a personalletter from a high-ranking Nazi. She later told the FBI it was from Joachimvon Ribbentrop, Hitlers former roving representative and ambassador toGreat Britain. A more likely candidate, however, is Josef Goebbels, Reich-minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Having heard of vonSternbergs plans to leave Hollywood and make films in Europe with her,the German government urged Dietrich to return and become the reign-ing queen of the German film industry. (As a Jew, von Sternberg was notincluded in the invitation.) Though Der Blaue Engelwas banned for publicscreening because of its Jewish connections, Hitler admired it and owneda private copy that he would screen at the slightest excuse. French dip-

lomats complained of being forced to sit through four hours of Dietrich,includingDer Blaue Engel, during which they were forbidden to speak oreven smoke.

The letter shook Dietrich, as she later explained to the FBI. Her reac-tion was described by an interviewing officer in a report to director J. EdgarHoover, dated July 12, 1942:

In an interview with Dietrich in the early part of 1941 . . . she stated that in1936 she was in Paris, at which time von Ribbentrop attempted to get her toreturn 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 withherself for two hours whether she should call Hitler directly, telling him thatshe 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 normalhuman being mentally, and described his evident feeling for her as he hasa 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 Franceon September 20, shedeclined, in the words of one report, to comment on her reported refusalto return to Germany and to confine her motion picture work to its stu-dios. The report continued, It is regarded as significant . . . that MissDietrich was returning on a French ship, after having come to Europe ona German liner, and that she did not ever cross the frontier into Germanyduring her three months vacation abroad. Once back in California, sheapplied for U.S. citizenship.

And what if she had followed her impulse, made the phone call, and beenwelcomed into the presence of the Fuhrer? Could she have gone through withher plan to murder him, knowing it would lead to her certain death? How


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The Making of The Blue AngelJohn Baxters books on the cinema include biographies of Federico Fellini, Luis Buuel,Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Ken Russell, andRobert De Niro, monographs on John Ford, King Vidor, and Josef von Sternberg, andvarious genre studies, includingThe Hollywood Exiles, The Gangster Film, TheAustralian Cinema, Science Fiction in the Cinema, Hollywood in the Thir-ties, andHollywood in the Sixties. He lives in Paris.


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