Free Marlene by Marlene Dietrich Page B

end. There were no good-bye parties as is customary today. One otherwise fine evening the curtain came down, and we simply walked out of the theater for the last time. I had to go back to the “small” roles.
    My performance in the revue had not brought me much recognition from the strict teachers of the Max Reinhardt Drama School. Again I began racing against the clock, riding the buses and streetcars, performing in countless productions with only a few lines to say, just as before.
    Yet one day my luck changed. I was engaged for Georg Kaiser’s Zwei Krawatten ( Bow Ties ). Hans Albers was to play the leading role, and Mischa Spoliansky was responsible for the music—two names that promised success. I played an American woman and had only one line: “May I invite you all to dine with me this evening?” This was the play in which Josef von Sternberg saw me when I repeated my line for the umpteenth time. The “Leonardo da Vinci of the camera” scrutinized the program with his eagle eye, found my name, stood up, and left the theater.
    It’s not true that he ran backstage as soon as the performance was over to meet me and sign me up for The Blue Angel right then and there. It is true, however, that from that moment on, von Sternberg had only one idea in his head: to take me away from the stage and to make a movie actress out of me, to “Pygmalionize” me.
    One step followed the other, despite my husband’s apprehensions. He allowed me to go for the screen test only after he had assured himself that von Sternberg’s proposal was serious. My meeting with von Sternberg has prompted many false assumptions on the part of my “biographers.” On the day after the performance of Bow Ties, von Sternberg arranged a meeting for me with the Ufa executives. This reception was ice cold. They did not like me, had no confidence in me. Von Sternberg flew into a rage, shouting: “If that’s how things are, I’ll go back to the United States!”
    But, as we know, he finally got his way.
    I had not been impressed by my first meeting with von Sternberg. When you’re young and stupid (which is often the case), you have no aptitude for appreciating extraordinary human beings. I pointed out to him that I was not photogenic (my few movie roles had convinced me of that) and suggested he look for somebody else.
    Despite all this, he arranged to give me a screen test on the same day he tested the most likely prospect for the job, Lucie Mannheim. She was well known and had set her heart on getting the part, even though it didn’t suit her at all. She had a rather broad behind. In addition to her acting talents, she had a gift for winning over Emil Jannings, who apparently had a weakness for broad behinds. Despite my baby fat, I’ve never had a prepossessing posterior. I was well-cushioned all over except for this particular part of my anatomy. Nevertheless, my rear seemed pretty round to me. But probably not enough so for Emil Jannings.
    To show his good will, von Sternberg’s screen test of Jannings’s protégée included shots of her most prominent feature. Finally, it was my turn.
    I wasn’t so upset at first because I didn’t care whether I got the part or not. But by the time I squeezed into a tight, sequin-studded gown and had my hair curled by a hairdresser with a curling iron, with steam billowing up to the ceiling, I felt utterly defenseless and full of despair.
    And there he was, the stranger, the man whom I would be seeing mostly behind the camera, the inimitable, unforgettable Josef von Sternberg himself. Someone was sitting at the piano. I was asked to climb on top of the piano, roll down one of my stockings to the ankle and sing a song, the notes of which I was supposed to have with me but had failed to bring. Since I thought I didn’t have a real chance for the role, why should I carry the music around with me? Then why did I come?