Author(s): Maria Riva

Entertainment

The 25th anniversary edition of the wildly entertaining and intimate biography of the glamorous and mysterious Marlene Dietrich, written by her daughter. Wildly entertaining, Maria Riva reveals the rich life of her mother in vivid detail. Opening with Dietrich's childhood in Berlin, we meet an energetic, disciplined, and ambitious young actress whose own mother equated the stage with a world of vagabonds and thieves. Dietrich would quickly rise to stardom on the Berlin stage in the 1920's with her sharp wit and bisexual sexuality, while wearing the top hat and tails that revolutionized our concept of beauty and femininity. Dietrich comes alive in these pages in all of her incarnations: as muse, artistic collaborator, bonafide movie star, box-office poison, lover, wife, and mother. She would stand up to the Nazis and galvanize American troops, eventually earning the Congressional Medal of Freedom. There were her artistic relationships with Josef von Sternberg (The Blue Angel, Morocco, Shanghai Express), Colette, Erich Maria Remarque, Noel Coward and Cole Porter, and her heady romances. In her final years, she would make herself visibly invisible, devoting herself to the immortality of her legend.