"Songs, sequins, sex, and sympathy."

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	• Marlene Dietrich Maria Riva Ballantine Books, 1994 - 800 pages average customer review:based on 31 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Marlene Deitrich

WOW! 800 pages.....I have only begun to dig into this book.....
but it is worth it if you love bios and Marlene......

One of the Best Bios I've Read

There are great autobiographies or memoirs written by friends of celebrities that consist of personal information and small tidbits that greatly interest readers. Then there are biographies, often more informational and objective than autobiographies. This book is composed of both which makes it one of the best books about a celebrity around.

Maria Riva is the daughter of legend Marlene Dietrich, an androgynous star of the 1930s, 40s, 50s, and 60s. One would believe that a daughter would be the most biased person to write a biography but this is not the case in this book. Riva has moments where she shares personal information but she always cites when she does so as to not confuse readers from fact and observation. She has included diary entries, letters from lovers, and a bevy of other sources including other acquaintances of Dietrich in the book. She reveals things that her mother made up for the press and what her mother really thought about things like films, other stars, and sex.

Riva always remains objective and portrays her mother respectably even in embarrassing or hateful situations because she is aware of the multitude of fans of Dietrich. She does not praise simply to praise though; she seems to understand the adoration of the facade Marlene Dietrich showed the world. Riva talks about how she had to trick her mother into being treated for a cancer she swore she didn't have. She writes about her mother forcing her to get fitted for a diaphragm before she traveled overseas to entertain the troops during the second World War. Even when she speaks of when Dietrich told Riva's sons that their mother had stolen them from her, she does not try to persuade readers to hate her mother.

This is an incredible book. Enjoy this jewel of writing.

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Extremely interesting and candid

Not a fluff piece by any means, and very well told story. This is no "Mommy Dearest" The complexities-- the ups and downs, the good and bad both-- of a compelling and original 20th century star.

Entertaining, but Brace Yourself!

Maria Riva writes this "insider" book in exquisite detail and detachment. She definitely loves her mother and has forgiveness skills beyond a saint. She is her mother's toy, her audience, her confidant and her one and only friend. Marlene is a narcissistic arrogant mother who had a strong will to succeed and used everyone around her to create the "Marlene Diethrich" goddess myth.

Throughout the book I see a sad but smart only child; who looks for love in her mother, as well as Marlene's many lovers, and her father's mistress. She desperately wants a normal life, but accepts what she has. To write in this great detail Marlene's diaries were used, and I had the feeling throughout the book that Maria must have kept a daily record of events and feelings. It mercilessly exposes Dietrich who only feels alive when she is in "Love" and many affairs carried on at the same time. Marlene loves women and men and hides very little from her daughter. She dominates, and even puts pictures aside and marks them "for Maria's book". Marlene had typical German personality, and my bet is she modeled mostly after her father, a Prussian officer. He was military, and must have bequeathed her with his high intelligence, strong will, discipline and eye for drama.

The book is long, 790 pages, full of dialogue and inside stories. The first half is Maria's childhood and the second half is when Marlene becomes the child to Maria. She needs constant attention, management of health problems, her career, and her life in general.

After Riva is raped by one of her mother's female lovers, the book begins to feel like a horror story, including the nanny Marlene hired, a lesbian who tries to seduce Riva. Marlene hopes to turn her daughter into a lesbian herself. Riva conjectures that her mother would therefore always have her and never have to compete with men - maybe Diethrich herself could love Maria that way as an adult. As you see, it almost becomes a Stephen King Novel. Diethrich's personality sounds so far off the Bell Curve but the way it is described and details around all the other drama throughout the book - it sounds possible to me.

Riva is overwhelmed and at one point turns into an alcoholic, but conquers this. She goes on to get married, have children and a fairly normal life. She manages and helps her mother until her mother dies. For all the craziness there is a love of some sort between the two women. It is one that accepts each other despite not quite living up to the others expectations.

They say most geniuses are also crazy. This book proves that point. Marlene was a genius as far as promoting her image, however, like the Wizard of Oz - mostly smoke and mirrors (and of course lighting!)

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"Songs, sequins, sex, and sympathy."

In this astonishingly honest biography of Marlene Dietrich from birth to age 73, her daughter Maria Riva reveals the truth about her mother as it contrasts with the sometimes embellished stories of the Dietrich legend. She does this with love, a sense of understanding of the needs of this complex woman, and with a surprising humor which is never deprecating. The resulting biography shows Dietrich in an almost heroic light--but not for the actions which have become part of her show-biz mystique. Her real life and her real commitments, many of which are far less celebrated, often prove to be more remarkable than the stories promulgated by the press.

Dietrich began keeping diaries and journals at age ten, and her daughter uses these and her personal knowledge to show Dietrich's life in three phases. The first part includes her family background, childhood, acting studies, early career, and decision to pursue a film career in Hollywood, and also incorporates her marriage to Rudolf Sieber (which lasted fifty years) and the birth of her daughter. In Part II, her decision to become an American citizen, help actively with the American war effort, and work tirelessly for the USO in America, Europe, and Africa shows a commitment to helping others that belies her cold, sexy image. In Part III, her postwar career in Las Vegas and on tour, despite her undiagnosed health problems, reveal her dedication to remaining a "goddess" on stage and in the public imagination.

Throughout the biography, Riva's honesty, including her awareness of her mother's faults, is always tempered by her respect for Dietrich's integrity and her commitment to entertaining--Dietrich, she says, was "the embodiment of other people's dreams." She details Dietrich's long love affairs with director Josef von Sternberg, with whom she made seven films, with French actor Jean Gabin during the war, and with Yul Brynner in the 1950s, along with shorter relationships with many other show business personalities, generals during the war, and composers and directors.

Though Kenneth Tynan once referred to the fact that Dietrich oozed "sex without gender," Riva pays little attention to the interest Dietrich may have had in other women, and to Dietrich's boast that she had slept with three members of the Kennedy clan. Her "inside look" at Dietrich as she grows older and keeps performing despite serious circulatory and cardiac problems, and her ability to share the "secrets" Dietrich used to enhance her image and hide her flaws, make Dietrich-the-Legend come to life. Written in an informal, straightforward style, Riva continues the legend despite her revelations--she just revises it a bit and makes it more realistic. n Mary Whipple

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

"Gossipy...Elabroately detailed...Greatly entertaining...Riva leaves no sequin unturned."
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Marlene Deitrich was considered one of the most glamorous stars of her day. A determined perfectionist with an incredible ego, her beauty, her style, her sense of the outrageous, made her a star. In this candid, illuminating, and detailed biography full of photographs, her only daughter Maria Riva, tells the incredible, fascinating, story of the star's life and career, loves and hates, hits and misses, as only a daughter can.

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