Blue Angel

by Donald Spoto

Book Overview

Marlene Dietrich's story spans Germany's cabarets, Hollywood's silver screen and beyond.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385425538
• ISBN13: 9780385425537
• Release Date: July 1992
• Publisher: Doubleday Books
• Length: 335 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Gives the Devil Her Due

According to his acknowledgments, Donald Spoto finished this book in January 1991. Five months later, his subject, Marlene Dietrich, died. This leaves the book with an unfinished goal, the biography of a great celebrity from birth to death. Dietrich was 90 when she died, and by that time an alcoholic recluse, but the circumstances of her passing would have brought this book the closure it lacks. Moreover, Spoto did not personally interview the star, so he had to rely on extensive research into published and unpublished sources, as well as interviews with those who knew La Dietrich, yet the overall result is a well-written, compact survey of her artistic career, with enough description of her personal triumphs and tragedies to satisfy most fans' interest. Dietrich's life and career are the stuff that biographers' dreams are made of; she started life as a well-brought up middle-class German girl born at the turn of the century; became a stage performer in the decadent Berlin of the Weimar Republic's 1920s; made the transition into silent and then sound films; had the good fortune to be the Trilby to the Svengali of genius cinematographer/director, Josef von Sternberg; found success as Hollywood's highest paid star of the 1930s, with a carefully crafted beauty that overrode concerns about her somewhat limited--but nonetheless memorably expressive-- singing and acting talents; became an icon of USO entertainers on the front lines of World War II, and let her native Germany know just what she thought of it; had a vast array of male and female lovers, including many of Hollywood's leading players; gained fame for her sense of style, both in glamorous female garments and striking male ensembles; resurrected her career in middle and old age by appearing as an ageless glamour girl in countless performances of a one-woman show she gave around the world; and then, unable to let the world see how age was robbing her of her vaunted beauty, chose to live out her life in a Paris apartment, slowly drinking herself to death. Despite being something of an enigma, her personality comes across quite vividly in this biography, and Spoto should be commended for presenting both her admirable qualities--relentless professionalism, maternal affection for those she loved, remarkable courage, and ability to craft an unforgettable artistic persona--and her less admirable ones--sexual profligacy, erratic temperament, astonishing egotism, and so on. This is not a work of hagiography, and the reader comes away both admiring Marlene Dietrich and despising her. Although Spoto's book covers many of Dietrich's numerous affairs, it is now clear that there were many others he overlooked (including Burt Lancaster and Barbara Stanwyck). Perhaps some later writer has covered these; I'm looking forward to reading Maria Riva's biography of her mother, which is about three times as long as Spoto's volume. An advantage of reading the book in 2010 is that one can easily see many of the

Yeah, well

An enjoyable and informative read, though at times presented too romantically and subjectively. A fine job of portraying Dietrich from many angles, fleshing her out (though the author is irritatingly fond of the word "plump")... Spoto seems to approach his subject with celestial reverence, as though trying to conceal his own crush behind historical voyeurism (the discussion of debauched 1920s Berlin is particularly gratifying). Sometimes he speculates too much on possible motivations instead of simply offering facts, but he also makes good use of others' reminiscences of Dietrich to back up some of his insightful conjectures. Enjoyable but not riveting.