Biographies of Paramount Players and Directors (1936)

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ittELSai DIETRICH ** (Paramount Player) Future students of Hollywood, looking bac.< ever the years, might regard Marlene Dietrich's life as having spanned a transition between two periods in a rapidly changing world. She was born among the last remnants of feudalism. Her early years were filled with the spectacle of marching soldiers and pervaded with an ancient tradition of military aristocracy. Then a few years 1^-ter all of this was swept away, all except the clcuds of glory that trailed her frcm the early days, and she found herself in the modern world of traffic signals and neon lights. Miss Dietrich was born in historic 'Weimar, in the Duchy of SaxeWeimar, where her father, Edouard von Losch, was a Prussian first lieutenant in the patrician Regiment of Grenadiers. The slow tempo cf this life, conditioned by a vast military machine of which her family was a part, suddenly changed with the roll of drums which mar:ed the opening of the World War. One day shortly tfter, news c une th-'.t her father had bean 'Killed on the Russian front. Then her mother took her to Berlin. But the event! set in motion by the war nad not yet run out, and revolution overtook Berlin. Th*t sent the bewildered family back to Weimar, where Miss Dietrich was placed in a boarding school. After the revolution was over and calm had been restored, the girl returned to Berlin in 1921. By this time, following a marked aptitude, she decided to concentrate on a study of music. She enrolled as a violin student at the Hoschschule fuer Musik, where s.ie was to be a pupil of the well <nown Fro^essor Flesch. Her nascent career as a violinist, however, was brought to a sudden end when she suffered an injury to the left wrist which made fingering difficult. Disappointed in this, she decided upon t e stage as an outlet for the creative urge which motivated her during that fornutive period..