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Vi^
/
The Real
DIETRICH
Unmasked
By Ida Zeitlin
*«^^HE'S gay" — "she's sad" — "she's mysterious" — "she's ^S frank" — "she's moody" — "she's equable" — "she's easy "^ to get along with" — "she's hard to talk to" — "she's this and that" — and a dozen contradictory things at once.
Thus runs the legend of Marlene Dietrich. Ask ten people about her and you'll get ten different reactions. I saw her once in a New York hotel, enroute from Europe to Hollywood. She was bubbling with spirits, flashing with fun, her high humor spilling over into impishness. I saw her again on the set, when von Sternberg was rehearsing the carnival scene for The Devil Is a Woman. Her white throat and shoulders rose from the soft folds of a black lace gown. Her bronze head was draped in a trailing black mantilla. Her face was so luminous that a gasp of spontaneous tribute rose from the crowd. She wasn't acting — she had just arrived to have her costume approved. But standing there, she was the symbol of all feminine loveliness.
I saw her eating in the Paramount cafe — with an apparently excellent appetite, even as you and I — talking earnestly meanwhile to a writer. Here was the easy, friendly atmosphere of any luncheon table. On another occasion, I saw her in her dressing-room. There was no trace of the merriment of the New York hotel. No trace of moodiness either. She was quiet, serene, willing enough to answer questions, though by no stretch of the imagination, garrulous. There was a job to be done and she did her share.
The last time, I saw her — ^but that's another story. Before that time came, I'd developed what I can only hope was a
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her!
pardonable curiosity about her. She seemed to glow and change like a jewel. Yet at the heart of every jewel of worth lies something unchangeable, giving it richness and depth. I felt that some such unchanging core must underlie her surface complexity, and for the life of me I couldn't help wondering what it was. It was something baffling.
O
NE fact finally pierced my consciousness. However di
always one recurrent unanimous refrain. "Dietrich's the most generous person in Hollywood." [Continued on page 66]
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