Top Secret (1954)

In 1933, the blonde child was given a small role with Marlene in “Catherine the Great.” lem of the ugly duckling but without Hans Christian Andersen’s happy ending in sight. It seemed Maria would never grow up to become a beautiful swan. Worst of all, there was that wide abyss between the successful, glittering mother and the shapeless dumpling of a daughter. It was a gulf that appeared impossible to bridge. MARLENE PARADES HER BABY At a time when movie stars tried to hide their children, end even deny their existence, because they felt kids and glamor didn’t mix, Marlene Dietrich paraded her own motherhood and showed off her little daughter, then nick-named "Heidede.” She started a fad that made parenthood both proper and popular among the stars of Hollywood. However, at the time, some people thought that her doting interest in her little ’'Heidede” was just a cruel publicity stunt, part of her own grandiose buildup, like the donning of slacks and wearing them in public. From the time she first learned to speak sentences for the fan magazines, Maria went out of her way to back up such impressions of her mother’s heartlessness. Even in 1944, in the bare dressing room of a Broadway theater where she was interviewed by a sympathetic newsman, Maria described her chidhood days in biting words. ”1 remember how I used to cry at night,” she said. "I remember a whiff of perfume, and my mother in furs, standing there so beautiful. I wanted her to stand there, shimmering, and to dress only for me. I was so jealous when she went out! I knew that she was dressing up for someone else, and that she wanted to see someone else rather than me.” But while Maria thought she had suffered because her mother had been callously indifferent to her, in fact the exact opposite was true. It was really Marlene who had suffered. But Marlene had concealed her grief and tears as she bore the greatest secret of her private life, concealing it from her adoring public, putting up a front of gaiclj aild Jtldppiiicsa. Behind that make-believe mask, Marlene Dietrich was heartbroken. She had won the love of millions, but she had only the hatred of her own daughter. She was a hit as an actress, and the rage of the world as a woman, but she was a flop as a mother. The relationship between Marlene and her daughter had the undetones of a Greek tragedy. It threatened to blow up in agloomy drama like the very Blue Angel that made the Dietrich world-famous. Marlene’s apprehension grew as her only child developed from a lovely, curly-headed, blonde little girl into an egotistical brat who tyrannized the whole household and dorve her own mother out of the house. And Maria blamed others. She blamed the servants and governesses who surrounded her. She tormented her little playmates who offered friendship but received, in return, spite. But especially she blamed her mother. “I had governesses and maids and all that.” she said, as she thought back on those horrible days of utter loneliness. “But I disliked them!” “I HAD NO PRIENDS” ”1 had no friends at all,” she cam plained. " 1 never mixed much. My only friend in all my childhood was Brian Aherne. He gave me much happiness. W e would discuss Shakespeare. "The policemen were my only other friends. They used to send me letters and jars of peanut butter when l went to school in Switzerland . . . I always liked to be alone. I read all the time — Shakespeare, and books on medicine and psychiatry — Cushings book \on brain surgery, books on psychoanalysis, books about the mind. "When l was a child l used to brood about suicide, cancer and tuberculosis. 1 used to wonder why people committed suicide. Medicine to me is the Mecca. If my own schooling had not been so mixed up 1 would have gone into medicine." These were the desolate words of a lost, friendless soul. It was a long, arduous road these two very attractive women had to travel, first to find themselves and then to find each other. But at the end of that tortuous road, the dark drama that threatened to end in tragedy was resolved by a sudden and unexpected switch of the plot. It became a tender story of affection in which two brilliant actresses are now playing their real-life roles with deep confidence in their love for each other. The slim, chic, talented young woman televiewers now know as Maria Riva, star of TV’s most gripping melodrams, was born Heidemaria Sieber in Berlin, almost thirty years ago. Her father was Rudolf Sieber, a minor theatrical producer who had to struggle hard for recognition and success. Her mother was a budding young actress called Maria Magdalene Dietrich von Losch. She used the name “Marlene Dietrich” on the stage during appearances which were as rare as they were insignificant. There was little money in the Sieber (Continued on Page 42) Marlene and her little Maria, or “Heidede", viewing a polo match in Santa Monica in 1943. It was around this time that the young girl began complaining to reporters about her mother. 13