Marlene Dietrich : life and legend / Steven Bach

This massive, admiring biography refutes the notion that Marlene Dietrich's femme fatale image was wholly the invention of director Josef von Sternberg. Bach, a film producer and author of Final Cut, who studied with von Sternberg, portrays the latter as a megalomaniac whose amorous frustrations with the star he had created drove him to maintain that she was a puppet who danced to his strings. Bach rejects the standard comparisons with Garbo as he plumbs Dietrich's special blend of erotic power, irony, and humor and limns a strong-willed woman whose innumerable sexual affairs satisfied a simple need for companionship. He divulges that Dietrich's sister Elisabeth, whose existence the actress denied, belonged, with Elisabeth's husband, to a group that entertained Nazis at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Strong on film and stage criticism but less intimately revealing than Donald Spoto's Blue Angel, this engrossing biography is especially good on Dietrich's early career, her valiant anti-Nazi efforts and her phoenixlike rebirth as a troubadour-actress. More than 100 photos, a filmography and a discography will also please fans.