A Woman at War: Marlene Dietrich Remembered (review)

The word "magic" is not typically used when describing a person, yet it consistently appears in the descriptions of those who knew and respected Marlene Dietrich. Despite her "magic," however, Dietrich was by many accounts a "manipulator of image" (xi). Thus, J. David Riva's title A Woman at War reveals more about Dietrich's war between image and reality than just her experiences during World War II. Throughout this book, Dietrich emerges as a complicated figure, but her heroic war service ultimately transcends the larger-than-life image of the movie star, singer, and entertainer that many knew.

Riva, the grandson of Dietrich, conducted and edited interviews from a wide array of people associated with the star and who she touched in sometimes intense, yet also very subtle ways. The interviews, presented in a loose chronology, range from Hollywood stars such as Rosemary Clooney, Burt Bacharach, and Cherto Dietrich's family members including her only child Maria Riva and to American and German army personnel during Second World War. Not only do these interviewees shed great light on Dietrich's life and experiences before, during, and after the war, but they also provide fascinating stories of their own. Through the interviews, we learn about an American interrogator of German prisoners of war prior to the Nuremberg Trials, a half Christian-half Jewish jazz musician barely rescued from being sent to Auschwitz, and Dietrich's nephew who served as an ardent member of the Hitler Youth.

The focal point of the book, however, lies with each person's relationship and interactions with Dietrich in order to create a more complete picture of her. Dietrich rose to fame through the theater and then film in Berlin in the 1920s, when the city epitomized a liberal and culturally diverse harbor, allowing Dietrich to live how she wanted to without regard to how others perceived her. But as the Nazis rose to power in the 1930s, Dietrich fled the country for Hollywood, refusing to be a part of the new German culture. She gained international stardom in Hollywood, soon becoming an American icon despite her German heritage. Dietrich, who obtained American citizenship in 1939, maintained a racy personal life and was also very political, yet according to producer A. C. Lyles who worked with Dietrich at Paramount Pictures, "she just had the ability to make it all look light" (31).

Dietrich's politics led her to concentrate on the American war effort by selling war bonds, secretly working for the Office of Strategic Services creating radio propaganda to demoralize the Germans, and visiting home front and overseas camps with the United Service Organizations to perform for the American troops. She espoused a deep hatred for Hitler and the Nazis and felt it was her personal moral duty to fight Hitler. Her daughter, Maria Riva, explained how "duty" was "the guiding force in [her] mother's life" (122), which is how she also came to spend ten months on the front lines with the American troops. American war correspondent and press officer Col. Barney Oldfield describes Dietrich as "not only a great actor but a great endurer . . ." who proved "remarkably adjustable to whatever seemed to be the right thing to do. Part of Dietrich's magic was that she was improbable . . . . She would find herself fitting into special niches that were so unexpected" (68). Col. Oldfield lauded her ability to give young soldiers their personalities and individualism back after the war reduced them to a uniform and statistic. These interactions led Dietrich to later declare: "after having performed for soldiers at the front, no other audience could ever measure up to this experience" (70).

Dietrich never got over what she saw and experienced during World War II, but she was able to reinvent her career once again in the postwar era. She performed in Vegas and then toured the world, even returning to Germany despite the highly emotional reactions from some Germans who still considered her...