When Dietrich Met Hemingway: Archival Documents Correct the Biographical Record

Trusting Marlene Dietrich’s 1955 account of her first meeting with Ernest Hemingway, biographers have repeated her story of meeting the author at a dinner party on the Île de France in 1934. The Letters of Ernest Hemingway Volume 5 1932–1934 (2020) corrects the record, noting Hemingway returned from his African safari on the Paris, not the Ile de France. Citing archival evidence, General Editor Sandra Spanier and graduate research assistant Katie Warczak revise the record further. Contemporary primary sources suggest that rather than meeting on the Ile de France in 1934, Dietrich and Hemingway met aboard the Normandie in 1938.