Marlene Dietrich S Abc S

A collection of the icon’s surprising and heartfelt thoughts on topics A-to-Z, plus recipes and photos—a wonderfully addictive scrapbook for fans. From the wonderfully varied and witty mind of Marlene Dietrich comes an alphabetized collection of her most zany, honest, and heartfelt thoughts. Offering her take on a range of ideas, people, and items, Marlene Dietrich’s ABC is an unprecedented glimpse into one of history’s brightest and most enigmatic stars. Nothing is too small or grand for Dietrich’s unique eye. From her entry for hardware store—“I’d rather go to a hardware store than to the opera”—to her entry for egocentric—“If he is a creative artist, forgive him”—she transforms both the mundane and the mysterious into snapshots of her own spirit. Complete with photos from her vast career, Marlene Dietrich’s ABC is an unexpected and addicting treat.

From the wonderfully varied and witty mind of Marlene Dietrich comes an alphabetized collection of her most zany, honest, and heartfelt thoughts. Offering her take on a range of ideas, people, and items, Marlene Dietrich's ABC is an unprecedented glimpse into one of history's brightest and most enigmatic stars. Nothing is too small or grand for Dietrich's unique eye. From her entry for hardware store - "I'd rather go to a hardware store than to the opera" - to her entry for egocentric - "If he is a creative artist, forgive him" - she transforms both the mundane and the mysterious into snapshots of her own spirit. Complete with photos from her vast career, Marlene Dietrich's ABC is an unexpected and addicting treat. In this edition Marlene offers her unique blend of wit, a sometimes mordant humor, sensitivity and acute observations of the world as she has known and, to some extent, shaped it. By blending the absolutely practical with her whimsical, poetic and sometimes moving observations, Dietrich creates in yet another field that special magic with which she has held the world enthralled for decades.

From the stages of Berlin to anti-Nazi efforts and silver-screen stardom, Steven Bach reveals the fascinating woman behind the myth surrounding Marlene Dietrich in a biography that will stand as the ultimate authority on a singular star. Based on six years of research and hundreds of interviews—including conversations with Dietrich—this is the life story of one of the century’s greatest movie actresses and performers, an icon who embodied glamour and sophistication for audiences around the globe.

Few movie stars have meant as many things to as many different audiences as the iconic Marlene Dietrich. The actress-chanteuse had a career of some seventy years: one that included not only classical Hollywood cinema and the concert hall but also silent film in Weimar Germany, theater, musical comedy, vaudeville, army camp shows, radio, recordings, television, and even the circus. Having renounced and left Nazi Germany, assumed American citizenship, and entertained American troops, Dietrich has long been a flashpoint in Germany’s struggles over its cultural heritage. She has also figured prominently in European and American film scholarship, in studies ranging from analyses of the directors with whom she worked to theories about the ideological and psychic functions of film. Dietrich Icon, which includes essays by established and emerging film scholars, is a unique examination of the many meanings of Dietrich. Some of the essays in this collection revisit such familiar topics as Germany’s complex relationship with Dietrich, her ambiguous sexuality, her place in the lesbian archive, her star status, and her legendary legs, but with fresh critical perspective and an emphasis on historical background. Other essays establish new avenues for understanding Dietrich’s persona. Among these are a reading of Marlene Dietrich’s ABC—an eclectic autobiographical compendium containing Dietrich’s thoughts on such diverse subjects as “steak,” “Sternberg (Joseph von),” “Stravinsky,” and “stupidity”—and an argument that Dietrich manipulated her voice—through her accent, sexual innuendo, and singing—as much as her visual image in order to convey a cosmopolitan world-weariness. Still other essays consider the specter of aging that loomed over Dietrich’s career, as well as the many imitations of the Dietrich persona that have emerged since the star’s death in 1992. Contributors. Nora M. Alter, Steven Bach, Elisabeth Bronfen, Erica Carter, Mary R. Desjardins, Joseph Garncarz, Gerd Gemünden, Mary Beth Haralovich, Amelie Hastie, Lutz Koepnick, Alice A. Kuzniar, Amy Lawrence, Judith Mayne, Patrice Petro, Eric Rentschler, Gaylyn Studlar, Werner Sudendorf, Mark Williams

In Marlene, the legendary Hollywood icon is vividly brought to life, based on a series of conversations with the star herself and with others who knew her well. In the mid-1970s Charlotte Chandler spoke with Marlene Dietrich in Dietrich’s Paris apartment. The star’s career was all but over, but she agreed to meet because Chandler hadn’t known Dietrich earlier, “when I was young and very beautiful.” Dietrich may have been retired, but her appearance and her celebrity—her famous mystique—were as important to her as ever. Marlene Dietrich’s life is one of the most fabulous in Hollywood history. She began her career in her native Berlin as a model, then a stage and screen actress during the silent era, becoming a star with the international success The Blue Angel. Then, under the watchful eye of the director of that film, her mentor Josef von Sternberg, she came to America and became one of the brightest stars in Hollywood. She made a series of acclaimed pictures—Morocco, Shanghai Express, Blonde Venus, Destry Rides Again, among many others—that propelled her to international stardom. With the outbreak of World War II, the fiercely anti-Nazi Dietrich became an American citizen and entertained Allied troops on the front lines. After the war she embarked on a new career as a stage performer, and with her young music director, the gifted Burt Bacharach—whom Chandler interviewed for the book—Dietrich had an outstanding second career. Dietrich spoke candidly with Chandler about her unconventional private life: although she never divorced her husband, Rudi Sieber, she had numerous well-publicized affairs with his knowledge (and he had a longtime mistress with her approval). By the late 1970s, plagued by accidents, Dietrich had become a virtual recluse in her Paris apartment, communicating with the outside world almost entirely by telephone Marlene Dietrich lived an extraordinary life, and Marlene relies extensively on the star’s own words to reveal how intriguing and fascinating that life really was.

This is a topical resource that provides a comprehensive look at the most influential women in Hollywood cinema across a wide-range of occupations rarely found together in a single volume. Unlike other anthologies, Hollywood Heroines: The Most Influential Women in Film History is a hybrid of film history and industry information with an exclusive focus on prominent women. This reference work includes more commonly discussed categories of important women in Hollywood film history, such as directors and actresses, and reaches beyond them to encompass women working as cinematographers, casting directors, studio heads, musical composers, and visual and special effects supervisors. The wide range of filmmaking crafts covered in the book provides an acute view of the industry and increases the visibility of and quality of representation for women working in Hollywood. By bringing the experience of these influential women to light, Hollywood Heroines joins a growing movement that endeavors to dismantle harmful, long-standing industry myths that perpetuate the systemic underrepresentation of women and the devaluation of women's stories in the Hollywood film industry.