Saturdays with the Stars: Marlene Dietrich

Each month of 2023 we are taking a look at a star who made their name in westerns, rustling cattle & riding horses during the brief time when cowboys ruled Hollywood.  Last month, we focused on Gregory Peck, an actor who today is most known for a single role (his Oscar-winning turn as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird) but was the star of multiple westerns throughout the 1950's.  This month, we're going to include the one actress we'll profile this year, and for those that aren't familiar with her work, she might come as a surprise for a series about cinematic cowboys.  However, her association with the genre included one outright classic of the format, and the success of that film led her briefly to become one of the major headliners of the genre.  This month's star is Marlene Dietrich.

Born in Berlin in 1901 to a wealthy German family, Dietrich initially wished to be a concert violinist but an injury ended those dreams.  Eventually she found herself studying drama, and working as a chorus girl & background player in a number of German movies.  This led her to meet the man who would change her life, Josef von Sternberg, who would direct her in the international smash hit The Blue Angel, which brought both actress & director to the attention of Hollywood.  Paramount, desperate for an answer to MGM's Greta Garbo, thought that she would be a fine way to capitalize on the success the rival studio had seen with the Swedish actress, and between 1930 and 1935, Dietrich & Von Sternberg made seven movies together.  Not all of them were successes (particularly the last two), but they are collectively considered to be some of the best movies of the era (Shanghai Express is one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen), and cemented both of their legends.

You might be wondering why I picked Dietrich for a series about actors in westerns.  After all, when you think of Dietrich's celebrity it's either focused on the seven films she made with Von Sternberg or her enduring singing & cabaret career that would extend all the way into the 1970's.  Dietrich, though, would become an unlikely figure in westerns due to 1939's Destry Rides Again, which revived her career after several flops, and made her a figure in the genre opposite Jimmy Stewart, with whom she reportedly had an affair.  After this, the studio continued to put Dietrich in westerns against John Wayne of all people.  It might shock people who didn't know this (I didn't know this until a few years ago), but Wayne & Dietrich, about as polar opposite as you can get for star personas in the Classical Hollywood era, were not only in multiple films together, but offscreen they had a passionate love affair, all of which we'll talk about this month in addition to the gargantuan career Dietrich had outside of the genre (we picked her for a five-Saturday month for a reason!).