Ridiculous Over Marlene Dietrich

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXV, Issue 12390, 30 July 1937, Page 6 (Supplement)

Ridiculous Over Marlene Dietrich

'We are making ourselves ridiculous over Marlene Dietrich, writes H. W. Seaman in the “Sunday Chronicle.” We? Well, not you, perhaps, or I; but all those others, who wait hours for a glimpse of her, swoon at her approach, and are ready to drop dead when at last they clap eyes on her in the flesh. In the flesh I said. On the screen it is something else again. Somehow, in the cinema we contrive to control our hysteria. I have never known anybody actually to pass out when her shadow appeared, or to be driven raving mad by her husky voice. If that had happened, her Press agents would have told us, you may be sure. They have told use everything else about her. What the publicity people who keep Marlene’s name in the papers seem to have overlooked is that they are making Marlene ridiculous, too. She may be the most beautiful woman in the world and she may not. But even the most beautiful woman in the world cannot live in a constant atmosphere of ballyhoo for very long without being made to look foolish. It is a great pity, because, as I have been saying for years, ‘ she is a capable actress and a good-look-ing woman. “Marlene is the hardest kisser in the business,” says Wally Westmore, the Hollywood make-up merchant, in a message to Alexander Korda, thereby linking his own name with that of a couple of reigning celebrities. “She needs a new mouth after each film kiss. Who cares? Not you or I, but

WAITING HOURS FOR A GLIMPSE

those others. At the first night of a new play, we are told, “the crowd was six or eight deep on each side of the dourtyard They were still waiting some time a’fter Marlene was comfortably settled in her stall. ■ Will any Dietrich-struck reader be good enough to write to me, explaining how she got that way, and why? She? Yes, I have seen the firstnight crowds, and they were mostly girls. Most probably they were there out of curiosity, but there must have been some who were drawn by the example of a womaxi who could use her beauty and her glamour to make £ 50,000 out of a few weeks’ work in a film. They were tryixxg to see how it was done. Well, .they will never find out by looking. Marlene has more than looks. It is for these people that my newspaper colleagues go to great pains to learn and report: That Marlene sleeps in a bed that cost £ 1500. That she has become a factor in London’s ti-affic problem. That she used to play old-wo-man parts in German films. That her uncle Max commanded a Zeppelin which was brought down in Britain; axxd That she recently paid £ 60 for the sheets from the late John Gilbex-t’s bed. For the victims of mass hysteria these facts may be important, but for the rest of us they are merely curious. What we want to know about a film star is how well sfce can act. Ballyhoo about anything else concerning her only distorts human values.