The Life and Legacy of Marlene Dietrich: Star, Style Icon, and Trailblazer

Marie Magdalena Dietrich was born on 12/27/1901 in Berlin, Germany. She studied singing and music as a teenager. She then began working in cabarets. She took acting lessons with Max Reinhardt, making her debut in Georg Jacoby’s The Golden Key (So sind die Männer, 1923). She had already been acting for some time when she was discovered by Sternberg in her great performance as the seductive Lola in The Blue Angel. She became a femme fatale. After this film, she was hired by Paramount and earned a high salary. Her films became increasingly extravagant and the plots were also somewhat absurd, such as “Morocco” from 1930, “Dishonored” from 1931, “The Shanghai Express” and “The Blonde Venus” from 1932.
From the 1930s onwards, the actress began to face problems in her career, as she was anti-Nazi and refused the high fees that Hitler offered her. For this reason, her films were banned in Germany. However, she toured the battlefields singing for the American troops. In the 1950s, she began to perform shows, where she surprised everyone with her husky and sensual voice.
Marlene spent the last years of her life in Paris, where she died at the age of 90. She wrote her name in the book of myths.

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Carla Marinho Leal

Writer, traveler and above all, curious about many subjects. She has studied cinema since 2002 and is a Specialist in Cinematographic Studies from UNICAP. Founder of the blog Purviance and the website Cinemaclássico. She loves Charles Chaplin, Raj Kapoor and constantly browses films from all over the world.

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