Books, Arts & Manners: Thoroughly Modern Marlene

Marlene Dietrich, by Maria Riva (Knopf, 790 pp., $27.50)

Marlene dietrich was nearly as old as the century. She grew up in Berlin in the years preceding World War I, and became famous in Hollywood in the Thirties. Dietrich made the transition from silent films to talkies. She became a U.S. citizen during the war and entertained the Allied troops. She knew Noël Coward and five-star generals. She was a thorn in the mind of Hitler. She was a movie star—of that first generation of movie stars who lived with the implications of a smile as long as a Cadillac, eyes as high as windows. Dietrich was a screen goddess, literally a projection, who in her later years managed a transfiguration, a miracle.

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Richard Rodriguez

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Marlene Dietrich, by Maria Riva (Knopf, 790 pp., $27.50)

Marlene dietrich was nearly as old as the century. She grew up in Berlin in the years preceding World War I, and became famous in Hollywood in the Thirties. Dietrich made the transition from silent films to talkies. She became a U.S. citizen during the war and entertained the Allied troops. She knew Noël Coward and five-star generals. She was a thorn in the mind of Hitler. She was a movie star—of that first generation of movie stars who lived with the implications of a smile as long as a Cadillac, eyes as high as windows. Dietrich was a screen goddess, literally a projection, who in her later years managed a transfiguration, a miracle.