Marlene dietrich gay

Marlene Dietrich appeared in dozens of films and paved the way for embracing queerness without apology during Hollywood’s Golden Age. Marlene Dietrich was the lynchpin to an underground society that she called ‘The Sewing Circle’. Marlene Dietrich in Seven Sinners Photo via Flickr.

This month also marks 25 years since her death, at the age of It was while watching the Marlene documentary that I realized writing about Dietrich would be no easy feat. Videos by VICE. By Brent Koepp. Her cheekbones seem to have been sculpted just for cinematic lighting, her eyebrows—thickening throughout her career—always playfully telling, her lips a slight and curious pout, and her deep-set bedroom eyes will have anyone looking into them head-over-heels seduced.

Despite a prolific career run that frequently pitted her side-by-side fluffer gay Greta Garbo, Dietrich became a notorious, bed-ridden recluse in her later years, and refused to be filmed for the aforementioned documentary.

What would otherwise be considered a handicap in filmmaking lends itself to a ruthlessly revealing and contradictory voiceover from Dietrich over film scenes and various other footage. This term described an underbelly of Hollywood comprising of closeted lesbian and bisexual film actresses reportedly including Greta Garbo, Ann Warner and a string of other big names from Hollywood’s Golden Age.

The Little Gold Men podcast kicks off a series of Pride flashbacks with ’s Shanghai Express, starring the inimitable Marlene Dietrich and Anna May Wong. By Stephen Andrew Galiher. It was an unprecedented move for that time period, but this particular scene ranks as one of the top moments that turned her into an elusive, androgynous sex symbol and queen of pantsuits.

At one point, Dietrich lies to director Schell, saying she was an only child—which they later fact-check pretty easily to find out she had a sister.

Queer Portraits in History : Their first American film, Morocco, had the very memorable scene of Dietrich singing in a tuxedo and top hat, and then kissing a woman on the lips

It also got her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Marlene Dietrich entertaining front-line soldiers of the Third Army, The Lorraine Campaign via Wikimedia Commons. She was, yes, born with it, but she was also groomed into icon status by the likes of von Sternberg, who nurtured her ever-growing mysticism and allure.

They loved her, they hated her. Follow Us On Discover. By Sammi Caramela. By Caleb Catlin. But swimming against the tide has made Dietrich an eternally celebrated figure, both on and off the screen—not that politics even need to come into play when appreciating what that woman can do in any given frame.

At times, it feels like watching a movie with an unreliable narrator. Dietrich is a woman who explicitly transformed, and let herself be transformed, for the sake of art: a skill so rare and, yes, serious, that she still captivates audiences nearly years later.

Born in Berlin, Germany, inDietrich lived through both World Wars, but her political agenda came into play during the second. She supported American troops and became one of the first celebrities to raise war bonds, and she used her art for good, details of which can be found, oddly enough, on the CIA website.