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Collection of essays on film icon Marlene Dietrich

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii
Prelude
Introduction: Marlene Dietrich’s Appropriations / Mary R. Desjardins and Gerd Gemünden 3
Falling in Love Again / Steven Bach 25
I. The Icon
Dietrich’s Face / Lutz Koepnick 43
The Legs of Marlene Dietrich / Nora M. Alter 60
Marlene Dietrich: The Voice as Mask / Amy Lawrence 79
II. Establishing the Star Persona
Playing Garbo: How Marlene Dietrich Conquered Hollywood / Joseph Garncarz 103
Seductive Departures of Marlene Dietrich: Exile and Stardom in The Blue Angel / Elisabeth Bronfen 119
The Blue Angel in Multiple-Language Versions: The Inner Thighs of Miss Dietrich / Patrice Petro 141
Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus: Advertising Dietrich in Seven Markets / Mary Beth Haralovich 162
Marlene Dietrich: The Prodigal Daughter / Erica Carter 186
III. “Marlene Has Sex But No Gender”
Marlene Dietrich and the Erotics of Code-Bound Hollywood / Gaylyn Studlar 211
“It’s Not Often That I Want a Man”: Reading for a Queer Marlene / Alice A. Kuzniar 239
Get/Away: Structure and Desire in Rancho Notorious / Mark Williams 259
IV. (Auto-) Biography and the Archive
The Order of Knowledge and Experience: Marlene Dietrich’s ABC / Amelie Hastie 289
Dietrich Dearest: Family Memoir and the Fantasy of Origins / Mary R. Desjardins 310
An Icon between the Fronts: Vilsmaier’s Recast Marlene / Eric Rentschler 328
“Life Goes On without Me”: Marlene Dietrich, Old Age, and the Archive / Judith Mayne 347
“Is That Me?”: The Marlene Dietrich Collection Berlin / Werner Sudendorf 376
Bibliography 385
Contributors 401
Index 405

About the Author

Gerd Gemünden is the Ted and Helen Geisel Third Century Professor in the Humanities at Dartmouth College. He is the author of Framed Visions: Popular Culture, Americanization, and the Contemporary German and Austrian Imagination and coeditor of The Cinema of Wim Wenders: Image, Narrative, and the Postmodern Condition.

Mary R. Desjardins is Associate Professor of Film and Television Studies at Dartmouth College.

Reviews

"Gerd Gemunden and Mary R. Desjardins convincingly suggest, and the essays together prove, that Dietrich is a figure who is interesting not just in herself but also as a prism reflecting discourses on aging, stardom, feminism, film theory, authorship, authenticity, performance, and masquerade, as well as audience projections ranging from Third Reich condemnation to lesbian cult fandom."--Pamela Robertson Wojcik, author of Guilty Pleasures: Feminist Camp from Mae West to Madonna "Most works on actresses are largely biographical in nature, with some critical evaluation of particular films and stage appearances thrown into the mix. This anthology by Gerd Gemunden and Mary R. Desjardins, however, presents serious historical and theoretical work on Dietrich's star image and career--all expressed in clear and readable language, devoid of 'jargon.'"--Lucy Fischer, author of Designing Women: Cinema, Art Deco, and the Female Form "The multiple authors lean heavily on academic language ... But some contributors say what they have to say in normal language, and Gaylyn Studlar's essay is particularly valuable on the ways that Marlene Dietrich's mentor, Josef von Sternberg, contrived innuendo and allusion to get her hyper-sexualised image past the 1930s censors."--The TImes, 1 Dec 2007