27 December: Marlene Deitrich

The actress Marlene Dietrich celebrated her birthday on this date. She was born in 1901.

1. Her name at birth was Marie Magdalene Dietrich, Marlene being the name she adopted herself at the age of 11, a contraction of the two names.
2. If not for a wrist injury as a teenager, she might have been a concert violinist instead of an actress and singer. Her first job was as a Violin player in a cinema, with an orchestra accompanying silent films. She was fired after four weeks. It wasn't clear why, with just one source alleging it was because she was too pretty and her legs were too distracting for cinema-goers.
3. In her early twenties, she was appearing on stage as a chorus girl and in 1923, appeared on film for the first time in The Little Napoleon, playing a bit part.
4. She met her husband, Rudolf Sieber, on a film set that same year. Unlike many Hollywood stars, Dietrich only married once - but once she'd moved to Hollywood, had a string of affairs while maintaining her husband and daughter, first in Germany and later on a ranch in California. Her lovers included Gary Cooper, James Stewart, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., John Wayne and Yul Brynner. Her husband knew about most of them - she'd pass him their letters to read and make scathing remarks about them. It was also believed she had affairs with women, too, dating back to the gay scene in 1920s Berlin. It's alleged she was part of the underground lesbian movement in Hollywood, dubbing it the "sewing circle". There were rumours that in Paris, her relationship with singer Edith Piaf was more than friendship, and even that she had an affair with her biggest film rival, Greta Garbo.
5. Her breakthrough role was that of Lola Lola, a cabaret singer in the 1930 film, Blue Angel. It was in this film that she sang her signature song, Falling in Love Again. The director of that film, Josef von Sternberg, claimed the credit for discovering her. It was he who encouraged her to move to America under contract to Paramount Pictures, who wanted an actress to rival MGM's Greta Garbo. They tempted her with extravagant gifts, like a Green Rolls Royce. Deitrich and von Steinberg made seven films together.
6. She received one academy award nomination, for a film called Morocco in 1930. Her green Rolls Royce appeared in the film, but more memorable was the fact she performed a song dressed in a man's White tie and kissed another woman on screen.
7. Naturally enough, the Nazi Party didn't like the fact a beautiful German woman was so successful in the USA. On a trip to London, Deitrich was approached by them with lucrative offers should she return to Germany and become a star for the Third Reich. Marlene didn't want to know. She turned them down flat and applied for US citizenship in 1937. When she became an American citizen she renounced her German citizenship altogether. She helped set up a fund to help Jews and dissidents escape from Germany, and donated her entire salary from one of her films to the cause. During World War II, she performed for Allied troops in Algeria, Italy, the UK and France, and even visited Germany with Generals James M. Gavin and George S. Patton. She believed this was the decent thing to do. She was awarded the Medal of Freedom in November 1947, and said this was the thing she was most proud of. She was also awarded the Légion d'honneur by the French government.
8. Her songs were used in propaganda broadcasts aimed at demoralising enemy soldiers. She was the only performer who was told her recordings were to be used. She recorded several songs in German for the project, including Lili Marlene, which would become a favourite of soldiers on both sides. Marlene's sister, however, remained in Germany during the war, and lived with her husband and son in Belsen, running a cinema there which was frequented by Nazi officers and officials who oversaw the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. While Marlene used her influence to save her sister and brother-in-law from being prosecuted as Nazi collaborators, she had no more to do with them after that, claiming in her memoirs that she was an only child.
9. Deitrich carried on performing on stage into her 70s, collaborating with, and encouraged by, the composer Burt Bacharach. However, in 1975 she fell off the stage during a show in Sydney, Australia, breaking her thigh. This ended her show business career.
10. In her later years, she became a virtual recluse in Paris, only allowing her closest family and friends to visit. She did agree to take part in a 1982 documentary about her life, but refused to be filmed, only allowing recordings of her voice to be used. She stayed in touch with the outside world through letters and telephone calls - her monthly phone bill was over $3,000. She was calling, among others, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. She died of renal failure at the age of 90.

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Secrets and Skies

Jack Ward, President of Innovia, owes his life twice over to the enigmatic superhero, dubbed Power Blaster by the press. No-one knows who Power Blaster is or where he comes from - and he wants it to stay that way.

Scientist Desi Troyes has developed a nuclear bomb to counter the ever present threat of an asteroid hitting the planet. When Ward signs the order giving the go ahead for a nuclear test on the remote Bird Island, he has no inkling of Troyes' real agenda, and that he has signed the death warrants of millions of people.

Although the island should have been evacuated, there are people still there: some from the distant continent of Classica; protesters opposed to the bomb test; and Innovians who will not, or cannot, use their communication devices.

Power Blaster knows he must stop the bomb from hitting the island. He also knows it may be the last thing he ever does.

Meanwhile in Innovia, Ward and his staff gather to watch the broadcast of the test. Nobody, not even Troyes himself, has any idea what is about to happen.

Part One of The Raiders Trilogy.

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