Marlene Dietrich cover art

Marlene Dietrich

The Life

 Preview

Audible Standard 30-day free trial

Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection.
Listen to your selected audiobooks as long as you're a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto renews for £5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Marlene Dietrich

By: Maria Riva
Narrated by: Christa Lewis
Try Standard free

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £23.26

Buy Now for £23.26

About this listen

With intimate detail, author Maria Riva reveals the rich life of her mother, Marlene Dietrich, the charismatic star of stage and screen whose career spanned much of the 20th century. Opening with Dietrich's childhood in Schöneberg, Riva's biography introduces us to an energetic, disciplined, and ambitious young actress whose own mother equated show business with a world of vagabonds and thieves.

Dietrich would quickly rise to stardom on the Berlin stage in the 1920s with her sharp wit and bisexual mystique, and wearing the top hat and tails that revolutionized our concept of beauty and femininity. She comes alive in these pages in all her incarnations: muse, collaborator, bona fide movie star, box-office poison, lover, wife, and mother.

During World War II, Dietrich would stand up to the Nazis and galvanize American troops, eventually earning the Congressional Medal of Freedom. There were her artistic relationships with Josef von Sternberg (The Blue Angel, Morocco, Shanghai Express), Colette, Erich Maria Remarque, Noël Coward, and Cole Porter, as well as her heady romances. And in her final years, Dietrich would make herself visibly invisible, devoting herself to the immortality of her legend.

©2017 Maria Riva (P)2020 Tantor Entertainment & Celebrities Entertainment & Performing Arts Film & TV Women Entertainment Celebrity Morocco
All stars
Most relevant
I listen to many biographies but this is by far the very best.

I especially loved the performance but also how well the story was told.

Amazing

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
incredible life and story. Not an easy Woman. Felt Maria could have held back on some of the detail. Especially towards the end.

All of it

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I really enjoyed listening to this book. It is unusually long, more than 33h but not at all boring. Old Hollywood is so vividly described. Mother daughter relationship is so complicated and honestly explained. Narrator is one is of the best, such a nice voice and diction. It motivated me to listen other some movie stars biographies, but this is best so far.

Fascinating life

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Dietrich's life from her Teutonic beginnings to her lonely, reclusive death is told in unflinching detail by her handmaiden daughter. The story is a study in fame and power and cruelty. Several times I needed to stop and think. Maria Riva is a great writer as she lifts the lid on Dietrich's 90 year legacy.

Life, legend and Reality

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Written with equal parts humour, love, sorrow and frankness, and such detail, I found this book thoroughly interesting. The narrator really bought the people in the book to life.

Well worth a listen

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews