Marlene Dietrich - biography

“I had no desire to be an film actress, to always play somebody else, to be always beautiful with somebody constantly straightening out your every eyelash.  It was always a big bother to me.”

“There’s something about an American soldier you can’t explain.  They’re so grateful for anything, even a film actress coming to see them.”

“When I talk to [Orson Welles], I feel like a plant that’s been watered.”

“America took me into her bosom when there was no longer a country worthy of the name, but in my heart I am German - German in my soul.”

“In America sex is an obsession, in other parts of the world it is a fact.”

“Darling, the legs aren’t so beautiful, I just know what to do with them.”

“The average man is more interested in a woman who is interested in him than he is in a woman with beautiful legs.”

“Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs.”

“Most women set out to try to change a man, and when they have changed him they don’t like him.”

“Courage and grace are a formidable mixture.  The only place to see it is in the bullring.”

“Grumbling is the death of love.”

“I’m worth more dead than alive.  Don’t cry for me after I’m gone; cry for me now.”

“When you’re dead, you’re dead.  That’s it.”

“I dress for the image.  Not for myself, not for the public, not for fashion, not for men.”

“A king, realizing his incompetence, can either delegate or abdicate his duties.  A father can do neither.  If only sons could see the paradox, they would understand the dilemma.”

“I am not a myth.”

“I never enjoyed working in a film.”

“On the Blue Angel, I thought everything we were doing was awful.  They kept a camera pointed here [at her groin].  I was so young and dumb.”

“It’s the friends you can call up at four a.m.  that matter.”

“Think twice before burdening a friend with a secret.”

“Latins are tenderly enthusiastic.  In Brazil they throw flowers at you.  In Argentina they throw themselves.”

“A man would prefer to come home to an unmade bed and a happy woman than to a neatly made bed and an angry woman.”

“The Germans and I no longer speak the same language.”

“To be completely woman you need a master, and in him a compass for your life.  You need a man you can look up to and respect.  If you dethrone him it’s no wonder that you are discontented, and discontented women are not loved for long.”

“How do you know love is gone?  If you said that you would be there at seven and you get there by nine, and he or she has not called the police yet - it’s gone.”

“I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.”

“There is a gigantic difference between earning a great deal of money and being rich.”

“Glamour is what I sell, it’s my stock in trade.”

“I am at heart a gentleman.”

“I was raised almost entirely on turnips and potatoes, but I think that the turnips had more to do with the effect than the potatoes.”

“If there is a supreme being, he’s crazy.”

“Once a woman has forgiven a man, she must not reheat his sins for breakfast.”

“The tears I have cried over Germany have dried.  I have washed my face.”

“The weak are more likely to make the strong weak than the strong are likely to make the weak strong.”

“They want you to bring out your intestines.”

“Without tenderness, a man is uninteresting.”

Marlene Dietrich has appeared in the following films:
Im Schatten des Glücks (1919)
So sind die Männer (1923)
Der Mensch am Wege (1923)
Tragödie der Liebe (1923)
Der Mönch von Santarem (1924)
Der Sprung ins Leben (1924)
Der Tänzer meiner Frau (1925)
Manon Lescaut (1926)
Madame wünscht keine Kinder (1926)
Eine Dubarry von heute (1927)
Der Juxbaron (1927)
Kopf hoch, Charly! (1927)
Sein größter Bluff (1927)
Café Elektric (1927)
Prinzessin Olala (1928)
Gefahren der Brautzeit (1929)
Ich küsse Ihre Hand, Madame (1929)
Die Frau, nach der man sich sehnt (1929)
Das Schiff der verlorenen Menschen (1929)
The Blue Angel (1930)
Der Blaue Engel (1930)
Morocco (1930)
Dishonored (1931)
Shanghai Express (1932)
Blonde Venus (1932)
The Song of Songs (1933)
The Scarlet Empress (1934)
The Devil Is a Woman (1935)
I Loved a Soldier (1936)
Desire (1936)
The Garden of Allah (1936)
Knight Without Armour (1937)
Angel (1937)
Destry Rides Again (1939)
Seven Sinners (1940)
The Flame of New Orleans (1941)
Manpower (1941)
The Lady Is Willing (1942)
The Spoilers (1942)
Pittsburgh (1942)
Kismet (1944)
Memo for Joe (1944)
Martin Roumagnac (1946)
Golden Earrings (1947)
A Foreign Affair (1948)
Jigsaw (1949)
Stage Fright (1950)
No Highway (1951)
Rancho Notorious (1952)
Around the World in Eighty Days (1956)
Montecarlo (1957)
Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
Touch of Evil (1958)
Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
Paris – When It Sizzles (1964)
Schöner Gigolo, armer Gigolo (1978)
Paragraph 175 (2000)