Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Supersluts of History: Hollywood's Marlene Dietrich

Episode Date: June 26, 2026

Marlene Dietrich was unapologetic in her love of sex, and she had a lot of it.She took Hollywood by storm in the 1930s and slept with some of tinsel town's most famous men and women.What made her so unique and create such a legacy? As a sexually liberated German woman what did the Nazis make of her? And did she really sleep with JFK and his father?!This is the final instalment of our mini-series, Supersluts of History, where we're exploring and celebrating women whose sexuality was used to define them. Have we saved the best til last?Joining Kate for this episode is author and journalist Mick LaSalle.This episode was edited by Hannah Feodorov. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters, it's me, Kate Lister. Welcome back once again to another episode of Betwix the Sheeds. Hello, fancy seeing you round here. Thanks for dropping by. But before we can go any further together, I do have to tell you that this is an adult podcast spoken by adults,

other adults about adult things, and adult a great coming around your subjects, you should be an adult too. And if you're not, just stop holding up the line, quite frankly, you're letting the entire side down, be off with you. Go and listen to Waybleau or, or poor patrol or something more appropriate. Right, for the rest of you, adults.

On with the show. Welcome to Winter Garden 1929, a cabaret club in Berlin where beneath the chandeliers and clouds of cigarette smoke, artists and dancers and women in tuxedos, are sipping champagne at tables long into the night. Backstage, a young actress called Marlina Diertrick is preparing for her performance

and learning just how powerful it is to combine sex, style and a mystery. Soon enough, Marlina will take her vibrant sense of sexuality to Hollywood and Germany will be lost to the Nazis. But for now, the drinks keep flowing and the jazz plays on. Well, what are you waiting for? Come on, it's your round. Oh, and welcome back to Petrox Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal and Society with me, Kate Lister. Today's episode is the fourth and final episode in our limited series

which celebrates and explores the so-called super-sluts of history. Who called them that, Kate? Well, uh, we did. actually we did, but, but it was an accusation made at the time and by many, many other people since. And we want to know, is it a reputation well-deserved or one fiercely resisted? Were they happy to be defined by their sexuality or thoroughly pissed off by it? And frankly, we have saved the best to last. From her time as a cabaret performer in Interwar Berlin to taking Hollywood by storm with her unique and unapologetic love of sex,

It is, of course, the one the only, the utterly fabulous Marlina D'ertrick. To take us back to this awesome woman, we're joined once again by the fantastic Mick LaSalle, film critic and author of books including complicated women, sex and power in pre-code Hollywood. Right, tuxedos at the ready, let's do this. Well, hello and welcome back to Betwix the Sheets. It's only Mick LaSalle. How are you doing? I'm doing great. How about you?

Oh, fabulous. We had so much fun talking about Faty Arbuckle the last time. We had to invite you on again. Oh, that's great. Thank you. It's good to be here. And we're here to talk about, well, she's just a walking one woman scandal, really, are we? Marlene Dietrich. Yeah, yeah. She's really something. She's sort of like the female Lloyd Byron, you know. She had sex with everybody. She had sex with everybody.

And that's like, wow, wow. So this is for our latest installment in our little mini series of super sluts throughout history, where we're basically asking, did the person who was accused of such promiscuity deserve their reputation and did they enjoy it? Yes and yes. Those are the answers. Yeah, she definitely. Well, thanks for coming on betwixt the sheets.

Yeah, that's it. We're done. But she did. Yeah, she did. She did. She was, I mean, she was amazing. She, she was apparently hitting on everybody. She, she liked men. She like women. It's hard to say which she liked better. She just, she liked everybody. My favorite, my favorite, I don't know if people in Britain know, but know the name. But I just, I found that she had sex with Adelae Stevenson. Do you know Adelae Stevenson? No, I don't.

He was Adelae Stevenson. He was a Democratic candidate for president in 1952 and 1956. He lost to Eisenhower. Wow. And he wasn't, you know, he wasn't exactly a looker, but, I mean, she had sex with Adelaie Stevenson. So she had sex with everybody. It's absolutely amazing. What a woman.

So first of all, can I check? How do you pronounce her first name? Because I think I always get it wrong. Is it Marlene or Marlena? Marlena. Malena. Marlena. See, I was getting it wrong even on the name.

Those two, Marlena. Yeah, Marlaine. I used to say Marlene, but it's Marlene because it's German and so an E is like an A in German. That's the one. That's the one. I knew I was getting it a little bit wrong. But can you tell us about her origin story? Where did she come from before she was seducing anyone she could get hold of?

Well, she was from kind of a solid middle class family. Her father was an officer in the military. and her mother was from some kind of good family. So I guess they were kind of middle class, upper middle class. But in World War I, her father was killed in World War I. And then her mother had a boyfriend who was then he was also killed in World War I. And so I believe after that, the family wasn't quite as well off as it was. But nothing too remarkable in her upbringing.

She's not particularly poor or like Greta Garbo was really poor. Greta Garbo was broke. She wasn't like that. And, you know, from an early age, it's interesting. The best biography about her is her daughters wrote an amazing biography of her. A daughter wasn't that crazy about her. I mean, a daughter had, but didn't hate her. You know, it was like she was kind of like the way kids are.

with their parents a lot of times. She was disappointed in her in a lot of ways and saw through her and all the, you know, so she was like that, but also loved her. And she has access to all these incredible letters. And so when she was young, her first attraction was to a woman, like a young woman, who was maybe like three or four years old than she was when she was like 15. and but then and then seemingly switched to men but actually it's still like both you know from a teenage years and always seemed to be from the beginning according to her sister and then her daughter reporting

on the sister she always just seemed to be very much her own person and in fact I mean she she invented the name Marlena because her name was Mary Magdalene. Oh, wow. Now that is a case of not nominative determinism, whatever the opposite of nominative determinism is. That's not a name she was going to grow into, is it, Mary Magdalen? No, no. So she was Mary Magdalene and she made herself into Marlena. And I think it's almost like when you get these drag queens who come up with a name and then come up with the personality that goes with it, it's almost like she did that, only she was a woman. That's incredible. So she was born and raised in Germany.

Is it? Yes, Germany. Was it, did she live in Berlin? Or was it, like, I'm just trying to think, was she exposed? Because by the time she's growing up, that would be the Weimar Republic. Right? That would be like, you know, the land of cabaret and the swinging nightclub. Yeah.

She was mainly like a straight theater person and a musical theater person, not like a cabaret performer. Though I think she, I'm not completely sure about this, but I think she may have done, you know, a little. bit of that stuff. But her main thing was that she was in musicals and she was in theater. And she was known, but she wasn't big. She wasn't like a big stage star or anything. She had a career. You know, that's, she had a career. She was, she was making a living. But she, you know, she wasn't like a big actress. Think about, you know, like Garbo, there's someone she's always compared to. I think she's a little bit more like May West. than Greta Garbo in a way.

But Garbo, Garbo's entire 20s are preserved on film in a sense because she was just a big star from a very early age. But Dietrich really isn't anybody, really isn't anybody until she's about 28. And then the United States, like really until she was pushing 30, I mean, pretty close. Like she became big at the end of 1930 when she was 29. Wow. Yeah. So the other thing I didn't know about her until very recently when I was doing a bit of background reading for our chat, I didn't know she was married and had been married the entire time.

I didn't know that. I know. She was married forever. She met her husband while she was making a movie. They got married. And they stayed, first of they stayed together for the rest of his life. But once they had a child, who it was Maria, you know, ventured by the name of Marie. Reariva, they stopped having sex.

And yeah, they stopped having sex. It seemed to have been her idea. And from that point on, they had a completely open relationship such that, like, whenever she got love letters from other guys, she would give him to her husband, just handed to the husband to read. So she stopped having sex with him so she could have sex with other people, basically. I guess. I mean, it seemed...

God, that's a weird. But it's not a weird setup. It's unconventional for the time for the polyamorous people come for us. It is unconventional for the time. I've heard of this. I've heard of men sometimes losing their attraction for their wives once they become mothers. That's an odd thing. But you sometimes hear that.

I haven't heard it the other way. But it seems like it happened. It was like that. But he was kind of a useful guy for her. He gave her a lot of good advice. I mean, one bit of good advice he gave her was, don't go back to Germany. It's getting really bad over here because once she was in the United States for a while, he was in Nazi Germany. And he was saying, you don't want to come here.

Yeah, just stay away. Did he love her, do we think? Or was he having extra relationships as well? Well, he not only had extra relationships, but also he had really the equivalent of a wife. It was a woman named Tamara, who was, I think, called Tammy by the. whole family. So she was his partner and but they and they very often live in the same house. But the real victim, according to the daughter, the daughter's biography is very, very good, very detailed. She really loved this alternate mom. And she felt that her father, who she was

pretty fond of, but she felt that her father and Dietrich destroyed this woman, just made her just, just she was basically the junior partner in a threesome you know and she had no legal standing and they kind of just put it down and pushed her around and and eventually she cracked up I think she ended up in an insane asylum oh yeah that was the that was like you know sometimes in that's not cool yeah sometimes in relationships right there's like a pressure point and sometimes the pressure the pressure shoved onto somebody else and it looks like she was the one who took all the pressure I mean She was told, for example, never to be in a photo. Like, never to be in a photo.

So she would, like, duck out of every... She had to run every time somebody picked up a camera to take a picture of Dietrich and her husband. Oh, Tammy. That's just... No, if people you're supposed to be in a relationship with are telling you that, I think that's a massive red flag, right? That's time to leave then. Oh, that's sad. And she had, like, tons of abortions.

I mean, like, a lot of abortions. Oh, God. So it just... Yeah, it was not good. That's not good, is it? All right, okay, so that's not a great testimony of Marlena Dietrich. But she's doing quite well on the stage. She's in this marriage of, I don't know, marriage of convenience,

but she's clearly having lots of other lovers with a daughter who seems to be in the mix as well. I'm not sure who's looking after her at this point. Sometimes it's the father and then sometimes it'll be Dietrich. But most of the time it's the father. But the father, a lot of times, is living with Dietrich. So they're all together in the same house. I'll be back with Mick and Malina after this short break. She ended up in America.

Like, she's doing well in Germany. And then she breaks into films. I mean, there's one called Blue Angel, was that, that kind of made her name? What was that? Yeah, so what happened was this is this guy, Joseph von Sternberg, who was an American, a director but with ties to Germany.

I'm not sure if he was German or Austrian. I think he might have been German. But in any case, I think his name was really Joseph Sternberg, but in those days they'd always had a Vaughn to make it, like Eric von Stroheim. And he was a successful director in the United States. And he went back to Germany to work on a movie, The Blue Angel. And he picked her out in an audition.

And he kind of had the idea that the movie, Have you ever seen the movie? I've never seen the movie. Okay. It's not that good. The other ones are better. Yeah. Yeah, it's not that good.

It's interesting, but it's not that great. But what it is, it's about a guy, like an old professor who goes to a nightclub because he wants to grab his students who are going to this nightclub to see this woman and they're getting like they're not studying and everything. He wants to go and confront this woman or whatever. He goes there and he falls in love. with the woman himself. Damn it. And he goes backstage and she's flattering him and she thinks he's just a joke.

But she makes him fall in love with her and just sort of wrecks his life. Rex's life, but she's not evil. She's just sort of just has a big sense of humor, you know, and it's kind of capricious. And that's the movie where she sings, Falling in Love Again, you know, falling in love again, you know, that.

That movie was made in two versions. There's a German version and the American version, English language version. The German version is much better. The German version is like 90 minutes. The English language version is like 120 minutes or something. It's crazy. Yeah, I don't know how that. Oh, that's a big difference.

Maybe they just spoke the language slower. But whatever it is, the American version crawls. But they knew Paramount. He was making it for Paramount Pictures. so they're somehow making a foreign film for Paramount Pictures. And they kind of knew what they had with her. Oh, okay. So she's like standing out at this early stage.

Yeah, in fact, she stood out from the audition. Her audition was filmed, and it's, I didn't even believe it really was her audition because she's so confident. I thought it was like a publicity thing, but apparently it is like an audition film she did. The thing about her from the beginning is that she was an enormously confident person. And she wasn't confident because she was this movie star.

She became a movie star because she was so self-confident. It's like that. She just really had it. And so they understood that they had something with her and what they wanted her to be, what they're hoping that she would be, would be Paramount's answer to MGM's Greta Garbo. Oh, so even at that, they're all set up to compete with one another. Oh, yeah.

She was going to be paramount. Garbo. And so it's this kind of cool Nordic beauty. And so she came to United States. And they told her to lose weight. And she lost about 10 or 15 pounds and became the Dietrich that we have a picture of in our minds. Because she probably, she was a little heavier in the European film. And this is like, this is like 1920s heavy. So it's still like rail thin to us. Yeah. But she never got, like, really skinny, you know, when she, she looked great in all her. She looked great in all those movies from the early 30s, for sure.

And so she comes to the United States, she makes a movie called Morocco. And you can tell that they take it seriously paramount because they give it a big publicity send-off and also they co-star her with Gary Cooper. And this is the film. Yeah, she's very big. And she has, of course, she has sex with Gary Cooper, of course. Of course she did. I wouldn't expect anything less.

No, no. And it's funny, Gary Cooper had a wife, but he also had a girlfriend. The girlfriend was like on the set a lot of the times to try. But somehow they managed it. I bet she had sex with the girlfriend too. She did do that with Errol Flynn and Lily Demita. Lily Demita was sort of a minor actress. But Louis Demita and Errol Flynn were married and she eventually had sex with Earl Flynn and

Lily Demeter kind of at the same time. But not at the same time, the same like, you know, juncture of history. But anyway, this, the Morocco is kind of fascinating because if she comes out, so she's playing a cabaret singer, which she very frequently did. And she comes out in a scene, saying, one of my bid from my apple, the fruit that made Adam so wise, that historic night, when he took a bite, they discovered a new paradise. And so she's going to throw it on apples. And she's like half nude doing this. And she looks great. So that's one nice introduction.

Next introduction, she does another number where she's wearing a tuxedo. And she's singing a song. And she has a top hat on. And then she walks over to a table and looks at this woman, this young kind of very feminine sort of woman, and looks at her. And then what goes over to her and says, may I have this? She has a flower and a hair. And the woman said, of course.

And then she smells the flower and then she kisses the woman. And everybody starts cheering. So this is, I mean, this is 96 years ago. This is 96 years ago. You're seeing this. And the thing is, I can't figure out what people thought of it. Did they see this and say, oh, Dietrich's bisexual? Dietrich, you know, likes girls or whatever.

What did they say, oh, wow, what a fun playing around with gender? Yeah, do they think it's funny? Like, oh, ha, ha, ha. that's a great joke. Oh, it's so difficult to know what they were seeing. I know. It is. And it really is.

It really is because I just think back. You know, we've all had this. I don't know if we've all had this experience. But I'll sometimes think of something that happened years ago and realize, oh, he was gay. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, right. Yes. That makes sense. Yeah. Okay.

But it's like we weren't sense. So who knows about 96 years ago. That was like the way she dressed. She would very often wear men's clothes. And people did not seem to say men's clothes, lesbian. They didn't do it that way. But they definitely knew she was playing with the notion of it. So I don't know.

It's interesting. There were laws being passed, or at least there were particularly men who like to cross-dress or perhaps trans women, maybe. But there were laws passed in America about basically dressing appropriate to your gender. I mean, maybe that was a little bit later on. So what they made of Marlena Dietrich,

I don't know what they saw when they looked at her. But they don't seem to have been particularly upset about it. No, they weren't upset. And Morocco is a big hit. And I probably should say something about the way she was photographed. this guy, Sternberg, Joseph von Sternberg, she, thanks to him, has this amazing cinematic legacy. It's the thing that she has over on Garbo. Garbo was a much better actress.

I mean, there's no comparison. I mean, Dietrich was barely an actress. She could be good. But what she had going for, put it with this way. There are a lot of good actresses. There's only one Dietrich, you know? Yeah. So Dietrich was her own thing.

But the thing that she has going for her as a star of cinema from a historical point of view over Garbo is that she had Sternberg. Sternberg was a master of lighting. He was a master of making women look beautiful. I mean, he made a movie called The Docks of New York about a year. before he met Dietrich with a woman named Betty Comson. And it's fascinating to watch it. It's a silent film because he does everything that he does with Dietrich with Betty Comson.

Betty Compson is, Betty Compson, aside from that movie, is kind of cute. You know, she's just a regular cute woman from 1928. He makes her into almost Dietrich. almost Dietrich. Wow. Okay. When he gets Dietrich, he turns Dietrich into just a goddess.

And they make, yeah, they make, I think I believe it's seven films. And every one of them is a classic. I mean, some you may like better than others. People seem to love The Devil as a woman from 1935, I think it was. It may have been 34. I don't like that one. But there are people who love that one. But, I mean, she makes Shanghai Express an amazing film.

She makes the song. Is that the one you'd recommend? If anyone's listening to this, thinking, you know, I haven't seen any Dietrich films? What would you tell them to go from? Yeah, Shanghai Express. Shanghai Express. Yeah, and Blonde Venus a second. But Shanghai Express also has the advantage of this other fine actress who I have there.

Oh, wow. Look at that face. That's anime Wong. So you get, you get anime Wong and Dietrich in the same movie, which is kind of great. Wow. I mean, Dietrich's face card is just, it's unparalleled. It's just that face, that iconic. And as you said, with the lighting and the eyes and the cheekbones and just, she's just so recognizable.

And it's interesting that you say in there that like, you know, did people, when they're watching her on screen, did they really take it seriously that this is like lesbianism and cross-dressing? And I guess we spoke about us before about how when something's on screen it sort of gives you a safe place to play with things and at least plausible deniability. Like maybe it was like Jack Lemon and Tony Curtis in some like it hot.

It's like, oh, it's playful, we're just playing with it. But some people, some people, hashtag lesbians, they took it seriously. So how quickly does she start to get a reputation as somebody that was having sex with women or somebody that was just having sex with everybody? Pretty soon, among the people who knew her, among the general public, having that marriage was useful. Because it was like, oh, she's just accompanying, you know, so-and-so to the premiere.

She's just doing this. She's a married woman. She's a married woman. She has a daughter, so it's like that. But among the people who knew her, she would just hit on people. She would hit on people out of nowhere. Like she sent flowers to Francis D. And to, that's one actress from Paramount, but also to Carol Lombard.

from Paramount, who was, you know, wanted nothing to do with it. See, if you didn't know that she was an absolute raging horn dog, you might just be getting those flowers. That's nice. Aren't German people nice, sending me flowers? Yeah, Carol Lombard caught on really quick and sent a note back saying, look, if you want to, like, she said something like, if you have anything to say to me, why you just like come over and say it and just, you know, come on and say hi.

But it was more like, stop doing the seduction thing because it's not going to work. She was going to have with Clark Gable, so she kind of declared her major. She was taking care of. I have a list here. I mean, it's like... Give us some of the names on the list. Let's have Marlenna's Best of Real, please. Okay, so she, I mean, this is just off the top here.

Gary Cooper, of course, John Wayne. She was with John Wayne for a few years. Right? That's impressive. Yeah, for about three years, she was with John Wayne. She was with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. During his marriage to Joan Crawford, and then when after they broke up,

then he was with her again for a few years on and off. Do you ever hear of a guy named Edward R. Murrow? That rings a bell, but I can't think who that is. Edward R. Murrow was the guy reported on the bombing, the Blitz in London. He reported on... Oh, journalist. Yeah, and he was kind of important

in making Americans... get focused on the idea that maybe we should get into this war. But anyway, she was with Edward R. Murrow, which sounds like, I mean, if you ever see Edward R. Murrow, this guy smoked, like, about eight packs of cigarettes a day, and the idea of, like, kissing this guy would be like, it makes the idea of kissing Humphrey Bargart seem wholesome, you know, it's like, that's weird that she went with him. Oh, she tried to have sex with Bert Bachrach, you know, the, the songwriter. But by this time, she was, like, 35 years old than Burt Backrack and he was her accompanist and wanted he didn't want anything to do with her

He was supposed to into that one. Yeah, she had sex with James Stewart, of course. Nice. James Stewart is another one. He, he, James Stewart had moves, you know. He really, he, he had this, oh, shucks thing. And it would be like he was Mr. All-American guy, but actually he went after everybody. Okay.

Kirk Douglas In the 50s, in 1950s, she was with Yul Brenner, you know, the bald guy from King and I. Yes. Yeah, he would leave the King and I and go over her house,

her apartment in Manhattan, and they had something going on for a few years. Oh, JFK, John F Kennedy. Fuck off. JFK! Yes. Okay, so in 1963,

in September of 1963, now at this point, she's 61 going, on 62. Oh, go on, girl. You get yours. Wow. Yeah. And he's 46 and he invites her to the White House and she walks in and she says, I have one hour because she had to be somewhere. I forgot where. And he said, well, there's not much time then. He starts taking off his clothes and they go into the bedroom. And she gave some details. She said that when he started taking over, close she realized how like screwed up he was physically because his back was so horrible and he had like

take his back brace off and everything and so she said she was she was actually careful with him you know she made sure he was on the bottom and and all that because she didn't want to blow out his back there's a meeting of minds yeah it's really i i know it's like you're like meeting of libidoes i should say yeah it's like it seems so almost cold-blooded it's like we're going to check this box you know Yeah. After they, you know, she puts her clothes on to leave and he puts a towel around himself. And he walks her to the door. He says, I asked you a question.

Did you ever have sex with my father, Joe Kennedy? And she said, as she told the story, that she could tell that JFK wanted her to say that she had it. Because she said that there was a lot of competition among the Kennedy men. So she said, no, I never did. And he got all happy. And he said, I knew he was lying. So she had sex with JFK. And his dad, by the sounds of it.

And his dad in 1938. Yeah. And I think, I mean, I think the dad wins. I mean, they went with her in 1938. That was pretty good year. What about Greta Garbo? Is that a rumor that they had sex with one another? Or is that true?

That's a rumor. But it's also, I think, like a. false assertion. There have been books that have said this to be the case. A lot of it, or some of it at least, rests on, okay, this is the story, and this is a story I don't think is true. Okay. The story is that when Garbo was making the joyless street for the director of G.W. Pabst in Berlin in 1924, 1925, I'm not sure. The movie came out in 25. She, supposedly met Dietrich who was an extra in the movie and they had an affair and then Dietrich broke up with Garbo and made Garbo and then ridiculed her to people and just said bad things about

her and just completely humiliated Garbo whose Garbo was a young woman that she was 19 and Dietrich was 22, I guess, 22, going on 23. And Garbo never forgot about it. In fact, some people have even said it's what made Garbo very guard of the better personal life. And I think it's nonsense because... Okay, okay. First of all, the extra, the extra people say, oh, there's Dietrich. We know who that woman was.

I don't know who it was. I don't know the name of the person. But people say, no, that's so-and-so, so-and-so. And she really was in the movie. So that wasn't Dietrich. Also, Dietrich had just given birth and she was home. And she doesn't seem like she was doing extra work. So it doesn't really seem to be the case.

Doesn't work. It doesn't work. And then just the whole psychological thing is like Garbo becomes a recluse because of this. I mean, I don't think it's true. No, come on. No. Garbo's made a stronger stuff than that. Garbo's made of stronger stuff than that.

And also, too, I mean, Dietrich talked about having sex with Kennedy. She talked about having sex with Adlai Stevens. She talked about having sex with everybody. But all of a sudden, with Greta Gronbo... Now she's gone coy. Yeah, she's got coy. Now she's coy with Greta Grogh. It doesn't make sense.

I mean, that's somebody you'd seriously brag about. I would. Oh, hell yeah. God, I'd have it put on a t-shirt, quite frankly. Absolutely. Yeah, so anyway, and, okay, during this time, during this time in the 30s and in the 40s, She had a name for it. I mean, she was very open about the fact she was having sex with everybody.

She wasn't embarrassed about it. She wasn't concealing about it except to the press. She had a thing that she called her alumni association that was with the men, her alumni association, and then her sewing circle, which was the women. Marlena, you scallywag. Yeah. She called them her sewing circle. Was that like a common slang at the time?

Or was that just something that she came up with? I don't know because it's since become, I think she made it up, but I don't know. Because now that they say, by the way, she did have, she had an affair with John Gilbert. Do you know, have you very familiar with John Gilbert? No. John Gilbert was a big, big, silent actor who was considered the great lover. and was the big silent actor after Valentino who had an affair with Greta Garbo

and was very helpful to Garbo because he gave her a lot of advice, told her to go on strike to get more money, they would live in lovers. Yeah, they would live in lovers. And then when the talkies came in, his career was just destroyed. He didn't have a bad voice, but just something,

it just... It was just weird to hear him talk. There was something like that. Yeah, it's like we were talking about once about how when you get on... Yeah. You get literalized when you're in a talkie. All of a sudden, you're a certain person from a certain place, that kind of thing. And it just didn't seem to work.

I like him better in the talkies myself, but that was not the opinion at the time. Anyway, Dietrich hears that John Gilbert is drinking himself to death. And so she decides, she shows up at his door. and basically says, I'm going to straighten you out. And this is one of the things. This is one of the nice things about Dietrich. She loved taking care of people. She really enjoyed it.

And she really enjoyed babying men, especially when they were vulnerable. So like when she had an affair with Kirk Douglas, she had an affair with Kirk Douglas. She was, he had pneumonia or something. She just took care of him until he got better. And then she was gone. She lost interest in him. he became Spartacus, Kirk Douglas, sickly Kirk Douglas she liked. That's interesting, isn't it?

It is. Yeah. What about my girl Tallulah Bankhead? Did they, were they lovers? Surely, surely, if they were within a mile radius of one another at any given point, that have been lovers. I think you're right. Nobody knows for sure because they didn't talk about it.

But they both had rooms, they had dressing rooms that were like, that are joined. could actually pass through. So people think that, because they say, well, why wouldn't they? Yeah. But anyway, I started to tell you about Gilbert. So she took care of Gilbert. She got him cast in a movie. She got him stopping.

He was just flat out drinking himself to death. And but then he had a heart attack. So they had to take him off the movie because he couldn't get insured. And she was like building him up again. And then according to the daughter, this is really. pretty amazing story. She was with Gilbert. She was sleeping with Gilbert. In the middle of the night, he had a severe heart attack. And she knew that she had, and she, I mean, he was, he was going to die. And so she, she knew that she had to get out of there because her career would be ruined,

because it would be like she was in bed with this guy and he died. And people would also say they were having sex. But that's not what happened. It was just that he was such a mess. He was only like 38 years old. So what she did was she said somebody call an ambulance and she took off. And so she got home and then just kind of waited for the news to come in that he died. But anyway, that's the Gilbert story. I'll be back with Mick and Malina after this short break. We could actually just sit here and just list people for hours.

But I'm also interested in, because she was doing quite a lot of activism and resistance work during the Second World War as well, which how she found the time, quite frankly, in between movies and having sex with everybody. Yeah, well, first of all, going into the military just gave her a whole new area of people in which have sex with. I mean, she, so she did some general, I think, named Gavin. and she started having sex with this general. Her daughter is kind of cynical about her war work because she said, okay, she did do these things. She was kind of brave. She did show up in places that were a little bit dangerous.

But everybody is under the impression that Dietrich basically spent three years doing nothing but entertaining the troops. And it was more like she would do it for a month. I mean, that's good enough, you know. But she'll do it for a month here, a month there. And so she wasn't like this wasn't a consuming passion of her life at this point. Also, she liked, she wanted to get a little bit closer because she was having an affair. And this wasn't even an affair.

This was a, this was a true love affair with a French actor named Jean Gabin. And Jean Gabin is, I think, like the greatest French actor. And so she was with Gabin for about three or four years. And she would arrange to meet Gaban when she was in France or she would be in Britain, but then she'd be in France at some of the time as the Allies were winning the war. She was a brave person and she did some good. There's no question about it. People thought it was a little bit of a joke that she won like the Legion of Honor or the Quatergara,

one of these things from the French government. I think it was a Legion of Honor. because it was like, you know, if she wasn't a movie star and she just did the same thing, it wouldn't have been quite, she wouldn't have won, she wouldn't have qualified for it. But she did okay. I mean, she was, I believe she was political, I mean, she had sex with Adelaide Stevenson,

so I guess she was a Democrat. There's no other way that would explain that. She renounced her German citizenship, though, didn't she, and became an American because she was violently opposed to. to the Nazis and to Hitler. Yeah, she really was. She was an early person against Hitler,

and she became a citizen, not even during the war. I mean, she became a citizen like in 33 or 34. So, I mean, you know, Hitler was only in there for about a year and a half or something by the time when she became a citizen. That did not, that she didn't go well in Nazi Germany for that reason, because they were very, they were really turning their propaganda guns on her early in Germany, like in even as early as 33. Well, you know, because Sternberg was Jewish, so right off the top, and now she's making

Jewish movies. As a person, as a Hollywood person, as a person, like a person in film history, not a great actress, but a great photographic entity. Definitely. She understood this and almost to an extent that. that was helping her, but also to her detriment, or at least to put a limit on her growth as an actress. She insisted that there'd be a full-length mirror

next to the camera so she can look at herself and make sure that she looked good when she was acting. Oh, wow. So that means she's not even in the moment. She's really acting with herself. She's not acting with other people. I forgot what co-star she said to, she said, do you have a good side or a bad side?

And the co-star said, yeah, I do. And she said, well, I have no good side, so I have to just do everything to the, into the camera, straight into the camera. So that means he'd be talking to her here, you know, looking at her and she'd be looking straight into the camera. Some of her later performances are better. But I think the thing about Dietrich that is great is that she introduced a certain kind of amused irony into the consciousness of the 20th century into popular entertainment. Yeah.

There's a wonderful book called The Great War, the Great War and Modern Memory by a guy named Paul Fustle. And he talks about how the biggest psychological change that World War I brought is that in the 20s, all of a sudden, everybody became ironic and had this kind of attitude of irony. And that's, that I think characterizes, I think that irony is held over, you know, today, I think that we're still in the same psychological space. And I think Dietrich in her performances, especially in those wonderful movies that she made with Von Sternberg,

the rest of her career, I think, is an epilogue, but it's those six or seven films that she may introduce this kind of modern irony so that you watch her and you're kind of smiling along with her as though you get the joke, even if there's no joke. You know, it's like, it's like everything's a joke. Yeah. So she's, yeah, I think that, and I think that's really valuable. I don't, I don't, I don't discount that at all.

When I say she's not, you know, not that great an actress, but she's, she's great. She's a presence and she is, the overused word is iconic, but in this case, she is like an icon of a certain kind of sensibility, certain kind of mentality. So she, she, in her own way, she was great. And she died in 1992, which I also hadn't realized. It makes me very happy because I was alive at the same time as Malina Dietrich, which is that just makes me very pleased. But she kind of lived the last maybe 20 years of her life in obscurity, didn't she? She fades from, I don't know if she even survives the sort of the Hays Code period of Hollywood with her reputation.

Well, she, okay, well, the Hays Code, she was one of the actresses. Garbo was one of them, Catherine Hepburn, I think Betty Davis possibly, but I'm not sure about that one. They were labeled in a full-page ad in one of the trade magazines is box office poison. Catherine Hepburn was one of them, box office poison. And, you know, this is the thing. I've been hearing about this box office poison thing my whole life. They're all women. And it's like, I look at it and I say, yeah, I know why they were box office poison.

It was because the code forced them to be making movies that they shouldn't be making. When you have Dietrich playing a nun, you've got a real problem going on. You know, that's just a problem, you know. And so everybody, you know, all these women had to get their virginity back. And of course they became less interesting. Their movies became less interesting. So, but she survived. She had a couple of years where she didn't make a movie.

Then she made a movie called Destry Rides Again with James Stewart, which was a kind of a big hit. And she kind of hung on. I think some of her later performances are really her best, like, as performances, like in, Oh, a touch of evil is a really good one. And then witness for the prosecution, she's really good in it. And at this point, she's in her 50s. But in the late 70s, she was in Just the Gigolo. And she sang Just the Gigolo, did the song.

Went home, never left her apartment except to go to the doctor for the rest of her life. She was 74. At that point, she lived to be either 90 or 90. depending on when she died, like what time of the year. I think she was 90, 90. But she lived to be 90 years old. According to a daughter and why would her daughter lie, she became just a big alcoholic and somehow lived to be 90.

What kind of genes of that? I mean, she was out. Her daughter lived to be 100. I guess she wasn't an alcoholic, you know. But the genes are pretty amazing to live to be 90 and be, you know, total alcoholic. Yeah, so she was, you know, it's a, kind of a sad epilogue.

I mean, Greta Garbo is known as a recluse, but she spent, you know, she spent the last years of her life really enjoying herself. I mean, she just, she had a circle of friends. She would go on vacation. She would walk around the streets in New York. She was, you know, she was kept to herself, but she was out there.

But it seems like Dietrich just, you know, when she, I don't know, she got past a certain age, she just sat there and got drunk and waited to die. So that's kind of sad. Oh, that is sad. But let's focus on her glory days because the question that we set out to answer. The question we set out to answer, it seems so stupid now. Was Marlena Dietrich a super slut? Yeah, she was a super slut.

I mean, it depends on you define slut. I mean, when I was a young man. It's a very loaded word, isn't it? Yeah, but strictly in the terms of did she have sex with like more than her share? more than you're allowed to do. Yeah, she definitely did. I mean, she was, first of all, she was a switch hitter. So as a result of this, she could just, you know, play in any game she wanted.

She could do anything. She was pretty amazing. So, yeah, she qualifies, yes. And she had a great time doing it as well. And what I love about Dietrich is she wasn't ashamed. She wasn't made to feel ashamed. This is a woman that embraced her sexuality and thoroughly enjoyed herself. She really enjoyed herself.

Yeah, there's no question about it. And yeah, and she, I mean, and she kept it up into her 60s. That's, that's some going, right? Like, just to keep going until your knees give out. That's impressive. Yes. Her knees gave out. They can't top that.

That's really good. Oh, Mick, you have been so much fun to talk to. Thank you so much. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? Well, I'd say that the gateway drug, for my work would be my column. Ask Mc LaSalle, which is, I answer questions from the public,

and that's at sifcronicle.com, San Francisco Chronicle.com. And the best movie you've seen lately? Oh, best movie I've seen lately. You know, I can't think of any. I can't think of any. It wasn't Wuthering Heights. I know that much.

I wasn't Wuthering Heights. No, we talked about that one. That was amazingly bad. Although, what did you, you said something about that? Oh, yeah. You said that it was the only movie you saw with, that had a second. montage.

Yes, true. That was amazing. So that's a cinematic innovation worthy of DW Griffith, so maybe we have to reassess that one because nobody's done the sex montage. I've never seen one before. Will you come back and tell us more things about the golden age of Hollywood? It would be my pleasure, yes, of course. Thank you so much.

You've been marvelous. You've been marvelous. Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Mick for joining me. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like with you and follow along whatever it is you get your podcasts. And coming up, we've got episodes on the less than lesbian blood sisters, and with America's 250th birthday coming up, we thought, what better way to celebrate them by taking a look at the sex lives of America's

presidents? No, not that one, not that one. Frankly, we don't have the stomach, but we'll look at some others. And if you'd like us to explore a subject, if you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at betwixt at history hit.com. This podcast was edited by Hannah Theodorov and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddie Chick. Join me again, Betwixt Asheed, the history of sex scandal and society, your podcast,

by history hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.