Welcome to another episode of You Must

Remember this, the podcast dedicated to exploring the secret and or forgotten histories of Hollywood's first century,

part of the Panoply Network. I'm your host, Curina Longworth.

Today we are continuing our ongoing series, Star Wars.

Previously in this series we've talked about actresses who sold war bonds,

who volunteered tirelessly at the Hollywood canteen, who tried to do their part by inventing high-tech

weapons, and who sacrificed their own health and sanity to the war effort. But the subject of today's

episode got closer to the actual fighting and more involved in backstage warcraft,

then perhaps any other woman associated with Hollywood during World War II. Today we're going

to talk about Marlena Dietrich.

How did Marlena Dietrich, the famously-libertein German actress-slash singer, who virtually

invented the modern idea of glamorous androgyny, end up so deeply embedded within Allied forces

that General Patton himself gave her both a pep talk and a pistol to understand that.

We have to go back to Dietrich's childhood during World War I and trace our way through her

long marriage and many, many affairs, her transformative collaboration with Joseph von Sternberg,

her fantasies of espionage on behalf of the Allies, and her actual efforts as a de facto intelligence

agent and propagandist. And then we have to talk about what happened immediately following the war

when Marlena found herself broke and in shock, and Billy Wilder convinced her to play a part that

on its surface appeared to embody everything she had just stood in thought against.

Join us, won't you? For the story of the war times of Marlena Dietrich.

Hey, bro, I'm watching out. I'm just getting the rest of them.

But don't feed them. I wrote it dangerous.

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