Marlene Dietrich vs. Leni Riefenstahl

To start out: I can´t imagine two women more alike and more different.  The names Marlene and Leni already kind of act as a spoiler: Leni was the little, the lesser Marlene. Leni had always been the beta female to Marlene´s alpha, you would not waste a breath for another syllable. Leni outlived Marlene by a few years and if we are to believe the old truism that only the good die young, none of these hotties were a Saint. But while Marlene was a bad bitch and kicked the oxygen habit at age 92,  Leni ever the overachieving grifter took the bad bitch trope a bit too literal. Leni “opportunistic ogre” Riefenstahl became worm food at age 102.

But apart from this: So many questions! A gazillion writers, filmmakers, thinkers, painters, musicians and whatnot have dedicated real estate in their brain to the question how the world would look nowadays if one of the many assassination attempts on Hitler would have actually been successful.  Fun fact: Marlene herself plotted murdering Hitler, by seducing and subsequently stabbing him, although hey I would not be surprised if that was a sexual fantasy, because hey it´s Marlene we talkin´. I am pretty sure both would have been successful without their patrons, as I will call Hitler/Arnold Fanck and Joseph von Sternberg, simply because both had those tireless unstoppable hustle genes that are just bound to yield results. Helene Amalie “Leni” Riefenstahl used Hitler and the Nazis for her career but am pretty sure she would have used the socialists, scientologists, stampcollectors, anyone would serve but yeah just like Marlene she was a bonafide workhorse.

Similarities.

But there are a lot more similarities. I will start out with their birth. Oddly enough, both were born in a distinctive “red district”. As stated, many times before, Marlene was born in Schöneberg, which is a neighborhood, now known for older affluent gay men and rather calm and fancy cafés, third wave coffee, quaint antique stores specializing in French art nouveau lamps, Italian butchers shilling pastured Tuscan veal for that perfect Carpaccio and the odd Romanian rent boy waiting for his date for the night.

During Marlene´s time, Schöneberg´s demographic was not that different, especially the area around Akazienstraße was known for well-to-do Jewish doctors and lawyers but the area around Nollendorfplatz soon turned into the biggest LGBTQ hub on the planet, which included clubs for gays, lesbians and what was then called “transvestites” and purchasable love. And by purchasable love I mean, whatever floats your boat, you could get it. So, all in all not that different from what it is today.

What was different back then was, that the area where Marlene was born, Leberstraße 36 was known as the red island due to its traditional socialist voters who slightly distinguished themselves from the rest of Schöneberg. Ok so of course, she took such a strong Nazi-stand! It´s like the “Location! Location! Location!” Mantra of every real estate agent! One could back it up, that the other German diva Hildegard Knef grew up in the same street and later took a strong Anti-Nazi stand by acting in such movies as “Die Mörder sind unter uns” (The murderers are amongst us). She helped popularize the very unique genre of the German “Trümmerfilm” (Rubble film). The name is a descriptive as it gets, wrecked Berlin served as a backdrop for wrecked actors playing wrecked characters.

Little red socialist riding hood

But the formula “being born in a red district=being shaped by it=taking a strong anti-Nazi-stand does not hold” when we consider that Leni Riefenstahl was born in Wedding. Back than (and to certain extent still) known as “red Wedding”, probably a lot redder than the red island on Schöneberg. In 1931 the SA, the paramilitary wing of the Nazi that is, had bloody brawls with the communists in the Wedding district night after night. Riefenstahl´s family later relocated to Zeuthen in Brandenburg, a village nearby Berlin. Brandenburg just like most of East Germany has a high percentage of right wing voters, probably due to inhaling Leni Riefenstahl´s old farts ha!

 Marlene´s family moved around a lot, and she spent WW1 in Dresden but to sum up this commonality: Both were born in district with traditionally left voters.

The horrible Turk Sabri Mahir

Both took boxing lessons with Turkish boxer and prizefighter Sabri Mahir. Mahir was a boxer who could get down and dirty by headlining in a circus as “the horrible Turk Sabri Mahir” who fights four men at a time but also went to art school and trained 20s It-girls such as  Marlene and Leni as well as  famous Jewish writer Vicki Baum.  Baum later joined Marlene, Thomas Mann, Fritz Lang, Berthold Brecht, Peter Lorre, Friedrich Hollländer and a few more in Cali and together they became the “Beiunskis”. The Beiunskis were called as such since all of the phrases they appeared to utter out were guided by the phrase bei uns (“back where we are from”)

So basically, Mahir was someone basic bitches, who do not understand multifaceted people with diverse interests and talents would call a hipster.

We are still far away from the aerobic craze in the 80s, but the feminine ideal was a lot more athletic than their grannies trying to catch a breath in their corsets. Wieland writes about Leni´s boxing training:

“Photographs clearly reveal the extent of her transformation from a somewhat pudgy, insecure girl to a slim, confident woman with a remarkably well-toned body in keeping with the ideal of beauty in her era. The vogue of the short straight line, emphasizing a woman´s legs and negating the female form, had been superseded by a renewed emphasis on feminine curves on a slim, sporty body. The modern silhouette could no longer be attained by means of whalebone corsets and girdles, it had to be acquired by engaging in sports. “The modern dress is far too light, too thin, too distinct in it lines to allow for false pretenses” Vogue magazine announced in 1928…This message was no mere fashion dictate. The war had a sobering influence on the relationship between the sexes.”

This paragraph also outlines another commonality: both lost weight to keep with the ideals of the time. Leni by exercising to the point of breaking her knee and ending her career as a dancer, Marlene by essentially starving herself with the occasional bouts of “Roman style of eating” as it was called then. And yes, I am speaking about the good old shoveling of the finger down the throat. Not eating suited Marlene´s working culture a lot since that meant that she would not need a lunch break. Win win! It has to be said that for Marlene this only happened when she went to Hollywood, it would not have crossed her mind to go on a diet in Berlin. If you see the blue angel and then Morocco you can see her transformation as well.

Peen and poon rides galore.

Should we get juicy right away? Of course, we should! Both were verrrrry promiscuous ladies, dickmagnets galore and I am talking famous dicks here. All the famous dick wanted to get in there and a lot did get in there. And while Marlene was a card-carrying lover of both puss and peen, also Leni was rumored to occasionally ditch a ride on a peen for a sexy scissoring session. By now you should know I love a good alliteration so be in the know that this was simply code for “engaging in lesbian activites” what they did exactly, we dunno. And yeah, I also know that scissoring is less of a thing for gay women than we would think, overrepresented in porn for the male gaze, blaaaaa.

That being said Leni totally looks like a scissorer.

A story as old as film: directors falling for their lead actresses.

It is also interesting what kind of men were besotted with the two actresses. In the beginning of her career both profited from the fact that their first directors fell head over heels in love with them.  The director falling in love with his lead actress would become a staple in filmmaking for decades to come. It´s gorgeous when it works (Tom Tykwer´s “Run Lola run”) and terrible when it does not (Darren Arronofsky´s “mother”. Ouch.)

 So, Joseph von Sternberg fell for Marlene, Arnold Fanck fell for Leni. The thing is that Joseph von Sternberg crushing hard on Marlene helped Marlene a lot more than Arnold Fanck´s infatuation for Leni. Or maybe it both helped them but in very different ways. As written a lot in my previous articles, Joseph von Sternberg was the master of lighting, and he transmitted his knowledge to Marlene. Marlene did bring all the raw material with her, but she was nevertheless shaped by Joseph von Sternberg. Unlike Marlene, Leni also did not rub fuck parts with Fanck. While Sternberg taught Marlene a lot about lighting (everything) and also allowed her to join him at the editing table, Fanck showed Leni everything there was to learn about moviemaking. This was due to the specifics of mountain movies the genre that Fanck and Leni became famous for. Mountain movies were something in between documentary and adventure movie, a genre very popular at the time in Germany. Making mountain movies was a lot more dangerous than making regular movies so Fanck taught the entire crew everything. In case of emergency everybody was supposed to cover for everyone. Meaning Leni learned how to handle a camera. Whether Fanck knew what kind of weapon he gave Helene we will probably never know. Getting some acting experience and learning the ropes of filmmaking was everything Leni could squeeze out of Fanck. Unlike Marlene, Leni thus had no reason to rub fuck parts with Fanck. According to her, Fanck was madly in love with her.

“by the way Fanck grew more deeply in love with me day by day. He showered me with gifts, especially editions of Hölderlin and Nietzsche, woodcuts by Käthe Kollwitz and graphics by contemporary artists such as Heinrich Zille and George Grosz”[1]

I have to come up with a disclaimer though, the late Leni constantly rambled about all the men who were falling for her, she even claimed that Joseph von Sternberg wanted her for the blue angel. “She figured Dietrich was to be jealous of her, she even claimed that Dietrich threatened to kill herself. When Riefenstahl visited von Sternberg during his rehearsals in Babelsberg, she reported that Dietrich sat down on the barrel and “offered an unobstructed view of everything she ought to be hiding” Von Sternberg, Riefenstahl claimed furiously tried to bring her to senses, whereupon Riefenstahl a decorous young woman, decided it would be better to stop visiting the studio.”[2]

I loled hard at this. Marlene threatening suicide? Over Leni betabitch Riefenstahl? Please. As for the Pussyflashing: As explained amply, Marlene knew the power of sex and she also lived in the sexualized Weimar, and some would argue the oversexualized Weimar (but more on that maybe in a separate blogpost), so that is possible.

Not even at the end of her life did lawless Leni take the high road. When she has a photoshooting with Helmut Newton at the end of her life, she once again mouthfarted that she always had the better legs than Marlene.

While Marlene was obviously the uncrowned queen of Berlin, the one that Nazi-Germany tried to woo, but could not, in some ways her script was a lot more foreseeable.

It very much seems that unlike Marlene, Leni slept with men she felt attracted too. Marlene slept with hmm… basically all of her costars. Men or women. She did admire Joseph von Sternberg for the genius that he was. “She liked his extravagant style of dress and behavior, and admired his divine and demonic power which enabled her to become the woman she had never dared to be”[3] and she probably relished in the feeling that someone of his status was wanting her so badly, but did she find him sexually attractive? Hmm..-Did Marlene felt attracted to all of her co-stars? I am not sure. I know this differs slightly from the articles I previously wrote where I was dead sure that Marlene was a very sexual person. But since then, I read even more about Marlene and I rewatched a few movies but I came to the conclusion that what Marlene wanted was being wanted. I mainly came to this conclusion after reading about other women of her time, mainly Leni. Because in a way Leni´s sexuality was a lot more transgressive than Marlene´s for the sole reason that she was a woman in National Socialism, but she was a career woman, childfree wore her hair short and not in long braids like the other Nazi women did. And also, due to the fact that she rubbed fuck parts with hunky athletes because for her men had to look a certain way.

Thirstrapping superstuds for Leni.

Leni had a type and it was manly men and not Fanck-like creatures. Yep, Leni did see the real Arnold Fanck, not the adventurer who threw himself into the world of sports and founded the adventurous genre mountain movie but the sickish boy who was shielded from everything by his parents and treated for asthma and tuberculosis. Riefenstahl´s aestheticism is interesting to me due to the fact that she sexualized men´s bodies, in a way that is rarely seen even today. Although looking at triumph of the will you realize how skinny the men were, nevertheless they were still extremely sculpted and muscular, nothing in comparison to nowadays beefcakes but it´s clear how she put a premium on lion-hearted men with athletic bodies. Athletic muscular men, were also her sexual predilection. So much that she broke the rules and did not sleep with her director as the meta-script would dictate for actresses just starting out on the scene, but a hunky co-star.

Karin Wieland also writes

“It cannot have been his physical appearance that drew Riefenstahl to Hitler, because he was certainly not the type of man she went for. She favored well-built men with broad shoulders, weather-beaten faces, and prominent muscles. Hitler by contrast was pallid and flabby and always carried a whip which made him look oddly effeminate. “[4]

Leni would not bed someone who looks like they are about to do the Macarena.

Hitler liked his pieces “on the younger side” to quote good old Trump when refering to Epstein´s groomed army of young girls. Well they were not underage, but Eva Braun was 23 years younger than Hitler.  And Leni too liked her army of hunks young and crispy. And the young and crispy liked her too. Cameraman Heinz von Jaworsky, 8 years her junior would decades later still go into raptures about how sexy Leni was. But just like a female Leonardo Di Caprio, Leni´s pieces became increasingly younger and instead of becoming a good ole German granny she dated a piece, 40 years younger than her. A professional and romantic relationship that would last until the end of her life.

 But less manly than Hitler was the shrieking shorty Goebbels whom she despised. Probably because he treated her badly after she rebuked him. She did flirt with Göring though and maybe Hitler was actually the one who got away. Fact is that Leni had access to Hitler, like very few did. And apparently she did so without offering the dazzling dictator a dignified dance without pants.

“She dealt only with Hitler´s secretary, that is she had direct access to him. She used his access to clever advantage, if she could not obtain something, she threatened to lodge a complaint. Then she would say `it will happen immediately`and it did.[5]

Promiscuous Patty or thirsty Thelma?

Marlene did not have a type, and in a way we can also interpret her sexually promiscuous behavior as desperation. How badly did Marlene need to be wanted? Before anyone accuses me of slut-shaming or gives me a sermon about women engaging in promiscuous behavior and how they do that because they feel like it. Yeah, sure I get it, if you are a promiscuous woman because you have a voracious appetite for sex, more power to you! But, if you engage in promiscuous behavior because you crave the attention and the feeling of being wanted and not out of an intrinsic sexual attraction, your motives for acting so, are not stemming from a voracious sexual appetite. It is said that there are basically three types of porn starts. Those that do it for the money, those that do it for the sex and those that do it because they crave the attention. The last category of performers usually won´t thrive. Marlene was not a porn star, but I guess you do not even need me to come up with a gazillion commonalities with the porn and the film industry! And with this odd analogy I am going to leave it!

Bis Spätersilie

Yours truly

Leni doing some modeling. You can see that she is a pretty lady with a bangin bod´but even reputable fashion photographers could not make her come alive on pictures. She also used to be a dancer but is it just me or does she look like she has no rhythm at all.

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[1] Wieland, p.86

[2] Wieland, p.98

[3] Wieland, p.144

[4] Wieland, p.124

[5] Wieland, p. 281