Marlene’s Tours of Duty

The camera loved actress Marlene Dietrich; so have documentary filmmakers. There have been at least 50 documentaries on the legendary German-born star of such films as “The Blue Angel,” “Morocco,” “Destry Rides Again” and “Judgment at Nuremberg.”

The majority have focused on her stardom, her glamour, her singing career and her numerous love affairs. But a new one, “Marlene Dietrich: Her Own Song,” premiering Thursday on Turner Classic Movies, tells of her involvement in American politics and her struggles against Nazi Germany.

Besides airing the documentary, which was directed and co-produced by her grandson, J. David Riva, the cable network is celebrating the late actress’ 100th birthday with a festival of 19 of her films, which will continue every Thursday through January. Dietrich died in 1992, at age 91, in Paris, where she had lived in self-imposed exile from public view since 1976.

Narrated by Jamie Lee Curtis, “Her Own Song” explores how, during World War II, Dietrich entertained the troops more than any other performer. Signing on for two tours of duty, she put her life in jeopardy, going to the front lines to help rally morale. Dietrich lived in the camps with the soldiers and endured harsh conditions, even being stricken by frostbite at one point.

“It was about time somebody did something on her war work,” says Dietrich’s only child, Maria Riva, a noted actress on TV in the 1950s and author of the biography “Dietrich,” as well as the lavish new coffee-table book, “Marlene Dietrich: Photographs and Memories.”

“The thing was, she never publicized it. She didn’t carry a photographer with her, and when she came back [from the war], she didn’t publicize it. A lot of people don’t know she was the first civilian woman to receive the Medal of Freedom. She always used to say to me, ‘Most children inherit their medals from their fathers. You will get yours from your mother.’ For a woman, who basically in America at least was known as a glamour queen and a movie star, to be decorated by a nation--that takes her a bit out of the category of movie star, which she always detested anyway.”

Dietrich, her daughter says, finagled her way to the front. “She started out with the USO uniform,” says the 77-year-old Riva, who also entertained the troops during the war. “Of course, by the time she had been over there a few months, she was in [the soldiers’ uniform]. It was one of the ways she could get to the front without someone spotting her.”

Her mother was always a soldier, says Riva. “She was a soldier’s daughter, and she was a soldier from the moment I ever knew her. It was a soldier’s attitude in the home. Everything was geared to her duty to her profession. She considered her profession like a military duty. That is why she survived and why we are still talking about her today, I think.”

Karin Kearns, the writer and co-producer of the documentary, says that Dietrich’s political story has special resonance in light of the Sept. 11 tragedies. “We understand that there are moments in history and moments in time when standing for your convictions becomes of primary importance,” she says. “She did that. She came out of the war period broke and she didn’t care, because being there and doing this was way more important to her [than her career].”

Dietrich, though, never abandoned her love for Germany. And during the war, says David Riva, “she was fighting against her homeland, and her mother and sister were sitting there [in Germany]. She was raising money to buy bombs to drop on their heads, which, not surprisingly, caused a certain amount of conflict [within her].”

Dietrich and her mother were reunited after the end of the war, and the actress did vouch for her sister, brother-in-law and nephew, so they wouldn’t be thrown out of their house and job, operating a cinema in Belsen. But thereafter, she ceased all contact with the sister.

The cinema they ran, David Riva explains, was just 400 feet away from the infamous concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. “All the troops went there,” he says. “In Marlene’s logical point of view, there was no way on Earth that this family could not have been aware of what was happening in Bergen-Belsen.”

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“Marlene Dietrich: Her Own Song” airs Thursday at 5 and 8:30 p.m. on Turner Classic Movies. The network has rated it TV-G (suitable for all audiences). “Blonde Venus” airs at 6:30 p.m.; “Judgment at Nuremberg” at 10 p.m. and “Seven Sinners” early Friday at 1:30 a.m.