And the award for Most Depressing Old Pop Song goes to Marlene Dietrich. If such a thing did exist, Dietrich would have a cabinet full of them (right next to the liquor). Sunshine and lollipops she was not. There have been plenty of stars who hid kinky personal lives underneath a wholesome image, but Dietrich never made that pretense. That’s not to say that she wasn’t a classy person who kept her life as private as possible. She created an image that hinted at dark and sexy secrets, which was not at odds with her personality, unlike many stars who were shepherded into portraying an image they didn’t even relate to. Singing some of the raunchiest and/or darkest songs that could slip past the Hayes Code was part of that.
Marlene Dietrich was a very naughty lady. She was way ahead of her time, and it was not a well-kept secret that she explored life to the fullest, so to say. Her aura of decadence was her appeal. She was not much as a singer, in technical terms, but her songs remain priceless. Many of them are frankly filthy, barely disguised by euphemism. In this case, feel safe in assuming that when she speaks of love it’s not holding hands and pancake breakfasts she’s thinking of. It’s slightly shocking; we don’t associate the 1930′s with blatancy like this. Blatant racism, for sure. Blatant sexuality, not so much. Here, for instance, she practically announces to the world that she learned her kissing skills by practicing on other women. Which she totally did. Not everyone could get away with it, true, but Marlene Dietrich could.
What a naughty song! It’s all about fucking sailors, if you didn’t get that. Not a real acceptable topic in the 1950s. Of course, only Marlene Dietrich could get away with something like that. For her to brag about not coming home at night, well, that suited her femme fatale persona just fine. Not to mention that people’s sense of propriety took a nosedive during the war years. Servicing service members was just another part of the war effort, a morale booster for everyone involved. Because folks naturally get sluttier when they’re living in the constant shadow of obliteration. Marlene Dietrich became a glamorous personification of the ballsy, tough wartime woman, a woman who worked as hard as a man and knew how to cut loose afterwards. Dietrich was as free spirited and liberated a broad as the times allowed. Heck, she was a wild one even by today’s standards. But she never allowed her sexy persona get in the way of being taken seriously, or being seen as a moral person. She certainly proved herself a hero in WWII. Having lived and worked in America since 1930, she became a citizen in 1939, refusing Hitler’s invitation to return to the motherland. Throughout the war she sold more war bonds than any other star, traveled to the front lines to entertain the troops and worked with the OSS on musical propaganda. For that work she earned the Medal of Freedom, being the first woman to receive that honor. I don’t know if this song was originally recorded in that era, or if she recorded it at the time she filmed Witness for the Prosecution in 1957, but I think it’s a great bawdy memento of the times either way.
This song is filthy. There’s not a dirty word in it, but there’s not a doubt what Marlene Dietrich is talking about when she says she’s a “fast movin’ gal who likes ‘em slow.” Dietrich was one of Hollywood’s most boldly sexual stars, known as a femme fatale onscreen and off. It’s rare in our slut-shaming culture for a woman to be celebrated for her conquests, and Dietrich is one of those rare women. She reportedly seduced everyone from JFK to Greta Garbo, and then some. Lucky for her she lived in the pre-tabloid era, when the studios, in exchange for complete control over a star’s professional life, worked mightily to keep their private scandals safe from the prying eyes of the public. Thus stars back then were free to conduct themselves with utmost depravity without the awkwardness of having their every drunken fumble documented, broadcast and criticized before millions of people. Some scandals, like the Lana Turner stabbing, couldn’t be covered up, but most of what we know now didn’t become public until relatively recently. The full extent of Dietrich’s exploits weren’t known until her daughter’s memoir, published after the star’s death. But we didn’t have to know the details. Dietrich’s persona was saucy enough there was never any need for names to be named. The characters she played and the songs she sang weren’t too far from reality. She really was as tough, smart and liberated as a woman could be, years ahead of her time. When she sings about her desires there’s no pretense of innocence. Some stars led double lives, like Doris Day, whose clean-scrubbed image belied the hard times she’s suffered privately. Marlene Dietrich’s image as a glamorous, dangerous, smart talking broad who took what she wanted may have been exaggerated and polished by Hollywood mythmaking, but it wasn’t entirely untrue. Maybe that’s why her memory is still so strong with us.
“… Never wanted to/what am I to do?/ I can’t help it.”
So goes one of the most famous songs of all time. It springs, in its most known iteration, from the 1930 German film The Blue Angel, from which also sprang its singer Marlene Dietrich. In the movie Dietrich is a sexy cabaret girl who seduces, marries and thoroughly emasculates a priggish professor. It was a bit racy, from Dietrich’s miles-of-leg-showing costumes to her maneater persona. The song is also quite racy, for when she sings offhandedly about flitting from one love to another, it is in the roundabout parlance of the times the clearest declaration of sexual independence she could be allowed. Back then, in nifty prude doublespeak all things carnal were disguised as love and romance. To sing about having an endless parade of loves is to sing about having an endless parade of lovers. Which Dietrich did with a vengeance – she took down half of Hollywood, male and female.
Since Marlene Dietrich made Falling In Love Again a splash, it’s been covered by all the usual suspects; from Billie Holiday in the forties, to Doris Day and Nina Simone in the sixties, to big shooters like Christina Aguilera more recently. The Beatles used to play it in concert, back when they could still play audible concerts. There’s a recording of William S. Burroughs croaking it in the original German. Bryan Ferry and Marianne Faithfull covered it, because that stuff is catnip to them both. All those versions are honorable – it’s hard to screw up such a classic piece of songwriting. Even Xtina’s version is unexpectedly good. But for me, the definitive Falling In Love Again will always be Klaus Nomi’s. Who but a Nomi would know that an age-old slice of Weimar was meant to be reborn as a disco homage to an entirely different Sodom and Gomorrah, worlds away?
It appears that in the 1940s there was a shortage of songs being written. Everytime someone wrote a good one a dozen artists would jump in and record it. Come Rain Or Come Shine was recorded five times in 1946, the year it was written. Since then it’s been covered by every one of the usual suspects: Holiday, Fitzgerald, Vaughan, Garland, Sinatra, Minnelli, er, Jack Kerouac…all have covered it. With the extreme songwriting drought going on, there must have been terrible catfights over who got to record new material first. It’s a well known rumour that Ol’ Blue Eyes, for one, was involved in clandestine black market song smuggling.
From the 1939 film Destry Rides Again. In 1939 filmmakers weren’t concertned much with versimilitude. Hence, sparkly cowgirl outfits. Dietrich was a real trooper and managed to bring some sexiness and glamour to even the silliest costumes. Dietrich had an incredible life, and she was always far ahead of her time. She lived and loved freely, thought for herself and didn’t care too much for conventions. Her roles and songs always reflected her own attitudes. She was often cast as a bad girl, but one with brains and heart. When most other stars warbled about love and romance, many of her signature songs were raunchy, or had dark themes. Her greatest hits include songs about war, death, sexual prowess (his), sexual largesse (hers), gold digging, capital punishment, smuggling, and drinking and that’s just off the top of my head. At a time when fun things like drinking and smoking were still considered unseemly for nice ladies, Dietrich popularized this perky little number about boozing her way to the grave.
Marlene Dietrich was a rock star, years before her time. Besides churning out a string of films spanning decades, she cut a handful of albums. When the film roles dried up, she found a second career as a cabaret act. She was a performer of the Can she sing?/Does it matter? school. No, she wasn’t a very good vocalist, but she was a smashing singer, by sheer force of personality.
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