Dietrich and Riefenstahl: Hollywood, Berlin, and a Century in Two Lives

Dietrich and Riefenstahl: Hollywood, Berlin, and a Century in Two Lives

Karin Wieland and Shelly Frisch

#1903 of 3,809 books · #649 in Biography & Memoir

Shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography (2015).

This book was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award (Biography) and was named one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post and the Boston Globe. Marlene Dietrich and Leni Riefenstahl, born less than a year apart, lived so close to each other that Riefenstahl could see into Dietrich's Berlin apartment. Coming of age at the dawn of the Weimar Republic, both sought fame in Germany's burgeoning motion picture industry. While Dietrich's depiction of Lola-Lola in The Blue Angel catapulted her to Hollywood stardom, Riefenstahl—who missed out on the part—insinuated herself into Hitler's inner circle to direct groundbreaking if infamous Nazi propaganda films, like Triumph of the Will. Dietrich, who toured tirelessly with the USO, could never truly go home again; Riefenstahl could never shake her Nazi past. Karin Wieland examines these lives within the vicious crosscurrents of a turbulent century, exploring the modern era's most difficult questions, about illusion and mass intoxication, art and truth, courage and capitulation.