My Life – Hommage à Marlene Dietrich is a chypre perfume that reflects the self-confident side of Marlene Dietrich. In general, the chypre scents are highly treasured by perfume connoisseurs – because of their refined aroma mix of tangy and sweet. (Probably the most famous of all chypre perfumes is „Cabochard“ by Grès). 

The head note of My Life is fresh and delicate from the essences of orange blossoms, wisteria and pink grapefruit. The fragrance is given a special kick by the warm, sensuous rum extract which then blends into the heart note with precious Sambac jasmine, heliotrope and cedar wood. The base note reveals the touch of the orient in this perfume, with seductive woody aromas such as Patchouli, sandalwood and vetiver, as well as beguiling resins like labdanum and benzoin.

The fragrance creation My Life is the work of the Parisian perfumer Marie Salamagne from the House of Firmenich.

 

MARLENE DIETRICH – MY LIFE

Or: The Desire to be a Soldier

 

The paths of life of the last living goddesses, whether Audrey Hepburn or Maria Callas, Romy Schneider or Marlene Dietrich, have one thing in common: along those paths they were faced with many barriers. It was overcoming the barriers that made each of these women so strong. The attitude of „against all odds“ was an inherent element of their rise. 

Marlene Dietrich, born as Maria Magdalene Dietrich, auditioned for acceptance to the acting school of Max Reinhardt in Berlin and was refused. She eked out a living as a revue girl for a while and then applied again. This time with success. „In her work”, Billy Wilder once said about Marlene, „she was like a soldier. Outstandingly disciplined, always ready to help others.“ That was not a matter of coincidence. Her mother came from a watch dynasty; her father was a police lieutenant. Her step-father, whom her mother married after the death of her first husband, was a grenadier lieutenant. Precision and discipline were part of Marlene’s heritage. According to Marlene, her mother was „a good General“, teaching her child to love her responsibilities and never to complain. „A soldier’s daughter never cries.“ And with the same perseverance that Marlene had shown when practicing Bach on her violin for up to eight hours a day – until her career ended because of tendonitis – she learned her roles, took daily boxing lessons from a Turkish trainer and did exactly what her discover commanded. The director, Josef von Sternberg, who made her a cult figure overnight as Lola in „The Blue Angel“ truly formed this young woman from Berlin. She followed him to the USA because he wanted her to, she lost 30 pounds because he so desired and she did her make-up, clothed herself, had her hair styled the way he felt it should be done. She gave up a lot for her career, but she never relinquished her personality and in public she never lost her self-control. In answer to a journalist’s question – which of her fellow human beings she liked least, she said, „People who cannot pull themselves together and who do not understand how to practice their profession.“  Her life demonstrated that she could do both. After a steep rise came an abrupt descent: in 1933 in her adopted country America, she was declared Box Office Poison and fell to a ranking of 126th in the list of stars.

Yet she made it once again to the top. Twenty years later, at the age of fifty-two, Marlene Dietrich was the highest paid star in entertainment worldwide. For her solo-show in the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas she earned 30 000 dollars a week. She never lost her strength of will, that wonder weapon against frailty. She overcame three stage accidents by having herself pushed in a wheelchair to just behind the stage, then appeared and performed as the person everyone wanted to see in her. Those who lived with her experienced just how much of a soldier she was: Jean Gabin called her „La Prussienne“ – „the Prussian“. The same was true for those who worked with her. Hitchcock declared, both in shock and admiration: „Miss Dietrich is a professional. She is a professional star, cameraman, art director, lighting technician, costume designer, hair dresser, make-up artist, producer and director.“ She was abundantly compassionate but never self-pitying. During the filming of „The Lady is Willing“ in Hollywood, as she was carrying her film baby in her arms, she stepped on a toy and while falling turned her body so as to protect the child. In doing so, she broke her ankle. The pain and the cast did not hinder her from completing the shooting as planned. „Whenever she is called to account for something“, said Odette Miron-Boire, Marlene’s housekeeper for seventeen years, “she behaves like a heroine – and, between us, she is one.“

In the eyes of her critics, her greatest role was that of the Prussian widow of a general in „Judgement at Nuremberg.“ She was sixty at the time.  In her own opinion, her greatest role was entertaining the troops of the American army, which she volunteered to do in 1941, after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour. In boots, a steel helmet and an Eisenhower jacket, she trudged through mud and ruins from 1944 to 1947. For three years she, the daughter of the 71st Infantry Regiment, sang for the GI’s in Alaska and Sicily, in North Africa and Holland, in Czechoslovakia and France, England, Belgium and Germany. She never complained when, in the Ardennes, her hands nearly froze and within minutes transformed herself from a filthy soldier into a glittering goddess who gave the soldiers the will to survive. „She liked this life of a warrior. She was one of the boys“, recalls lieutenant colonel Robert Armstrong. Revered like Joan of Arc, she marched along the Champs Elysées at the end of the war in an American uniform. She was decorated with the Medal of Freedom and with three crosses of the French Legion of Honour.

Marlene Dietrich was, however, not a soldier who blindly obeyed orders. She refused to accept the National Socialists’ attempt to woo her and, after swearing the oath to the American Constitution in 1939, she read in the „Stürmer“ news, „The German-born actress Marlene Dietrich has spent so many years among the Jews in Hollywood that she has now become an American citizen.“ Yet she supported her old companion Maurice Chevalier, who after 1945 was snubbed and maligned in France because he had sung for the German soldiers during the Third Reich and was under suspicion for having collaborated with the Nazis. His tediously won acquittal was largely due to Marlene’s efforts. She was convinced that he had sung his chansons in Germany to encourage the French prisoners of war there.

Marlene Dietrich remained true to her friends and to herself. When asked which people she admired the most, she declared: „ Those who do not take themselves so seriously.“ Her fame and her funeral were not important to her at all. It would have pleased her to know that her coffin was covered with the French flag, however, because that is the way soldiers are buried.