My Passion – Hommage à Marlene Dietrich is a deliberately sensuous, delightful perfume that brings out the „vamp“ in a woman. The perfume already begins its seduction with the head note of apple, cinnamon and lilies of the valley. The floral heart note is filled with enticing orange blossoms and salicylate. All its warmth and passion with rich portions of ambra, vanilla and musk unfold in the base note of My Passion.

 The perfumer Sidonie Lancesseur from the House Robertet composed My Passion.

 

MARLENE DIETRICH – MY PASSION

Or: The good Fortune of being compassionate

Passion has two meanings: suffering and rapture. Both can be felt among the last goddesses – from Marilyn Monroe to Marlene Dietrich. They suffered and they glowed. And they concealed a private person under the armour of professionalism.

In her career, Marlene had everything under control, every movement she made, every bat of the eye, every nuance of her voice – of which Hemingway said: „If she had nothing more than her voice, she could break your heart with it.“ She broke his heart and the hearts of director Josef von Sternberg, air force general Ernst Udet, actor Willi Forst, composer Peter Kreuder, author Erich Maria Remarque and screen heroes Gary Cooper and James Stewart. The list of her male lovers is remarkable, and that of her female lovers as well. One of them, Mercedes de Acosta, a script writer of boyish build with intense black hair framing a white face, knew what made Marlene melt: the need to be consoled. After Greta Garbo left her Mercedes for a man, Marlene dried her tears and caressed her. „You are so wonderful“, Mercedes said thankfully to her passionately compassionate friend, „it is only a week ago today that your incomparable, naughty hand opened a white rose.“ Marlene wrapped her passion – as did others – in a veil of secrecy. She did not need to list the names of her lovers – as Leporello did for Don Juan – to prove her power as a seductress. She surrendered sexually in order to experience love and devotion „because if a woman does not sleep with a man who loves her, he leaves her.“ Marlene, whose coolness heated her admirers, was a warm, motherly friend and for many men more of a buddy than an object of desire.

There was only one man whom Marlene referred to as the love of her life. Not her husband Rudolf Sieber, with whom she had her only child, her daughter Maria Heidede. He was young, handsome, blond and clever, but very soon uninteresting. No, it was a man with a thick nose, reddish skin, the charm of a farmer and totally lacking in success that she fell for – when she was in her thirties. He was four years younger, had been a French soldier and just barely managed to escape from the Germans, then fled to Hollywood, where he wanted to become a film star. His name was Jean Gabin and he became Marlene’s passion in both meanings of the word. Before she began to suffer because of him, they were ablaze for each other. She gave parties for him, introduced him to everyone, worked on his English with him, cooked Chou farci, cabbage rolls filled with ground beef to ease his homesickness, promoted his career. While she was entertaining the troops, he sent her love letters every day, visited her in the midst of the desolation, kissed away the horror. After the war they resided in Paris in the Hotel Lancaster. Gabin had no more obligations to the world cinema, which did not affect her love for him in the least. She paid, he provided the food, she cooked, he called her „La Grande“. He knew all the secret paths taken by the black market dealers, acquiring meat which was impossible to get because of the severe rationing controls, she grilled it over a Bunsen burner that she kept hidden on top of the cupboard.  They made a film together, but it was a flop – yet they remained lovers. He followed her jealously, she kicked him out – then let him back in again. They fought and then kissed and made up. At 45 Marlene became pregnant from him but felt she was too old to have a child and flew to the USA to get an abortion. Gabin followed her, tried to change her mind, but she refused.  They had been together for ten years – with interruptions. It was only then that they broke up. He married a woman who gave him children right away. Marlene summed up the whole thing with the laconic words: „I was stupid.“

Yet the tragedy continued because their love had not died.  „He was good and understanding – the way any woman would want“, commented Marlene about him as an old woman in her memories and, she admitted to Madame Odette, she hoped to be reunited with him in the hereafter.

Whether she followed a man without asking a single question, as with Remarque or sang to him on the edge of the bathtub, like to Hemmingway or if, as it happened at the age of sixty-three, she turned the head of someone like the very young Australian journalist Hugh Curnow, replacing his half-empty tin valise with four luxury suitcases filled with custom-tailored suits – all her other lovers remained insignificant in comparison to her passion for Jean Gabin. Marlene expressed it without self-pity but in a cheeky Berlin-humour type of way. „Until the day he dies he will never forget my excellent stew. It was his favourite dish.“ But the night in her heart could not always be concealed. The pain of love never diminished – even with increasing age.

Once a reporter who had found out where Marlene lived in Paris, dressed himself in the uniform and cap of a Dior delivery man and, with a package in hand, rang the doorbell at Avenue Montaigne Nr. 12. A woman with stringy hair wearing worn-out slippers and a pale pink bathrobe that had been mended often, opened the door and declared that Madame had gone out.  He engaged her in conversation, she was affable, complained a bit about the Diva, revealed a few financial indiscretions and expressed some banal peeves. Then the journalist asked, „Is it not true that this apartment had been a gift from Jean Gabin to the Diva?“ The old woman in her bathrobe slammed the door in his face. If he had put his ear to the door, he would have heard her sobbing. Marlene had mastered the role of her own servant perfectly, but the mention of Jean Gabin destroyed her control completely. 

She knew that suffering is the other side of passion and it was exactly that which gave her the capacity to be a loving woman. „Marlene understands more about love”, Ernest Hemingway said, „than anyone else in the world“.