Marlene Dietrich

Rating:
Summary: Rare biography written with intelligence
Review: This is one of the best biography ever written. Much better than most of the biographies written by those famous bio writers, as it is written with intelligence (or as Dietrich will say "superior intelligence"). This is written without the usual self-pity you would expect from hype and with great insight and information. I enjoy this book very much.

Rating:
Summary: My favorite book!
Review: When I first saw the cover for this book, in 1993, I thought I was looking at a picture of Madonna! Then I opened it and found that it was about Marlene Dietrich. Still, I checked it out from my local library, and I couldn't put it down! I spent my entire summer vacation reading this book. I hardly knew anything about Dietrich--or Hollywood's Golden Age--before this. Like many young people (I was fifteen at the time), I wasn't interested in watching those "boring", old black-and-white films, but this book changed all that. Marlene is such a fascinating person, flaws and all. She is also an extremely talented one, helping with the design of her famous costumes, and even to arranging her own lighting. Riva's anecdotes about her mother and old Hollywood made me wish I could have grown up during the twenties/thirties, instead of the eighties/nineties. I highly recommend this biography, especially for young people who have yet to discover actors and films from a time long gone by.