Marlene by Marlene Dietrich Page B

other side of the Atlantic. But since he was the main reason for my coming to America and I had a blind trust in him, I stuck out the bad weather. This German ship was the last connection with my past, and for a long time I was not going to hear my mother tongue again.
    At that time I didn’t know that constantly speaking a foreign language would matter so much to me, although I fully mastered English in the following years.
    It was a strain for me to converse in English, and since von Sternberg improved not only my grammar but my accent as well, I was sometimes insufferable. Anyway, so he claimed. Mostly he would refuse to speak German with me. But after all I had Resi and, on the telephone, my husband. I had sent him three or four telegrams a day in German from the ship. Money means nothing to me when feelings are involved. Besides I thought I would be earning lots of it in America. Innocence, innocence, will you ever leave me?
    It never left me.
    In the course of my life I have squandered entire fortunes. They struck me as ridiculous, and they perished under the pile of checks that I would sign every day. I responded to the appeals of foundations and charity organizations without actually knowing what they were all about. It didn’t matter to me. It’s so easy to write your signature on a check.
    I also made long telephone calls from the United States and sent out telegrams all day long. I learned how to spell my German messages in English, and to this day I wonder who taught me that. But it was necessary since the postal employees spoke no German.
    Later, I also sent telegrams in English which made things easier. But I could never manage to be brief on the phone. I spoke with my daughter in the morning and in the evening. Otherwise Ibusied myself as best I could. I cooked, worked in the garden of my little house, waited to be called to the studio, tried to get used to the strange environment and to the homesickness that constantly plagued me—especially in the morning when the sun was shining and the palm trees stood motionless and I stood in front of the house on the lookout for the mailman. Waiting for the mailman was to become a habit during all the years spent far from my country, at any rate, for so long as Germany remained my country.
    When I decided to renounce my German citizenship, America opened its arms to me.
    To give up your homeland and mother tongue, even when forced to by circumstance, is an almost unendurable ordeal. Only German, this lovely language, has remained to me as a legacy. I came very close to forgetting it the more securely I settled in America and felt sufficiently at home in English. To be sure, I still don’t have a perfect mastery of English (to the degree that I would like), but I’m familiar with it now, and that’s the main thing.
    Of all the languages I know English is the most precise, which makes my work easier. With von Sternberg’s help I learned new words, new expressions every day—enough to grant the usual interviews and to survive them satisfactorily, that is, as far as the studio was concerned.
    Although I was still young, these long “conversation exercises” in a foreign language were physically difficult for me. I didn’t understand why I would almost faint from fatigue at sundown. Yet I seldom rebelled. I had a great respect for the efforts of others. Compared to the way things were to go later, the studio at that time radiated peace and tranquility. Perhaps everybody was taking a deep breath for the upcoming work on my first American film in the hope that it would be a success. At that time the postal workers were in no danger of being buried under avalanches of my fan mail. The unknown actress by the name of Marlene Dietrich wasn’t a burden for anybody, and the reverse was likewise true. My only ventures in the outside world were limited to walks to a drugstore in the neighborhood or to visits to the movies with