I heartily despise the Americans' "Leelee Mar-lay-nee" (who stole that song from Lale Andersen anyway), that effing dyke! Was there really any NEED baring her legs to American GIs while her brothers (metaphorically speaking) were dying in Russia?
Superfluous to say supporting the American war effort was the right and honourable thing to do, but it wouldn't have been exactly... detrimental to it had she not made an indecent show of herself and saved the poor, sex-starved guys an itchy time? (But hey, what prickteaser could resist SUCH an opportunity...) Then again, she was such a pathetically bad singer that she somehow HAD to do it, I guess, to distract from her poor performance.
She was incredibly overrated as an artist and a beauty, a war profiteer, an opportunist, an exhibitionist and she would have jumped on any bandwagon furthering her career. So many Jews who, different from her, HAD suffered came back to Germany after the war. What did her pompous "...never on German soil again!" do for her but letting her lap up some brownie points from Americans and politically correct Germans? Germany had become a seventh-rate-entity when it came to arts and entertainment anyway after the war (and deservedly so)... Gosh, her antigermanism was such a cheap shot.
"Marlene showing her loyalty to the 3rd Division". I've never seen a more absurd euphemism. Loyalty my behind! When I walk the dogs in bad weather I put my loyalties in green gumboots.
However, happy birthday, Marlene, wherever you are. I hope for you it's in a place of eternal wrinklefreeness!
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A Jack Kirby anecdote: Kirby served in Patton's army group till he was invalided out (frozen feet) in the winter of '44. He remembered a number of unbelievably absurd scenes from the war (one day, he swears that some German troopers lined up with his own comrades to get an American lunch), of which one that stuck in his memory was this: there was his unit, exhausted from a long march and some fighting, muddy, wet and stinky. An officer appears out of nowhere and orders them to go see Marlene Dietrich. Someone tries to talk sense to the officer - the men have had hard duty, they're tired, they need rest and washing - and he starts yelling along the lines of, we've got Marlene Dietrich here, now go and watch her! I don't suppose that was her fault, just some jumped-up self-important twerp such as all armies have; but Mr. Kirby used to wonder, and I would too, just what kind of satisfaction would have given her to be performing for a bunch of filthy, half-dead GIs who wanted nothing more than a good sleep.
That is a good question and the answer would support my "attention whore" theory.
Gosh, it will never cease to amaze me how that entirely talent-free woman could become a superstar.
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