Stunning Portraits of a Very Young Marlene Dietrich in the 1920s

Marie Magdalene “Marlene” Dietrich (December 27, 1901 – May 6, 1992) was a German-born American actress and singer whose career spanned nearly 7 decades. Dietrich’s family nicknamed her “Lena,” “Lene,” or “Leni.” Aged about 11, she combined her first two names to form the name “Marlene.”

Dietrich attended the Auguste-Viktoria Girls’ School from 1907 to 1917 and graduated from the Victoria-Luise-Schule (today Goethe-Gymnasium) in Berlin-Wilmersdorf in 1918. She studied the violin[ and became interested in theater and poetry as a teenager. A wrist injury curtailed her dreams of becoming a concert violinist, but by 1922 she had her first job playing violin in a pit orchestra for silent films at a Berlin cinema. She was fired after only four weeks.

The earliest professional stage appearances by Dietrich were as a chorus girl on tour with Guido Thielscher’s Girl-Kabarett vaudeville-style entertainments and in Rudolf Nelson revues in Berlin. In 1922, Dietrich auditioned unsuccessfully for theatrical director and impresario Max Reinhardt’s drama academy; however, she soon found herself working in his theaters as a chorus girl and playing small roles in dramas.

Dietrich’s film debut was a small part in the film The Little Napoleon (1923). She met her future husband Rudolf Sieber on the set of Tragedy of Love in 1923.

Dietrich continued to work on stage and in film both in Berlin and Vienna throughout the 1920s. On stage, she had roles of varying importance in Frank Wedekind’s Pandora's Box, William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and George Bernard Shaw’s Back to Methuselah and Misalliance. It was in musicals and revues such as Broadway, Es Liegt in der Luft, and Zwei Krawatten, however, that she attracted the most attention. By the late 1920s, Dietrich was also playing sizable parts on screen, including roles in Café Elektric (1927), I Kiss Your Hand, Madame (1928), and The Ship of Lost Souls (1929).

In 1929, Dietrich landed her breakthrough role of Lola Lola, a cabaret singer who caused the downfall of a hitherto respectable schoolmaster (played by Emil Jannings), in the UFA production of The Blue Angel (1930) shot at Babelsberg film studios. Josef von Sternberg directed the film and thereafter took credit for having “discovered” Dietrich. The film introduced Dietrich’s signature song “Falling in Love Again,” which she recorded for Electrola. She made further recordings in the 1930s for Polydor and Decca Records.

Here’s a collection of 16 stunning vintage portraits of a very young and beautiful Marlene Dietrich in the 1920s: