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Dietrich: Style and Substance

Name: Dietrich: Style and Substance
Author: Patrick O'Connor
ISBN: 9780525935339

by Patrick O'Connor

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Overview

Dietrich: Style and Substance is the first pictorial biography to examine Dietrich's unique style. Her individuality is revealed in Patrick O'Connor's meticulously researched text and in the fine selection of over 150 informal, off-screen photographs, many of them never previously published. Included are features on Dietrich's make-up, her remarkable eyebrows and her use of veils, hats, shoes and even handbags.

Patrick O'Connor charts Dietrich's evolution from her early years as an actress and cabaret chanteuse in the 1920s through her revolutionary trouser-wearing in the 1930s to her surprising return to the stage in the 1960s, when she became a symbol of glamorous survival and won the hearts of a whole new generation.

Dietrich: Style and Substance also contains the first full-scale analysis of Dietrich's recording career and includes an extensive discography spanning more than half a century, from 1928 to 1978.

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Editorials

Library Journal

Marlene Dietrich's style is favored over substance in this hagiography by the author (with Bryan Hammond) of Josephine Baker (Bulfinch Pr: Little, Brown, 1991). Dietrich's life history is briefly recapitulated in O'Connor's text, but most of the book consists of photographs--some carefully posed, some candid, and others somewhere in between. In many of the candids, Dietrich looks unattractive, but O'Connor addresses the point glancingly, if at all. According to the dust jacket copy, O'Connor ``first saw Marlene Dietrich perform . . . in 1964 and waited until 1 a.m. to get her autograph.'' This example of a fan's tribute may be suitable for some coffee tables but not many libraries.-- John Smothers, Monmouth Cty. Lib., Manalapan, N.J.