Marlene Dietrich filmography Marlene Dietrich filmography Marlene Dietrich was a German-American actress. In the 1920s, she acted on the Berlin stage and in silent films, making her film debut in 1922. She was propelled to international fame by director Josef von Sternberg, who cast her as Lola-Lola in "The Blue Angel" (1930). The film's commercial success brought her a contract with Paramount Pictures in the United States. Paramount sought to market Dietrich as a German answer to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Swedish sensation, Greta Garbo. Her first American film, "Morocco" (1930), directed by Sternberg, earned Dietrich her only Oscar nomination. She would appear in several other
Marlene Dietrich in the German city of Belsen throughout the war years, running a cinema frequented by Nazi officers and officials who oversaw the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Dietrich's mother remained in Berlin during the war; her husband moved to a ranch in the San Fernando Valley of California. Dietrich vouched on behalf of her sister and her sister's husband, sheltering them from possible prosecution as Nazi collaborators. Dietrich would later omit the existence of her sister and her sister's son from all accounts of her life, completely disowning them and claiming to be an only child. Dietrich received the Medal of Freedom