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 Israel. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Dietrich the ninth-greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema. Dietrich was born on at Leberstraße 65 in the neighborhood of Rote Insel in Schöneberg, now a district of Berlin. Her mother, Wilhelmina Elisabeth Josephine ("née" Felsing), was from an affluent Berlin family who owned a jewelry and clock-making firm. Her father, Louis Erich Otto Dietrich, was a police lieutenant. Dietrich had one sibling, Elisabeth, who was one year older. Dietrich's father died in 1907. His best friend, Eduard von Losch, an aristocratic first lieutenant in the Grenadiers, courted Wilhelmina and married her