Dietrich or Treat

Marlene, black-wigged, eyes beholders
Our main man's grown big as some boulders
But his wistful, sad gaze
Through the mist of past days
(And chain-smoked cigars) sadly smoulders.

David Cairns


Marlene Dietrich and Orson Welles in Touch of Evil (1958).

Any Lust Requests?

Miss Dietrich is peddling her bod
A streetwalking, bed-hopping broad
Then when hired as a spy
She's a liar, quite sly
But gets beat by the dread firing squad.

David Cairns                 



Marlene Dietrich is given a last cigarette in Dishonored (Josef von Sternberg; 1931). Barry Norton is the young Lieutenant.

Catherine Was Great

We're tempted by Sternberg's blonde starlet
An empress who yearns to be harlot
She's laid a battalion
And maybe a stallion
An attempt that has made her turn scarlet.

David Cairns


Josef von Sternberg's The Scarlet Empress (1934) does not show Catherine the Great (Marlene Dietrich) getting amorous in a stable, but the script throws in several teasing allusions to this apocryphal rumor.

My Bare Lady

He chiseled, and hammered and scraped
A vision of damsel undraped
The model's not shown,
But the body in stone
Is in sizzling, glamorous shape.



Cleverly finessing the censors, Brian Aherne sculpts Marlene Dietrich in The Song of Songs (Rouben Mamoulian; 1933).