Marlene Dietrich

Initially coming to fame with her striking blonde hair and cool expressions in the silent movie era, Marlene Dietrich effectively adapted her image with the dawning of "talkies", while her cool, deep voice helped her gain much popularity as a singer too. From a privileged Berlin family which owned a clockmaking firm, she studied violin and by 1922 was playing in the orchestra pit for silent movies. She then became a chorus girl in various vaudeville shows, making her movie debut with a small role in the movie So Sind die Männer. Dietrich continued to appear on stage and screen through the 1920s and made her big breakthrough in 1929, playing a cabaret singer in the successful movie Lola-Lola, which included her signature song Falling In Love Again. It led to international acclaim and a major movie contract with Paramount in Hollywood, which promoted her as a German version of Swedish movie legend Greta Garbo. She played a series of femme fatales in films like Morocco, Dishonored, Blonde Venus and Shanghai Express as she became one of Hollywood's most glamorous figures. At the approach of World War II Dietrich resisted lucrative offers to return to Germany and, an outspoken critic of the Nazi party, gained American citizenship in 1939, giving many wartime shows for Allied Troops. She subsequently changed her image by playing comedy roles in movies like Destry Rides Again, which included another of her hits, The Boys In The Back Room. From the 1950s to the 1970s she was one of the world's top cabaret acts, popularising a broad variety of material from I Can't Give You Anything But Love to Where Have All The Flowers Gone? Her career ended when she broke her thigh after falling off stage in 1975 and she died in 1992.