Marlene Dietrich - Did they meet?

Some stories and rumours do exist of possible meetings of those two icons from the silver screen. Often they are hard to believe, because there is still this huge question above all of them: If they met, why was it not a big story in the press? It must have been a sensation. “Garbo and Dietrich, those two rivals did finally meet.”

But nothing like that does exist.In Marlene's legendary interview for Sweden TV in the early 1970s, Marlene Dietrich said that she NEVER met Garbo Below you'll find stories and reports by various personalities… if they are true or not.. make your own decision.

Garbo and Dietrich: did they meet?
 

Content

* While Garbo visited Gilbert? (mid 1930s)
* On the The Joyless Street set?
* In Hollywood via Emil Jannings?
* In California?
* In Beverly Hills via Orson Welles?
 
* At a Hollywood tennis match?
* In New York via Gus Statiras?
* In Switzerland via Brian Aherne?
* In California at Frank Sinatra's house?
* Secret meeting of Garbo and Dietrich at a resturant?

 
In the John Gilbert biography of her father, Dark Star, Leatrice Fountain related a story about a visit Garbo made to Tower Road – with a jealous Marlene Dietrich steaming at the front door while Jack and Greta talked in her car. Marlene thought that Garbo begged him to come back to her and a shocked and hurted Dietrich left the house and the situation.

John Gilbert

This encounter, Fountain admits, was unconfirmed and had been erroneously added to the manuscript by a collaborator. Gilbert's daughter now believes it to be nothing more than “a romantic fabrication.”

 
The classic German Pabst film, A joyless Street, was filmed in Berlin during February–March 1925. There was for decades this rumour that Marlene Dietrich played a minor role in this film. A dark-haired woman waiting in the butcher shop line was and still is often mistaken for Marlene.

Marlene as she looked around Joyless Street.

Garbo in Berlin

Actually it was Hertha von Walther. She had a much larger role in the original uncut version of the film.

In Hollywood via Emil Jannings? (early 1930s)

 
German actor Emil Jannings was riding high on the success of The Blue Angel, even though Dietrich had supposedly stolen it from him, he wanted Garbo to meet Dietrich. Perhaps he thought that Garbo might bring Dietrich down a couple of notches. If he indeed suggested that they meet, the introduction most likely took place at the home of Ernst Lubitsch, who also lived in Santa Monica.

Emil Jannings in The Blue Angel, 1930

There is no record of their meeting, but two months later, Dietrich asked an interviewer: “ Why do people call me a Greta Garbo? Why do they associate my name eternally with lovemaking? I have met Greta Garbo. I have seen her films. We are not the slightest bit alike. I do not concentrate on lovemaking on the screen. I am as happy to play the part of a charwoman.”

It is not known if Jannings made the impossible possible and that he made Garbo and Dietrich meet.

In California? (early 1940s)

 
Just after Marlene finished The Spoilers , Gabin went off to make a bad picture called Moontide, giving Marlene time to rest and recuperate from the rigors of their relationship...

Gabin dodged the nosy next-door neighbor, who appeared each afternoon at four in a floppy straw hat and sunglasses. The neighbor displayed fanatic devotion to the shrubbery separating the properties, creeping along and peering through for a glimpse of grass she suspected was greener than her own. Her lope was vaguely familiar, but horticulture was a previously unsuspected passion of the female Peeping Tom, whom he finally realized was Greta Garbo. 

Gabin and Dietrich

Marlene, never shy about nude swimming and sunbathing, seemed unperturbed by Garbo's spying, but Gabin was. He was jealous. He was jealous of Marlene's work... Gabin went a little insane, too. He beat her. The "though guy" persona was no pose; he used his fist when jealousy proved overwhelming. When she bought lingerie, he wanted to know for whom.

When she went to the grocery for the makings of a pot-au-feu, he was certain it was an alibi for a stew of another sort. Her men friends were potential or past alumni, her women friends might belong to the Sewing circle. Gabin was simply uncontrollably jealous.  She was amazing, puzzling, provocative...  Always seductively perfumed.

In Beverly Hills via Orson Welles? (early 1940s)

 
When it turned to the end of war, Marlene Dietrich was guest in Orson Welles house and his wife Rita Hayworth in their house in Los Angeles. Dietrich suggested Welles and succeeded to persuade a meeting with Greta Garbo arranged by him.

According to Welles, Marlene wanted only to determine, how the Swede looked after several years absence of the movies and to meet the woman who Mercedes de Acosta, Gilbert and Remarque once loved. Her own affair with the Acosta belonged meanwhile also to the past. Anyhow a party in the house of Clifton Webb in Beverly Hills was given. Welles presented the two women each other, and promptly Dietrich swarmed around Garbo and told her how inspiring she was, called Garbo “goettlich” (divine) and an “unsterbliche” (undying) MUSE.

Orson Welles

Garbo who hated blandishments exactly the same like gatherings of people, brought only a narrow smile out and a short appreciative remark, with which the maintenance should actually be terminated, but Dietrich let itself not be shaken off and increased her flattering nearly in the intolerable. Now Garbo had to endure and still said some absent-minded thanks. Finally Dietrich withdrew herself exhausted. Later in that evening Dietrich said to Welles: "Her feet are not at all as large, as one always says."  But the topic was not yet terminated. With a drink at home MD insisted on the fact that the Garbo, against the rumour, quite put up some make-up:

"She has curved eye lashes. Do you know, how long one needs, to bend around the lashes to get them that way?" Welles did not have notion, but the affair was not further pursued. Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo had nevertheless met once again; there is no reference on the fact that they met at another time.

At a Hollywood tennis match? (early 1940s)

 
One rumor is that during the 1940s, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Errol Flynn and Thomas Mann were playing tennis in Hollywood.  The son of a wealthy businessman, owned the Brentwood Country Club at one point, and during the 1940's, the family lived in Hollywood.

Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Errol Flynn and Thomas Mann

Gregory (the son) described looking out at the family's tennis court one day and seeing, no lie, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Errol Flynn and Thomas Mann playing tennis. Three of the most beautiful people in the world and a man who wrote about beauty.

In New York via Gus Statiras? (unknown date)

 
Music dealer and record producer Gus Statiras told this story about Marlene and Garbo.

"One rainy day, Miss Dietrich, attired in a yellow rain hat, coat and boots, stormed into the Liberty Music Shop demanding to see me. I was talking to and waiting on Mrs. Brian Aherne (Mary Aherne) and Miss Greta Garbo, who were seated on the sofa off at the far end of the record counter. At the other end of the counter, near the front entrance, at the top of her voice, Miss Dietrich shouted she wanted to see Mr. Statiras!

Miss Dietrich wanted me to introduce her to Miss Garbo! I dashed to Miss Dietrich and told her that would be most difficult, knowing of Miss Garbo's regard for privacy. She then went into an almost tearful speech of how she copied Miss Garbo's eye makeup style and that Miss Garbo was her inspiration, etc.; that I must take her to meet Miss Garbo.

I returned to the other end of the counter where I found the sofa had been abandoned. Miss Garbo and Mrs. Aherne slipped out into the rain through a side door at the far side of the shop. Telling Miss Dietrich that Miss Garbo had left through the side door, she dashed out of the shop into the rain looking up and down Madison Avenue for a glimpse of Miss Garbo."

In Switzerland via Brian Aherne? (1964)

 
Brian Aherne was an Oscar-nominated English actor of both stage and screen, who found success in Hollywood. During his touring days in The Barretts of Wimpole Street, long before Aherne had befriended Garbo, he was now divorced from Joan Fontaine and married to Eleonore de Liagre. The Ahernes lived in Switzerland, and visited Garbo from time to time.

Brian Aherne

In July 1964, they took her to supper with Noël Coward, who saw them again a few days later at the Geneva airport: “Brian, Eleonore and Garbo (quivering with neurosis) were on the plane.”   Eleonore once asked Jean Negulesco if he would mind dining with three ladies – the other two being Garbo and Dietrich. Negulesco liked the idea and later recalled:

“G complained about the neighbour living in the apartment over hers. Noise and copper pipes came through her ceiling. Marlene was comparing the rising prices from day to day on fruit and fresh vegetables. Two of the most famous women in the world exchanging banalities and kitchen talk!”

In California at Frank Sinatra's house? (late 1950s)

 
In the 2003 released Frank Sinatra book, Mr. S: My Life with Frank Sinatra by George Jacobs and William Stadiem, they write that Jacobs once catched Dietrich and Garbo in Sinatra's pool, swimming naked and kissing.

the book

As the right hand of Frank Sinatra from 1953 to 1968, George Jacobs arguably had one of the coolest jobs in the world at the time when Sinatra was the undisputed master of the entertainment universe. Jacobs rose from his humble beginnings in New Orleans to join Sinatra in the mansions of Beverly Hills, the penthouses of Manhattan, the palaces of Europe, the pinnacles of world power. George Jacobs saw it all, did it all.

By far the most exciting thing that happened in the Frank Sinatra house occurred when Mr S wasn't there. He would readily lend his house to anyone, even if he barely knew the object of his largesse. The case in point here was Minna Wallis, sister of producer Hal Wallis. Because of her brother's success, Minna was A-list and someone Mr S, who was a social climber, wanted to cultivate.

"He sent me down to Palm Springs to prepare the house for her and whomever she happened to bring. Boy, was I unprepared when Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo showed up. Both women were in their fifties, and the two superstars couldn't have been more natural, no make-up, no airs, no frills. Garbo had some weird dietary requests, no dairy, no animal protein, just a diet now known as 'vegan'.

I had to make a mad run back to LA, which had everything to keep the ladies happy. When I returned that evening, they couldn't have been happier. They were oblivious of me. I slipped into the house and into my room so as not to spoil their party, though I couldn't resist peeping through the blinds. What mortal could?

young Sinatra

I rarely heard Garbo talk, but I did hear her laugh. She was having a wonderful time, giggling, splashing Minna, dunking Marlene under water. They got out of the pool, but didn't dress. They savoured the privacy, the freedom, the night-time desert warmth.

Marlene lit up a cigarette, which she passed to Greta. They each took long drags, intercut with long, pregnant looks at each other. And then a coyote began to howl.

The ladies jumped in fright and retreated into the house, and the best I could do was to serve them yogurt, oatmeal, and organic honey for breakfast. At this point, even before Mr S made the cover of Time a few months hence, I had no doubt that I had the coolest job in the world."

Secret meeting of Garbo and Dietrich at a restaurant? (mid 1930s)