Dietrich always denied having made silent pictures. She was quo ted as saying "Only Garbo and Lilian Gish made silent pictures!"

Garbo and Lillian Gish, USA, April 1927

 
“Finally Acosta went to Garbo's house, ” said Marlene Dietrich. “And there she found that Garbo had gone away with Mamoulian instead of her. Acosta was crying, so, of course, I took her in and fed her."

  
Dietrich was riding a train from Berlin to Prague when she was interviewed by a Czechoslovakian reporter in the early 1930s:

“Where did you learn English?” asked the reporter. “Only in Berlin,” answered Dietrich. “How about Greta Garbo?” asked the reporter. “How is her accent?” “She has one but it is very charming. She has made a hit of it all the way.”

“Did you meet Greta Garbo?” the reporter asked. “Not even once,” replied Marlene, who had apparently been advised by Josef von Sternberg to downplay any connection she might have with the Mercedes de Acosta circle. “She doesn't go any place and I don't go anywhere either. There is no possibility of our meeting.”

The reporter sensed something. “Marlene is a lady, but just the same she has something of the real bohemian about her. Of course an artist must have some bohemian characteristics.... She glances at her red-colored fingernails, her boyish costume and cloak.”

 
"The films of Garbo and me made history."

Marlene Dietrich

 
Marlene was distressed about the steady comparisons between her and Garbo, during an interview given to The Times.

"If they had only shown 'The Blue Angel first',” said Dietrich in a Los Angeles Times interview, “then people would not say these things. There I was not a very nice girl, a little tough. I was not like Garbo. I was myself.

Marlene 1930

"In 'Morocco' it is different. Maybe I do look a little like her, but I don't try to. If I do, I can't help it, and I think that it is cruel of people to say such things."

 
When Mercedes de Acosta wrote to Dietrich that she is going to write a 'Joan of Arc screenplay' for Garbo, Dietrich told her husband about it:

“What stupidity! Can't you just see Garbo – hearing voices? Being ever so religious á la Swede?"

Mercedes

 
“I envy Garbo“ , said Marlene Dietrich. “Mystery is a woman's greatest charm. I wish I could be mysterious like her. I don't want people to know everything about me! Garbo never gives interviews. I wish I could do the same.“

Marlene Dietrich

 
“She must think that I am trying to imitate her, but there is nobody like Garbo.”

 
Who is who?

 
A collection of previously unseen journals of Leo Lerman (the late, flamboyant Vanity Fair magazine editor who was a lifelong pal of Dietrich) – in his book, from Knopf, Lerman reveals an unappetizing secret about the hygiene of sex icon, Greta Garbo:

"Marlene says Garbo has only two suits of underwear. They are made of men's shirting. She wears one for three days, then washes it, does not iron it. Then she wears the other," Lerman writes.

The Grand Surprise: The Journals of Leo Lerman

 
Marlene took the role Garbo had turned down in The Garden of Allah (1936). Josh Logan quoted Dietrich speaking at the first script meeting:

“It's twash. Garbo wouldn't play this part. They offered it to Garbo and she said she didn't believe the girl would send the boy back to the monastawy. She is a vewy clever woman, Garbo! She has the primitive instincts–dose peasants have, you know.”

Marlene in her first color film

 
“Who is Marlene Dietrich?”

Garbo, 1930/1931

 
While making promotion in Germany for her book on Marlene, Maria Riva (Dietrich's daughter) told German TV, what Marlene said after Garbo died in 1990 due of natural causes.

Maria Riva

What Marlene may have said is truly too nasty to post here and since we have no real prove what exactly she said, we will not post it here.

Dietrich's famous TV interview

In her legendary interview for Sweden TV in the early 1970s, Marlene Dietrich said that she NEVER met Garbo.

 
In the famous documentary film (1984), actor and director Schell talked with Marlene about the Oscars and he said that it is sad that she never won one for Witness for the Prosecution (USA 1957).

The famous documentary film