Heaven and Earth

"A strange combination of the femme fatale, the German Hausfrau and Florence Nightingale."
-Billy Wilder on Marlene Dietrich




In honor of Marlene Dietrich's birthday, I'll pass along her smirkingly wise advice on life, from Marlene Dietrich's ABC:

MD on Envy:
I do not know envy. I do not know how this happened. I can only guess that I was taught to enjoy things regardless of ownership.

MD on Mink Coats:
An American symbol. A luxury item with a quality rare in luxury items--toughness.

MD on Scorpios:
The World, the flesh, and the devil.

And from the longest entry of all...
MD on Married Love (strategy of):
To make a man happy is full-time job. It leaves us very little time to take ourselves too seriously. And if you have children, you have no time at all. Or you should have no time at all. And when the work is directed towards the making and the keeping of a happy home, it makes you rich in contentment and puts occupational afflictions, like aching bones, into the only place where they belong, a hot bath.

This rich contentment will make you do a lot of things you had forgotten. You will remember your instinct's aerial, the tender, fine antennas you used to stretch his way in the beginning. Although neglected, they are still with you, dusty and bent, but you can straighten them. They'll help you know what he would like before he says it, as long ago when you were thrilled, and kissed, because he found another mystic link between your mind and his.

And a recipe, for Heaven and Earth:
A great meal for summer evenings, a peasant favorite because it is good and cheap: apples (for heaven) and potatoes (for earth). Cook tart, sliced apples with sugar or, better, honey, or make applesauce. Boil potatoes, peeled or with the skin. Put two bowls on the table. Everyone has his own way of mixing the fruits of heaven and earth.

On Actresses, Pt. III

"Slick and overdetermined, this picture was so far out of control it got snatched by snatch. From reel one Stone owned Basic Instinct. She took it away from Douglas and made it hers, and in the process rewrote Joe Eszterhas’s misogynist tripe start to finish. It was, indeed, a performance worthy of all the great divas from Davis to Dietrich, who year in and year out turned man-made trash into gold, and yet another lesson in how complicated movies really are.” --Manohla Dargis, The Village Voice, 1992


Stellar phrasing (though I don't totally agree.) Some thoughts on the feminist prismatic perspective of Basic Instinct, and the unpopularity of certain forms of intelligence (as demonstrated by this comic genius who knows that some gentlemen prefer bleach-blondes:)




Monroe on the backlash:
"Let's take some actors or directors. Usually they don't say it to me, they say it to the newspapers because that's a bigger play. You know, if they're only insulting me to my face that doesn't make a big enough play because all I have to say is, "See you around, like never."