My mother Marlene Dietrich

When Josef von Sternberg's film The Blue Angel was released in 1930, the then virtually unknown German actress Marlene Dietrich stunned the world as the variety singer Lola. Her seductive costume consisting of a man's top hat, tails and exposed beautiful long legs became a legend and Dietrich's aureole of the femme fatale with "bed eyes" remained once and for all.

But what was her real life like? Who really was Marlene Dietrich? How has acting fame affected her private life? My Mother Marlene Dietrich, a memoir written by the actress's daughter Maria Riva, gives unusually open answers to these questions.

The author does not conceal anything about her mother, yet she is not tabloid indiscreet. She recounts her experiences from behind the scenes of film shoots, which she has participated in since childhood as her mother's indispensable assistant. He shares with the reader all the difficulties of Dietrich's pedantic temper and her starry mannerisms. But he also shares the complications of growing up and building his own family in the shadow of the silver screen star. Where her memories are not enough, she takes the help of her mother's diaries and correspondence.

Like a red thread, Dietrich's love affairs wove through her memories. Although she was married to Riva's father, film producer Rudolf Sieber, throughout her life, this did not prevent her from having dozens of lovers. Among them were famous directors, actors, politicians and writers. She was madly in love with Josef von Sternberg, Jean Gabin, Yul Brynner and Erich Maria Remarque. Few could resist it. However, as much as Dietrich longed for love and admiration, she herself was cold and distant to those close to her, which was felt most keenly by her daughter and grandchildren.

Particularly poignant is the very end of the memoir, where Riva tells of his mother's retreat from fame and her futile struggle with ageing and alcoholism. But even here the actress tried to keep the face of a silver screen star until the last moment. When that was no longer possible, she closed herself off from the public in her Paris apartment, where she died in 1992 at the age of 90.

However all this, what Maria Riva says, sounds unbelievable, we suspect, that picture of Marlene Dietrich, that he presents to us in his memoirs, is painfully true.