Advertisement

Marlene Dietrich Letter From Hemingway On Sale

A letter from Ernest Hemingway to Marlene Dietrich is among an assortment of memorabilia that is going up for auction.

In the letter from the American author he gives the German actress some humorous, but slightly racy, advice on what she should do for a performance in Las Vegas.

The collection, which is being put up for sale in Los Angeles by Dietrich's grandson J David Riva, also contains watches, a suit, silverware and old-fashioned cigarette lighters.

Mr Riva said: "Ernest Hemingway and Marlene were the best of pals, it's the only way of putting it. It's like two college guys that were out on a bender, that's pretty much their relationship."

He explained Hemingway and Dietrich met on a trans-Atlantic ship voyage and had remained in close contact ever since, although both insisted that their relationship never bloomed into romance.

As for the rest of Mr Riva's collection, he said that they showed a more 'human' side to Dietrich that the general public rarely saw.

"And so this collection shows the side of her that was a little bit more human in that sense.

"You know, she spoke a lot about politics, she spoke a lot about different things that were going on in her life in a much more personal and less 'Marlene Dietrich' way and I think that's the interesting thing about the letters and a lot of the personal items that reflect a different person from the created and crafted image that she had intended the public to see most of the time," Mr Riva said.

He also jokingly added that he was putting the items up for auction because he simply couldn't display them around his house.

"In LA you can't put a picture of your grandmother on the wall, you know, and invite people over for coffee. You know, it's really pretentious, you know, I couldn't exhibit these things.

"These things ended up sitting in storage. I mean some of these posters are amazing posters, but it's not polite to shove this in people's faces."

The auction is taking place inside the same room where fabled make-up artist, Max Factor, prepared Dietrich's make-up before her movie shoots. The room is now part of the Hollywood Museum, which displays thousands of pieces of authentic memorabilia.

Some of Dietrich's most famous works include the films Morocco, Shanghai Empress and Destry Rides Again.

The star died in Paris in 1992 aged 90.