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Condoleezza Rice
Florence nightingale
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Marlene Dietrich.
(1901-1993)
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Someone said her name began with a caress and ended with a whiplash---that
is Marlene Dietrich. As a screen actress her power was total and compelling
she knew lighting better than many cameramen and exactly how it should the
high cheekbones while softening the strong jaw. There was a perfection can
be seen in each and every work. A devotion given to a work turns fruitful
so that was the case with Marlene Dietrich .
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She often
brought Sapphic overtones to her performances .There were frissons when
in male evening attire in her first Hollywood film ,Morocco, she paused
in her song to kiss a girl in the audience full on the lips.
Interviews with her never turn out to be satisfactory as she always
plied journalist with misinformation or exasperating simplifications; “I
was born in Germany and made a film called The Blue Angel. Then I went
to America. “ She categorically told Maximilian Schell ( for his
documentary, Marlene that she was an only child in spite of irrefutable
evidence that she was only child in spite of irrefutable evidence that
she had an elder sister who survived Balsen. |
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In truth, The Blue Angel( directed by Josef von Sternberg) was her 18th film and when
it made in 1929 she was well established in German cinema. After her
move to Hollywood a stream of erotic , intense Sternbergian collaborations
followed. In Morocco( 1930) she played Army Jolly , the cabaret singer who
eventually follows a legionnaire , Gary Cooper , when his column marches off
into the Sahara Then came ‘Dishonored’(1931) with Victor Mclagen;’ Shanghai
Express’( 1932) and ‘Blonde Venus’( 1932) with Cary Grant , in which she
performs a memorable striptease from a gorilla suit.
She could
have accepted Hitler offer of astronomical riches as Queen of the Reich
Cinema and a triumphant return to Berlin, but she rejected it unequivocally
,becoming a US citizen in 1939 .Her passionate hatred for the Nazis prompted
her after 1943 to entertain the troops from Africa to the Aleutians .
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