Hmmm.. Dietrich

Annti was trying to have me guess which old actress she was watching on the tee-vee in NOLA, and I really couldn't guess. Turns out it was 'La Dietrich', the 'divine' Marlene. Gay icon. But not for me. I admired the woman for her courage and pure guts. So I told her the little I do know from this side of the frog pond. I never liked most of her films. But 'The Blue Angel' would rank in one of the top 100 films I have ever seen. Saw it in college during a summer programme that the German government happily paid for. They gave me a grant.... no ties, no obligations, and I ended up being the best in my level, which led a teacher from Munich to encourage me to go there the summer before my jr. year abroad programme, and gave me addresses, and the rest was history.

It was run by the Goethe Institute, and there only two summer schools like that in America. They promote the German language and culture world-wide. One was in my state, the other in San Francisco. I've never experienced anything so intensive, and yet so challenging and pleasureable. In eight weeks.... I did two semesters of what would have been intermediate German. Sound dull? Hardly. It was so exciting. Up till then, I'd been working 80 hour weeks just to pay tuition, commuted the one hour drive just to get to my classes and another hour back, and was fairly overwhelmed, but determined.

So having a leave of absence, and just concentrate on what I wanted to learn? Heaven.

The whole programme was geared to teaching from the level beginners to people working on their graduate programmes. We had our own dorm, our own dining room and the thing was... you had to promise not to speak any english for the entire summer. Everyone helped everyone else. It's incredibly successful.

We had a very structured day. Four hours of class in the morning, a ton of homework, but... since the Uni was not far from the beach, we'd all go out and do it there for the afternoon. Learning and swimming in the ocean, who could complain, hey? I'd gotten my first novella, and got the best advice ever. It was so difficult, and I was looking up every other word. One of my teachers flopped down beside me, and said 'You're doing it wrong. Words will keep coming up and will begin to make sense, and if you only get the gist, leave it. Use the dictionary only when you really get stuck.' Truer words never said, hey. In two weeks I'd finished my first novella, and knew all the fine points of the story. It was like learning to read all over again.

And we were still having fun. Half the staff were from Germany and Austria, the other from my university. And one of the running jokes was... the Germans didn't wear jock straps under their bathing suits. And I think it was a girl named Carol who famously said... 'If you run around like THAT.. they'll either think you are gay... or European.' I fell apart.

Our classmates were people from all over the country. In the evening there were language drills for an hour after dinner. Gruelling, especially for the newbies. But it paid off. There was so much fun, and silliness going on. People would tape signs everywhere to help the newbies. On the stairs... 'Die Treppe, Die Treppen.' My favourite was inside the stalls of the WC... 'Achtung! Fertig! Los!' (Ready? Set? GO!") First time I saw it I fell apart laughing, and couldn't ...go.

After the drills, we got the fun part. For the first four weeks, we saw a German classic silent film, wonderful stuff. When the four weeks were up, the people who had never spoken a word of German before, the newbies, had to get up and perform skits, and it was AMAZING. The silent ones had flash dialogue cards on them, and the beginners had a fiendish delight in yelling them out loud. 'DOCH!' was a favourite. Which sort of means, yes, or 'on the contrary... it has lots of meanings. But is so much fun to use as a contradictary exclamation.

Hard to explain.

Which brings us to the second half of the summer. After week four... we got films with SOUND. And they began with the earliest.... and that is where I saw ''The Blue Angel' for the first time. It was a hammer. As we say. It's incredibly tragic. Staid professor falls for a show-girl who takes him for a ride, and he gets fired, and ends up in the show as an impotent rooster, and goes crazy. Doesn't sound like much, but it was very impressive. The film version of Buddenbrooks also flattened me, a Thomas Mann book that is so rich, it defies description. But the film was sort of like the Cliff Notes version.

So... The Blue Angel. It made Marlene Dietrich a star... world-wide. There was a lot more to the woman, and I admire what she did with her life. But never got into the whole gay adoration thing. I admired her tenaciousness, courage, and never giving up her integrity.

What I forgot to tell Annti. It was the summer of my life. Incredible friendship, bonding, and parties that nearly brought down the roof, and they were hosted by staff on the weekends. It was the closest I got to real 'education', and not 'edumacation'. And I sucked it up.

It wasn't long after when I was back to the real grind when the film Blazing Saddles came out. One of the craziest movies ever made, Mel Brooks. Madeleine Kahn had her first big role. As a saloon entertainer. And she has a big number. 'I'm Tired'. It was the most raucous parody of Dietrich in the Blue Angel, it friggin' floored me, and I still have to laugh till I wanna pee my pants. It helps if you've seen the real version. I DRAGGED Peter to see it later in Graz. He laughed himself silly, but was a bit shocked. The Producers left him spitless. I loved shocking him like that. But this is about Dietrich and Kahn.

May they both rest in peace. And just so's you know... Madeleine Kahn was a trained opera singer.