Shabannie's video: Tribute to Marlene Dietrich and Her Costars: Time On My Hands

Marlene Dietrich was a German-American actress. In 1920s Berlin, she acted on the stage and in silent films, making her film debut in 1922. She was discovered by director Josef von Sternberg who cast her as Lola-Lola in The Blue Angel (1930). The movie's mainstream success brought her international fame and a contract with Paramount Pictures in the United States. Paramount sought to market Dietrich as a German answer to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Swedish sensation, Greta Garbo. Her first American film, Morocco (1930), directed by von Sternberg, earned Dietrich her only Oscar nomination. She would appear in several other hits mostly directed by von Sternberg, including Dishonored (1931), Blonde Venus (1932), and Shanghai Express (1932). Dietrich and von Sternberg's last two film collaborations, The Scarlet Empress (1934) and The Devil Is a Woman (1935)—the most styled of their collaborations—were their least successes at the box office. Her first film without von Sternberg was 1936's Desire directed by Frank Borzage. But without von Sternberg, Dietrich—along with Fred Astaire, Joan Crawford, Mae West, Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, Dolores del Río and others—was labeled "Box Office Poison" after the movie Knight Without Armour (1937) proved an expensive box office failure. In 1939, however, her stardom revived when she played a cowboy saloon girl in the light-hearted western Destry Rides Again opposite James Stewart singing "See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have". While Dietrich arguably never fully regained her former screen glory, she continued performing in the movies, including appearances for such distinguished directors as Billy Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles, in successful films that included A Foreign Affair (1948), Stage Fright (1950), Witness for the Prosecution (1957), Touch of Evil (1958), and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). Her final film appearance was as herself in the 1984 documentary, Marlene. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Dietrich the ninth greatest female star of all time.