Giovanni Boldini (31 December 1842 – 11 July 1931) was an Italian genre and portrait painter who lived and worked in Paris for most of his career. According to a 1933 article in Time magazine, he was known as the "Master of Swish" because of his flowing style of painting. BiographyGiovanni Boldini was born in Ferrara, the son of a painter of religious subjects, and in 1862 went to Florence for six years to study and pursue painting and met there other realist painters known as the Macchiaioli, who were Italian precursors to Impressionism. Their influence is seen in Boldini's landscapes which show his spontaneous response to nature, although it is for his portraits that he became best known. Moving to London, Boldini attained success as a portraitist. He completed portraits of premier members of society including Lady Holland and the Duchess of Westminster. From 1872 he lived in Paris, where he became a friend of Edgar Degas. He became the most fashionable portrait painter in Paris in the late 19th century, with a dashing style of painting which shows some Macchiaioli influence and a brio reminiscent of the work of younger artists, such as John Singer Sargent and Paul Helleu. He was nominated commissioner of the Italian section of the Paris Exposition in 1889, and received the Légion d'honneur for this appointment. In 1897 he had a solo exhibition in New York. He participated in the Venice Biennale in 1895, 1903, 1905, and 1912. The famous Giovanni Boldini's "Portrait of Franca Florio" was commissioned by Ignazio Florio. Boldini’s initial, beautifully provocative version, painted in 1901 was not approved of by Ignazio Florio. He reportedly found it risqué and "unnatural and unreal" looking and demanded that Boldini lengthen the dress and add full sleeves with wide black lace. Once Boldini had reworked the work to oblige his commissioner’s discontent it was exhibited at the 1903 Venice Biennial. The portrait remained like this until 1924 when, with the demise of the Florio family’s wealth, Baron Maurice de Rothschild acquired it. Therefore, Rothschild engaged Boldini to restore it to its original sensual version. After two auction (Christie's 1995 and Sotheby's 2005), the painting has been on display at the Grand Hotel Villa Igiea in Palermo since 2006. In 2017 it went to auction again. It is said that the necklace in the painting, with 365 pearls, one for each day of the year, was a present from the husband, begging forgiveness for his many affairs. A Boldini portrait of his former muse Marthe de Florian, a French actress, was discovered in a Paris flat in late 2010, hidden away from view on the premises that were unvisited for over 50 years. The portrait has never been listed, exhibited or published and the flat belonged to de Florian's granddaughter, who inherited the flat after her father's death in 1966 and lived in the South of France after the outbreak of the Second World War and never returned to Paris. A love-note and a biographical reference to the work painted in 1888, when the actress was 24, cemented its authenticity. A full-length portrait of the lady in the same clothing and accessories, but less provocative, hangs in the New Orleans Museum of Art. The discovery of his painting in the 70-years-empty apartment forms the background to Michelle Gable's 2014 novel A Paris Apartment. Further interestBooks: Videos:
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ProfileGong Li (Chinese: 巩俐; born 31 December 1965) is a Chinese-born Singaporean actress, often regarded as the finest actress in China today. She starred in three of the four Academy Award for Best International Feature Film-nominated Chinese-language films. Gong was born in Shenyang, Liaoning, and grew up in Jinan, Shandong. She enrolled at the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing, from where she graduated in 1989. While a student at the Academy, she was spotted by director Zhang Yimou and debuted in Zhang's Red Sorghum in 1987. Gong and Zhang's professional and personal relationship received much media attention in the Chinese-speaking world, as they continued to collaborate on a string of critically acclaimed movies, including the Oscar-nominated features Ju Dou (1990) and Raise the Red Lantern (1991). For her role in the Zhang-directed The Story of Qiu Ju (1992), Gong won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival. Gong also starred in the Chen Kaige-directed Oscar-nominated Farewell My Concubine (1993), for which she won Best Supporting Actress at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards. Other notable appearances include Zhou Yu's Train (2003), 2046 (2004), Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), Curse of the Golden Flower (2006). Gong was head of jury at the 2000 Berlin Film Festival and the 2002 Venice Film Festival, the first Asian to hold such position at both events. Throughout her career, Gong has won three Hundred Flowers Awards, two Golden Rooster Awards, a Hong Kong Film Award, and honorary awards at the Berlin and Cannes film festivals. She was appointed a Commander (Commandeur) of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France in 2010. 巩俐,AL(英語:Gong Li,1965年12月31日-),出生於中國辽宁省沈阳市,祖籍山東省濟南市,新加坡籍華人女演員,聯合國糧農大使,聯合國全球環境保護大使,聯合國促進和平藝術家[8]。 1987年,鞏俐主演張藝謀電影《紅高粱》而成名,從此開始了與張藝謀及中國第五代導演的合作,該片獲得第38屆柏林影展金熊獎。1992年憑藉電影《秋菊打官司》獲得第49屆威尼斯影展最佳女演員、第13屆中國電影金雞獎最佳女主角,成為首位華人威尼斯影后,該片亦獲得金獅獎。1993年主演電影《霸王別姬》獲得第46屆坎城影展金棕櫚獎,成為世界影史第一位主演影片包攬歐洲三大影展最高獎的女演員。1996年登上美國《時代周刊》封面。 2000年憑藉電影《漂亮媽媽》獲得第24屆蒙特利爾影展最佳女演員、第20屆中國電影金雞獎最佳女主角,成為首位兩度獲得國際A類影展影后的華人演員。2004年獲坎城影展特別大獎;同年上榜美國《首映》雜誌“影史百大偉大表演”。2005年入選中國電影百年百大演員。2006年上榜《時代周刊》“60年亞洲英雄”和《華盛頓郵報》“全球年度5位偉大演員”。2007年憑藉電影《滿城盡帶黃金甲》獲得第26屆香港電影金像獎最佳女主角。2010年法國政府授予鞏俐“ 藝術與文學勳章” 司令勛位。2019年獲得坎城影展組委會授予的“躍動她影”(Women In Motion)獎。 鞏俐是中國大陸第一位國際女演員,也是迄今為止成就最高、評審履歷最豐富的華人女演員。鞏俐與中國電影有著密不可分的關係,也是在世界影壇上最受認可的東方女演員,她在華人電影界享有崇高的地位,被譽為“亞洲影壇第一夫人”、“第五代導演的電影繆斯”。 BiographyGong Li was born in Shenyang, Liaoning, China, the youngest of five children. Her father was a professor of economics and her mother was a teacher. She grew up in Jinan, the capital of Shandong. She has been fond of singing and dancing since childhood, and dreamt of becoming a singer. In 1985, she was accepted to study at the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing from which she graduated in 1989. While a student there, she was discovered by Zhang Yimou, who chose her for the lead role in an anti-Japanese war romance Red Sorghum, his first film as a director. That was the beginning of her 15-year cooperation with the China's fifth-generation directors. The film Red Sorghum won the Golden Bear at the 38th Berlin International Film Festival, becoming the first Chinese film to win this award. It also won the Golden Rooster Awards and the Hundred Flowers Awards for Best Picture in China in 1988. Over the several years following her 1987 acting debut in Red Sorghum, Gong received international acclaim for her roles in several more Zhang Yimou films. In 1990, Gong's film with Zhang Yimou, the family ethics movie Ju Dou, won the Luis Buñuel Special Award at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 63rd Academy Awards, becoming the first Chinese film to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Gong also won the Best Actress award at the Varna International Film Festival. In 1991, Gong starred in Zhang Yimou's representative film Raise the Red Lantern, which won the Silver Lion award at the 48th Venice Film Festival and was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 64th Academy Awards. In 1992, Gong won another Golden Lion award at the 49th Venice International Film Festival for her role in the rural drama The Story of Qiu Ju. In 1993, she starred in Farewell My Concubine (1993) directed by Chen Kaige. The film was her first major role with a director other than Zhang Yimou. Premiere magazine ranked her performance in Farewell My Concubine as the 89th greatest performance of all time. In 1994, Gong won the Grand Prix at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival for her role in the drama To Live with Zhang Yimou. She was called by Asiaweek as "one of the world's most glamorous movie stars and an elegant throwback to Hollywood's golden era". In 1996, Gong appeared on the cover of Time magazine. In November that year, Gong married Singaporean tobacco tycoon Ooi Hoe Seong at Hong Kong's China Club. In 2000, Gong won her second international Best Actress trophy for her performance as a struggling single mother in Breaking the Silence (2000) at the Montreal Film Festival, directed by Sun Zhou. She attended the Montreal Film Festival that year, where she was awarded a special Grand Prix of the Americas for lifetime achievement for her outstanding achievement. In the same year, Gong was invited by the Berlin Film Festival to be the president of its international jury for the festival's 50th anniversary. That year she was also nominated Goodwill Ambassador of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) In 2002 Gong was invited to head the jury of the Venice Film Festival. Despite her popularity, Gong avoided Hollywood for years, due to a lack of confidence in speaking English. She made her English speaking debut in 2005 when she starred as Hatsumomo in Memoirs of a Geisha, where she learned her English lines phonetically. The English-language films, Gong has gradually established herself in Hollywood. Speaking of the Hollywood experience, Gong said it broadened her horizons, gave her a better idea of what she liked and allowed her to experiment with different acting styles. In 2006, Gong was voted the most beautiful woman in China. She worked again with Zhang Yimou for historical epic Curse of the Golden Flower, for which She won the best Actress at the 26th Hong Kong Film Awards. Time named her performance as the Empress as the 7th greatest performance of the year. In 1997, Gong worked with Jeremy Irons on the romantic drama Chinese Box, which won the Best Original Music award at the Venice Film Festival. In the same year, Gong was invited to be a jury at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first Chinese to be a jury at the festival. In June 1998, Gong Li became a recipient of France's Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Gong's personal and professional relationship with director Zhang Yimou has been highly publicized. The pair collaborated on six films between 1987 and 1995, before ending their relationship. The film Curse of the Golden Flower was their first time to work together again after a decade, and they collaborated again in 2014 on Coming Home. In November 2008, Gong received her Singapore citizenship certificate; On 28 June 2010, Gong's agent confirmed that Gong Li and her husband Ooi had divorced. In 2014, Gong was the president of the jury for the 17th Shanghai International Film Festival. In 2018, Gong served as the jury president of 55th Golden Horse Awards. In 2019, Gong married French musician Jean-Michel Jarre, son of Maurice Jarre, composer for music scores of film Lawrence of Arabia. In 2020, Gong starred in Peter Chan's biographical film Leap, where she plays the hard-driving, real-life head coach of the Chinese women’s national volleyball team Lang Ping. 生平1965年,巩俐出生于中国遼寧沈阳市,是家中五个孩子中最小的一个。其父曾在辽宁大学教书,于文化大革命前期调入山东大学教书,并举家迁往山东济南。母亲是国企财务人员。四个哥哥姐姐均是教师。她從小就喜歡唱歌跳舞,夢想著有天能當一名歌唱家。 1985年走入了中央戲劇學院表演系,并在毕业后留校任话剧研究所演员。 1988年,她与首次担任导演的张艺谋合作,在影片《红高粱》中扮演女主角九儿,一位能幹的農村婦女。從而正式進入電影界,開啟了與第五代導演長達十五年的合作旅程;該片獲得第38屆柏林電影節金熊獎,成為華語影壇首部獲得世界三大電影節最佳影片獎的電影,且同時獲得了1988年中國電影金雞獎與大眾電影百花獎最佳影片。 1989年,巩俐第一次与香港电影人合作,偕同张艺谋主演电影《秦俑》。《秦俑》是大陆和香港电影人第一次跨地区的合作,两地精英尽出,制作团队庞大。憑藉在《秦俑》中的表演,鞏俐第一次提名香港電影金像獎最佳女主角。 1990年,鞏俐與張藝謀合作的家庭倫理電影《菊豆》獲得第43屆戛納國際電影節布努埃爾特別獎,並提名第63屆奧斯卡獎最佳外語片,成為首部提名該獎的華語影片,鞏俐亦憑藉此片獲得瓦爾納國際電影節最佳女演員獎。 1991年,鞏俐主演了張藝謀執導的愛情倫理電影《大紅燈籠高高掛》,影片摘得第48屆威尼斯國際電影節銀獅獎,並提名第64屆奧斯卡獎最佳外語片。 1992年,鞏俐主演了農村題材的電影《秋菊打官司》,此片摘得第49屆威尼斯國際電影節金獅獎;鞏俐獲得最佳女演員獎,成爲首位華人威尼斯影后。 1993年,鞏俐首次與陳凱歌合作,主演同性愛情倫理電影《霸王別姬》,影片獲得第46屆戛納國際電影節金棕櫚獎和英國電影學院獎最佳外語片並提名奧斯卡最佳外語片等獎。 1994年,鞏俐與張藝謀合作劇情片《活著》,鞏俐在片中飾演知書達理的母親,該片獲得第47屆戛納國際電影節評審團大獎等獎,鞏俐憑藉此片表演提名美國Chlotrudis電影獎最佳女主角。 1995年,鞏俐主演其與張藝謀長達八年戀情的分手之作《搖啊搖,搖到外婆橋》,她在片中扮演上海灘歌舞廳的台柱“小金寶”,一位妖艷嫵媚的“歌舞皇后”並演唱了全片所有曲目,本片獲得戛納國際電影節技術大獎及美國金球獎最佳攝影、美國國家影評人協會獎最佳外語片獎等獎項,並提名了金球獎最佳外語片,鞏俐應邀出席了當屆的金球獎頒獎典禮。 张艺谋与巩俐在事业和感情上都曾是亲密无间的伴侣,一系列的合作使这对导演和演员达到了两人事业的巅峰。然而在交往8年、合作過7部电影之后,两人最终还是分手。 1996年,鞏俐與陳凱歌、張國榮再次合作愛情電影《風月》,入圍當年戛納國際電影節的主競賽單元。同年鞏俐登上美國《時代周刊》封面和德國《明鏡周刊》封面,打破了之前中国人都是政治人物登封的慣例。 巩俐随后与英美烟草公司香港总裁黄和祥结婚,並於2008年11月8日入籍新加坡,但兩人於2010年離婚。 1997年,鞏俐受邀擔任第50屆戛納國際電影節主競賽單元評委,成為首位擔任戛納電影節主單元評委的華人。 1998年,鞏俐被法國文化部授予“藝術與文學勳章”軍官勳位。 2000年,鞏俐擔任第50屆柏林國際電影節主席,成為首位在世界三大電影節上擔任評審團主席的華人;同年鞏俐與第五代導演孫周合作了溫情電影《漂亮媽媽》,出演一位自強不息的單身母親孫麗英,憑藉該角色鞏俐在蒙特利爾國際電影節上獲得了她的第二座國際A類電影節最佳女主角獎,並被授予終身成就獎,鞏俐因此成為第一位兩度獲得國際A類電影節最佳女主角獎的華語演員。
2002年,鞏俐再次受邀擔任第59屆威尼斯國際電影節主席,成為首位兩度在世界三大電影節擔任評委會主席的亞洲人,也是亞洲人首次執掌威尼斯國際電影節。 2003年,鞏俐擔任第16屆東京國際電影節主席,成爲東京國際電影節史上首位女主席。 2005年,鞏俐首次演出荷里活電影,一部描述日本藝伎的電影《藝伎回憶錄》,該片獲得《時代周刊》“年度十大佳片”第九名,第78屆奧斯卡獎最佳藝術指導、最佳攝影、最佳服裝設計等三項大獎等等。鞏俐憑藉片中藝伎館的當紅頭牌初桃一角也獲得了第39屆美國國家評論協會獎最佳女配角,美國《首映》雜誌2005年度“最佳表演24強”之最佳女配角第3名等獎項。 2006年,鞏俐一共有三部大片在全球範圍內上映,其中與張藝謀再次攜手,與周潤發、周杰倫合作的古裝宮廷情感電影《滿城盡帶黃金甲》被《時代周刊》評選為2006年全球十大最佳電影,鞏俐在片中飾演隱忍大氣的皇后,並憑藉該角色獲得第26屆香港電影金像獎最佳女主角、第12屆香港電影金紫荊獎最佳女主角、第13屆香港電影評論學會獎最佳女主角、美國《時代》評選的“年度最偉大表演”第7名、《華盛頓郵報》評選的世界5位最佳電影表演者第二名等眾多獎項。 2010年,鞏俐被法國文化部晉升為“藝術與文學勳章”司令勳位,成為首位授此榮譽的女華人。 2011年,鞏俐出任第17屆上海國際電影節評審團主席一職,這是她第四次擔任國際A類電影節評審團主席。同年,鞏俐第二度上榜日本《電影旬報》“百大外國女星”。 2015年,鞏俐受美國《VOGUE》主編安娜·溫圖爾邀請出任 Met Gala(紐約大都會藝術博物館慈善舞會)聯合主席,成為首位擔任此職的華人。同年,鞏俐入選聯合國16位影響人類文化藝術家。 2019年,鞏俐跟法國電子音樂家让-米歇尔·雅尔结婚。 2020年9月4日,鞏俐獲得新時代國際電影節慶祝新中國成立70周年全國十佳電影女演員獎。 Marie Magdalene "Marlene" Dietrich(27 December 1901 – 6 May 1992) was a German-born American actress and singer. Her career spanned from the 1910s to the 1980s. In 1920s Berlin, Dietrich performed on the stage and in silent films. Her performance as Lola-Lola in Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel (1930) brought her international acclaim and a contract with Paramount Pictures. Dietrich starred in many Hollywood films including, most iconically, the six vehicles directed by Josef von Sternberg: Morocco (1930) (her only Academy Award nomination), Dishonored (1931), Shanghai Express and Blonde Venus (both 1932), The Scarlet Empress (1934) and The Devil Is a Woman (1935) – plus Desire (1936) and Destry Rides Again (1939). She successfully traded on her glamorous persona and "exotic" looks, and became one of the highest-paid actresses of the era. Throughout World War II she was a high-profile entertainer in the United States. And then Dietrich spent most of the 1950s to the 1970s touring the world as a marquee live-show performer. Dietrich was known for her humanitarian efforts during the war, housing German and French exiles, providing financial support and even advocating their American citizenship. For her work on improving morale on the front lines during the war, she received several honors from the United States, France, Belgium and Israel. In 1999 the American Film Institute named Dietrich the ninth greatest female screen legend of classic Hollywood cinema. BiographyDietrich was born on 27 December 1901 at Leberstraße 65 in the neighborhood of Rote Insel in Schöneberg, now a district of Berlin. Her mother, Wilhelmina Elisabeth Josefine, was from an affluent Berlin family who owned a jewelry and clock-making firm. Her father, Louis Erich Otto Dietrich, was a police lieutenant. Dietrich had one sibling, Elisabeth, who was one year older. Dietrich's father died in 1907. His best friend, Eduard von Losch, an aristocratic first lieutenant in the Grenadiers, courted Wilhelmina and married her in 1914, but he died in July 1916. Von Losch never officially adopted the Dietrich sisters, so Dietrich's surname was never von Losch, as has sometimes been claimed. Aged about 11, she combined her first two names to form the name "Marlene". Dietrich attended the Auguste-Viktoria Girls' School from 1907 to 1917 and graduated from the Victoria-Luise-Schule (today Goethe-Gymnasium [de]) in Berlin-Wilmersdorf, in 1918. She studied the violin as a teenager, but a wrist injury curtailed her dreams of becoming a concert violinist. Dietrich was raised in the German Lutheran tradition of Christianity, but she abandoned it as a result of her experiences as a teenager during World War I, after hearing preachers from both sides invoking God as their support. "I lost my faith during the war and can't believe they are all up there, flying around or sitting at tables, all those I've lost." The earliest professional stage appearances by Dietrich were as a chorus girl on tour with Guido Thielscher's Girl-Kabarett vaudeville-style entertainments, and in Rudolf Nelson revues in Berlin. In 1922, Dietrich auditioned unsuccessfully for theatrical director and impresario Max Reinhardt's drama academy; however, she soon found herself working in his theatres as a chorus girl and playing small roles in dramas. Dietrich's film debut was a small part in the film The Little Napoleon (1923). She met her future husband, assistant director Rudolf Sieber, on the set of Tragedy of Love in 1923. Dietrich and Sieber were married in a civil ceremony in Berlin on 17 May 1923. Her only child, daughter Maria Elisabeth Sieber, was born on 13 December 1924. Rudolf Sieber later became an assistant director at Paramount Pictures in France, responsible for foreign language dubbing. Dietrich continued to work on stage and in film both in Berlin and Vienna throughout the 1920s. In 1929, Dietrich landed her breakthrough role of Lola Lola, a cabaret singer who caused the downfall of a hitherto respectable schoolmaster (played by Emil Jannings), in the UFA production of The Blue Angel (1930). Josef von Sternberg directed the film and thereafter took credit for having "discovered" Dietrich. The film introduced Dietrich's signature song "Falling in Love Again". In 1930, on the strength of The Blue Angel's international success, and with encouragement and promotion from Josef von Sternberg, who was established in Hollywood, Dietrich moved to the United States under contract to Paramount Pictures, the U.S. film distributor of The Blue Angel. The studio sought to market Dietrich as a German answer to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Swedish-born star, Greta Garbo. Dietrich starred in six films directed by von Sternberg at Paramount between 1930 and 1935. Von Sternberg worked effectively with Dietrich to create the image of a glamorous and mysterious femme fatale. He encouraged her to lose weight and coached her intensively as an actress. She willingly followed his sometimes imperious direction in a way that a number of other performers resisted. In Morocco (1930) with Gary Cooper, Dietrich was again cast as a cabaret singer. The film is best remembered for the sequence in which she performs a song dressed in a man's white tie and kisses another woman, both provocative for the era. The film earned Dietrich her only Academy Award nomination. Morocco was followed by Dishonored (1931) a major success with Dietrich cast as a Mata Hari-like spy. Shanghai Express (1932) was von Sternberg and Dietrich's biggest box office success, becoming the highest-grossing film of 1932. Dietrich and von Sternberg again collaborated on the romance Blonde Venus (1932) with Cary Grant. Dietrich and Sternberg's last two films, The Scarlet Empress (1934) and The Devil Is a Woman (1935)—the most stylized of their collaborations—were their lowest-grossing films. Dietrich later remarked that she was at her most beautiful in The Devil Is a Woman. Von Sternberg is known for his exceptional skill in lighting and photographing Dietrich to optimum effect. He had a signature use of light and shadow, including the impact of light passed through a veil or slatted window blinds (as for example in Shanghai Express). This combined with the scrupulous attention to set design and costumes makes the films they made together among cinema's most visually stylish. The collaboration of one actress and director creating seven films is still unmatched in motion pictures, with the possible exception of Katharine Hepburn and George Cukor, who made ten films together over a much longer period but which were not created for Hepburn the way the last six von Sternberg/Dietrich collaborations were. Dietrich's first film after the end of her partnership with von Sternberg was Frank Borzage's Desire (1936) with Gary Cooper, a commercial success that gave Dietrich an opportunity to try her hand at romantic comedy. Extravagant offers lured Dietrich away from Paramount to make her first color film The Garden of Allah (1936) for independent producer David O. Selznick, for which she received $200,000, and to Britain for Alexander Korda's production, Knight Without Armor (1937), at a salary of $450,000, which made her one of the best paid film stars of the time. In the late 1930s, Dietrich created a fund with Billy Wilder and several other exiles to help Jews and dissidents escape from Germany. In 1937, her entire salary for Knight Without Armor ($450,000) was put into escrow to help the refugees. While in London, Dietrich later said in interviews, she was approached by Nazi Party officials and offered lucrative contracts, should she agree to return to Germany as a foremost film star in the Third Reich. She refused their offers and applied for U.S. citizenship in 1937. In 1939, she became an American citizen and renounced her German citizenship. In December 1941, the U.S. entered World War II, and Dietrich became one of the first public figures to help sell war bonds. She toured the U.S. from January 1942 to September 1943 and was reported to have sold more war bonds than any other star. At the war's end in Europe, Dietrich reunited with her sister Elisabeth and her sister's husband and son. Dietrich vouched for her sister and her sister's husband, sheltering them from possible prosecution as Nazi collaborators. But she would later omit the existence of her sister and her sister's son from all accounts of her life, completely disowning them and claiming to be an only child. She also moved her husband and his mistress from Europe to a ranch in the San Fernando Valley, near Hollywood. Dietrich received the Medal of Freedom in November 1947, for her "extraordinary record entertaining troops overseas during the war". She said this was her proudest accomplishment. She was also awarded the Légion d'honneur by the French government for her wartime work. While Dietrich never fully regained her former screen profile, she continued performing in motion pictures, including appearances for directors such as Mitchell Leisen in Golden Earrings (1947), Billy Wilder in A Foreign Affair (1948) and Alfred Hitchcock in Stage Fright (1950). Her appearances in the 1950s, included films such as Fritz Lang's Rancho Notorious, (1952) and Billy Wilder's Witness for the Prosecution (1957). She also appeared in Touch of Evil (1958) of Orson Welles for whom she had a kind of platonic love. Her last substantial film role was in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) directed by Stanley Kramer; she also presented the narrative for the documentary Black Fox: The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1962. From the early 1950s until the mid-1970s, Dietrich, who was fluent in German, English, and French, worked almost exclusively as a cabaret artist, performing live in large theatres in major cities worldwide. In 1953, Dietrich was offered a then-substantial $30,000 per week to appear live at the Sahara Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip. The show was short, consisting only of a few songs associated with her. Her daringly sheer "nude dress"—a heavily beaded evening gown of silk soufflé, which gave the illusion of transparency—designed by Jean Louis, attracted a lot of publicity. This engagement was so successful that she was signed to appear at the Café de Paris in London the following year; her Las Vegas contracts were also renewed. Dietrich employed Burt Bacharach as her musical arranger starting in the mid-1950s; together, they refined her nightclub act into a more ambitious theatrical one-woman show with an expanded repertoire. Together, they recorded four albums and several singles between 1957 and 1964. In a TV interview in 1971, she credited Bacharach with giving her the "inspiration" to perform during those years. Bacharach then felt he needed to devote his full-time to songwriting and left her. Dietrich wrote in her memoir: “From that fateful day on, I have worked like a robot, trying to recapture the wonderful woman he helped make out of me. I even succeeded in this effort for years, because I always thought of him, always longed for him, always looked for him in the wings, and always fought against self-pity ... He had become so indispensable to me that, without him, I no longer took much joy in singing. When he left me, I felt like giving everything up. I had lost my director, my support, my teacher, my maestro.” Dietrich's return to West Germany in 1960 for a concert tour was met with mixed reception— despite a consistently negative press, vociferous protest by chauvinistic Germans who felt she had betrayed her homeland, and two bomb threats, her performance attracted huge crowds. She also undertook a tour of Israel around the same time, which was well-received. She would become the first woman and German to receive the Israeli Medallion of Valor in 1965, "in recognition for her courageous adherence to principle and consistent record of friendship for the Jewish people". She performed on Broadway twice (in 1967 and 1968) and won a special Tony Award in 1968 and continued with a busy performance schedule As she grew older, Dietrich’s use of body-sculpting undergarments, nonsurgical temporary facelifts (like tape), expert makeup and wigs, combined with careful stage lighting, helped to preserve her glamorous image. In an interview with The Observer in 1960, she said, "I dress for the image. Not for myself, not for the public, not for fashion, not for men. If I dressed for myself I wouldn't bother at all. Clothes bore me. I'd wear jeans. I adore jeans. I get them in a public store – men's, of course; I can't wear women's trousers. But I dress for the profession." Her public image included openly defying sexual norms, and she was known for her androgynous film roles and her bisexuality. Throughout her career, Dietrich, although married in 1923, had numerous affairs, with both men and women, some short-lived, some lasting decades, often overlapping and almost all known to her husband, to whom she was in the habit of passing the intimate letters from her lovers, sometimes with biting comments. When Dietrich arrived in Hollywood and filmed Morocco (1930), she had an affair with Gary Cooper, even though he was having another affair with Mexican actress Lupe Vélez. Another one of her affairs was with actor John Gilbert, known for his professional and personal connection to Greta Garbo. Gilbert's untimely death was one of the most painful events of her life. Dietrich also had a brief affair with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., even though he was married to Joan Crawford at the time. During the production of Destry Rides Again, Dietrich started a love affair with co-star James Stewart, which ended after filming stopped. According to writer/director Peter Bogdanovich, Marlene Dietrich told him during an aircraft flight that she became pregnant as a result of the affair but had a surreptitious abortion without telling Stewart. In 1938, Dietrich met and began a relationship with writer Erich Maria Remarque, and in 1941, the French actor Jean Gabin. The relationship ended in 1948. In Paris, Dietrich had an affair with Suzanne Baulé, known as Frede, a coach and cabaret hostess whom she met in 1936 at the Monocle, a women's nightclub on Boulevard Edgar-Quinet in Paris. The two women remained friends until the 1970s, as can be seen in the correspondence kept in the Marlene Dietrich archives in Berlin. In the early 1940s, Dietrich also had an affair with Cuban-American writer Mercedes de Acosta, who claimed to be Greta Garbo's lover. When Dietrich was in her 50s, she had a relationship with actor Yul Brynner, which lasted more than a decade. Dietrich's love life continued into her 70s. She counted Errol Flynn, George Bernard Shaw, John F. Kennedy, Joe Kennedy, Michael Todd, Michael Wilding, John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, and Frank Sinatra among her conquests. In her 60s and 70s, Dietrich's health declined: she survived cervical cancer in 1965 and suffered from poor circulation in her legs. Dietrich became increasingly dependent on painkillers and alcohol. A stage fall at the Shady Grove Music Fair in Maryland in 1973 injured her left thigh, necessitating skin grafts to allow the wound to heal. She fractured her right leg in August 1974. Dietrich's show business career largely ended on 29 September 1975, when she fell from the stage and broke a thigh bone during a performance in Sydney, Australia. The following year, her husband, Rudolf Sieber, died of cancer on 24 June 1976. Dietrich's final on-camera film appearance was a brief appearance in Just a Gigolo (1979), starring David Bowie and directed by David Hemmings, in which she sang the title song. Dietrich withdrew to her apartment at 12 Avenue Montaigne in Paris where spent the final 13 years of her life mostly bedridden, allowing only a select few—including family and employees—to enter the apartment. During this time, she was a prolific letter-writer and phone-caller. She kept in contact with world leaders by telephone, including Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev and Margaret Thatcher, running up a monthly bill of over US$3,000, according to her daughter Maria Riva. Her autobiography Nehmt nur mein Leben (Take Just My Life), was published in 1979. In 1982, Dietrich agreed to participate in a documentary film about her life, Marlene (1984), but refused to be filmed. The film's director, Maximilian Schell, was allowed only to record her voice. Schell used his interviews with her as the basis for the film, set to a collage of film clips from her career. The film won several European film prizes and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary in 1984. Newsweek named it "a unique film, perhaps the most fascinating and affecting documentary ever made about a great movie star". On 6 May 1992, Dietrich died of kidney failure at her flat in Paris at age 90. Her funeral was a requiem mass conducted at the Roman Catholic church of La Madeleine in Paris on 14 May 1992. Dietrich's funeral service was attended by approximately 1,500 mourners in the church itself—including several ambassadors from Germany, Russia, the US, the UK and other countries—with thousands more outside. Her closed coffin, draped in the French flag, rested beneath the altar and was adorned with a simple bouquet of white wildflowers and roses from the French President François Mitterrand. Three medals, including France's Legion of Honour and the U.S. Medal of Freedom, were displayed at the foot of the coffin, military style, for a ceremony symbolising the sense of duty Dietrich embodied in her career as an actress, and in her personal fight against Nazism. In her will Dietrich expressed the wish to be buried in her birthplace Berlin, near her family. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall her body was flown there to fulfill her wish on 16 May. Her coffin was draped in an American flag befitting her status as an American. As her coffin traveled through Berlin bystanders threw flowers onto it, a fitting tribute because Dietrich loved flowers, even saving the flowers thrown to her at the end of her performances for use in subsequent shows. Dietrich was interred at the Städtischer Friedhof III, Schöneberg, close by the grave of her mother Josefine von Losch, and near the house where she was born. The same year, a plaque was unveiled at Leberstraße 65 in Berlin-Schöneberg, the site of Dietrich's birth. Dietrich was made an honorary citizen of Berlin on 16 May 2002. A few months after Marlene Dietrich's death, her daughter Maria Riva published a candid biography of her mother, titled Marlene Dietrich. On 24 October 1993, the largest portion of Dietrich's estate was sold by Dietrich's heirs to the Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek for US$5 million, where it became the core of the exhibition at the Filmmuseum Berlin. The collection includes: over 3,000 textile items from the 1920s to the 1990s, including film and stage costumes as well as over a thousand items from Dietrich's personal wardrobe; 15,000 photographs, by Sir Cecil Beaton, Horst P. Horst, George Hurrell, Lord Snowdon and Edward Steichen; 300,000 pages of documents, including correspondence with Burt Bacharach, Yul Brynner, Maurice Chevalier, Noël Coward, Jean Gabin, Ernest Hemingway, Karl Lagerfeld, Nancy and Ronald Reagan, Erich Maria Remarque, Josef von Sternberg, Orson Welles and Billy Wilder; as well as other items like film posters and sound recordings. The contents of Dietrich's Manhattan apartment, along with other personal effects such as jewelry and items of clothing, were sold by public auction by Sotheby's in Los Angeles in November 1997. Her former apartment located at 993 Park Avenue was sold for $615,000 in 1998. Dietrich was an icon to fashion designers and screen stars. Hollywood costume designer Edith Head remarked that Dietrich knew more about fashion than any other actress. Marlene Dietrich favoured Christian Dior. In 2017, Swarovski commissioned a $60,000 Art Deco-styled dress in the style of her famous "nude dress", from Berlin-based fashion tech company ElektroCouture to honor Dietrich 25 years after her death. It contains 2,000 crystals in addition to 150 LED lights. ElektroCouture owner Lisa Lang said that the dress was inspired by electrical diagrams and correspondence that took place between the actress and fashion designer Jean Louis in 1958: "She wanted a dress that glows, she wanted to be able to control it herself from the stage and she knew she could have died of an electric stroke had it ever been realized." The dress created by Lang's company was featured in French-German broadcaster Arte's documentary Das letzte Kleid der Marlene Dietrich (The Last Dress of Marlene Dietrich). On 27 December 2017, she was given a Google Doodle on the 116th anniversary of her birth.
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