Marlene Dietrich started her career as a young revue-artist in Berlin. In 1927 she became acquainted with an instrument that would accompany her all along her career: the musical saw.

Her real breakthrough came in 1930 with one of Europe's first sound films "Der Blaue Engel". The music in this film was composed by Friedrich Hollaender, an all-round pianist-composer who from now on would write film songs, exclusively and especially for her. In that film she was cut out for her part of "femme fatale", which she seemed a lot to act out also in daily life. From her early performances on she attracted attention due to her fatal sensuality and her apparent indifference but significant pretence. 

About 1930 the golden days of Berlin cabaret had come to an end, the nazis took power and Marlene Dietrich decided to emigrate and to settle in the United States after the first american performance of "The Blue Angel". In her wake followed numerous German intellectuals. Among them Hollaender, Spoliansky and other composers, scriptwriters and artists. Dietrich was approached many times by the nazis, but refused to lend her name as a cover for nazi ideology. She became an official American citizen and was considered a traitress of her country by the nazi-press. "The Germany I have known all along doesn't exist any more," she declared when she arrived in Germany as a mascot of the allied forces and saw her destroyed country.

After the war, from 1953 on, and for twenty years, she travelled all over the world with her "one-woman-show" and made the acquaintance of composer Harold Arlen. During the last years of her life she withdrew from the highlights and died lonely in her apartment in Paris on May 6th 1992. She was almost 92 years old.