I Wish You Love: Conversations with Marlene Dietrich [Hardcover]

Eryk Hanut (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1996

Marlene Dietrich's film career spanned six decades, until she retired in 1976 to live her life as a recluse. While living in Paris in the 1980s, Hanut wrote to Dietrich, expressing his admiration for her work. To his surprise, she responded. Here is a record of their sudden friendship. Dietrich shares her thoughts on a wide array of topics--art, literature, haute couture, Hollywood, her career, and her image and persona. 2 cassettes.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

This first book by Danish-born, Paris-raised photographer Hanut describes his telephonic friendship with Dietrich over the last few years of her life. Hanut recalls that he first saw Dietrich at one of her stage performances when he was only eight years old. He was terrified by this commanding presence in furs, and his fears were only slightly assuaged when she came over later to speak to his aunt, another film actress, at a postshow gathering. Many years later he wrote to her on a whim, thereby engendering a series of phone conversations that are the raison d`ˆtre of this slender volume. Much of the book's first half is taken up with Hanut's rather overwrought narrative of his own depressing childhood and youth: abusive father; both parents killed in an auto wreck; raised by a dotty celebrity aunt; drugs, booze, living on the bum across Europe. He never met Marlene in person, but seems to have enjoyed rare confidences from her during their long chats. Their conversations, as recounted herein, range over a wide assortment of topics, touching only briefly on her film career, but dwelling at length on her philosophy of life, her love of Paris, her distaste for America and its culture, her devotion to the poetry of Rilke. The Dietrich that emerges from this book shows flashes of the scathing wit that was one of her cinematic trademarks, as in a series of derisive remarks about Monaco's Princess Stephanie. Most of the time, however, she deals in rather pretentious aper‡us of a purportedly philosophical nature on such high-flown subjects as love and friendship. In that respect she is an accurate reflection of the author, who once sent her a copy of Gibran's verse. The book reeks of sincerity. In describing his initial letter to Dietrich, the author calls it ``a monument of touching imbecility.'' The same may be said of the book. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 138 pages
• Publisher: Frog Ltd/Vision (March 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1883319471
• ISBN-13: 978-1883319472
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #483,530 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Marlene Dietrich's Grandson comments, April 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: I Wish You Love: Conversations with Marlene Dietrich (Hardcover)

As Marlene Dietrich's youngest Grandson, I am often made aware of books written, or even legends told that involve the often herculian efforts and opinions of my Grandmother. I was both pleased and saddened in the case of "I wish you love". Tragically, my Grandmother chose to remain without the care our family intended for her, and as a result spent these years very much without supervision or even basic human contact. The author was one of many people, hardly known, with whom she continued a correspondence or schedule of phone calls to fill this void. For the comfort this gave her, I am grateful. For the chronicled accounts of her comments, I have less gratitude. While there is great enjoyment in seeing her rendered opinions so fathfully in print, one might also understand the sobering reality that they changed oftan, sometimes within a single sentence. Because of her on-going pain associated with her hip and legs, she drank and took pain medication to excess. While this is reflected by her manner in many parts of the book, the natural reverence of the author for Marlene's celebrity has failed to firmly place these conversations in what was, regrettably, the tragic context of her condition. Regardless, for those of us who had the benefit of this insight, the book remains an honest portait of Marlene's style, if not her truth.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a compelling and fascinating true story., January 21, 1999

By 

Mollie K Corcoran - See all my reviews

This review is from: I Wish You Love: Conversations with Marlene Dietrich (Hardcover)

I think that the "Kirkus Review"totally misrepresents (as it does for many good books)the essence of this really interesting account of Dietrich's last years.I have read many books about Dietrich, studied and enjoyed her films and find this a beautifully moving portrayal of a true and wonderful friendship. Howard Kissel, in " The New York Daily News" called it "well written" and "compelling"; Many details in the book about Dietrich's life were unknown to me and I appreciated the author's subtle analysis of her fame and the way she dealt with it; To conclude, I find this book refreshing because it is also mostly about gratitude; and not one more "dysfunctional family saga" as in the Mommie Dearest tradition.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An extraordinary story of friendship and love, February 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: I Wish You Love: Conversations With Marlene Dietrich (Audio Cassette)

An unusually fine celebrity memoir surfaces in Eryk Hanut's I WISH YOU LOVE-CONVERSATIONS WITH MARLENE DIETRICH.for several years before Dietrich's death, in 1992, at the age of 91, Hanut, a young dane living in Paris,carried on wide-ranging phone chats with the aged star.Hanut's records of these talks reveal Dietrich as an intelligent woman of fiery opinion, and the author as a sensitive soul who here offers neither hagiography nor indictment ,but a tender,thoughtful appreciation of a woman turned legend PUBLISHERS WEEKLY April 1996