Break A Leg

At right is a picture of Dietrich in 1933.

Linked here is another picture of Dietrich, in the form of a terrific memoir of her 1965 visit to Australia by entertainment journalist Raymond Stanley.

Between the press conference and the opening performance Dietrich had nine hours of rehearsal with the orchestra. At the final rehearsal, on the day of the opening, according to (impersario) Kenn Brodziak, the star never ceased to complain. Everything seemed to be wrong - the lights, sound, music - just about everything. At 4 p.m. she said: “It’s terrible. Everything’s wrong. I’m going. You’ll have to fix it.” And left the theatre.

There was dead silence and everyone seemed panic-stricken - except Brodziak. “We’re going to do nothing”, he said firmly, “she’s too much of a perfectionist. If anything was wrong she wouldn’t have left the theatre.”

Sadly one cannot sure whether Dietrich would have remembered our country foundly. While on tour here in 1975, at the age of 74, she broke her leg, effectively ending her stage career.