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Peter Riva, 51, is a literary agent and TV
documentary producer who lives and works in New York. He agreed to
share an ashtray on behalf of his late, legendary grandmother – the
Berlin-born singer-actress who glamourised smoking in the first half
of the 20th century, in such films as ‘The Blue Angel’
and ‘Destry Rides Again’. December 27, 2001, marked the
centenary of Dietrich’s birth.
JL: Where did Marlene Dietrich first take up
smoking?
PR: In 1920’s Berlin. I think pretty much
all women in Germany at that time smoked for affectation; it was a
part of the cabaret scene. It was the accessories as much as
anything else that brought her to smoking – all those terribly
elegant cigarette cases, holders, lighters and boxes.
JL: What was her preferred smoke?
PR: Cigarettes. She used to smoke
Gauloise with Jean Gabin but Chesterfield were her preferred choice
in America - she also advertised Lucky Strikes, once.
JL: What would she have said if she were still
alive today and someone in a public place told her to put her
cigarette out?
PR: You’re making the supposition that
someone would ask her. A) they wouldn’t dare and B) she
wouldn’t answer. It’s exactly as if you were asking the Queen to do
something - you wouldn’t dare.
JL: She smoked in most of her early films…
PR: Yes. Smoking for her was a wonderful
affectation, but like most singers she didn’t smoke very much. She
probably only smoked 5-10 cigarettes a day in real life. It was a
wonderful aural sexual gesture to have a cigarette. In those days a
lady held a cigarette between two fingers, and a guy held a
cigarette between his thumb and two fingers. In pretty much all of
her films, you see her holding cigarettes in different ways. As one
of the guys in ‘Destry Rides Again’, she used two fingers and a
thumb. When she was a grand lady in The Flame of New Orleans with
John Wayne she made sure she held the cigarette between two fingers
- as a lady did.
JL: She once said, "I started smoking during
the war. I have kept it up ever since. It keeps me healthy." When
did she quit smoking?
PR: She was told not to by her doctor, in
the 1960s, when she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. With her
typical discipline she never lit another cigarette.
JL: After that, did she mind people smoking
around her?
PR: As someone who was well-bred and
well-mannered, she wouldn’t have presumed to tell anybody else about
their personal habits. There was one occasion on a flight when a
man lit a rather large cigar and she asked him politely to refrain
from smoking because it was making her airsick. However, she would
never have told him to put the cigar out as a right.
JL: If your grandmother was still alive, would
you like to share an ashtray with her?
PR: It’s not a thought that ever occurred
to me. I had smoked in my grandmother’s presence but it never
occurred to me it was a social occasion. I stopped smoking
cigarettes when I was 21 but I occasionally smoke a cigar. Smoking
today is becoming more ritualistic than it was 20-30 years ago when
it was part of everyday life. Now, it’s something you contemplate
doing each time you light up. I was a 3 pack a day smoker and just
woke up one morning, stepped out of the shower, lit two cigarettes
and forgot I had already lit them. Everybody stops for their own
reasons. I stopped because I didn’t like it controlling me. |
