She was a Hollywood icon, a bisexual beauty whose style and intoxicating sex appeal endured through the ages.
But Marlene Dietrich was also a cruel woman who did nothing to protect her own daughter from sexual assault by a lesbian nanny, her grandson claimed last night.
Speaking about an auction of her possessions, grandson David Riva, 53, told The Mail on Sunday: ‘She was cold and emotionally detached. She wasn’t a conventional granny.’
The German-born star of The Blue Angel and Judgement At Nuremberg was an alcoholic and bulimic who cheated on long-suffering Rudi Sieber throughout their 52-year marriage with both men and women.
Her lovers included John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Frank Sinatra, Greta Garbo and Edith Piaf.
David said: ‘She slept with anyone she found attractive. But it wasn’t the physical side of sex that mattered. For her, intimacy was about power.
‘One night my mother got a frantic call and raced over. Marlene ushered her to her bedroom. The bed was rumpled and covered in make-up.
'She’d slept with Yul Brynner, who was acting in The King And I. She just wanted to show off her conquest.’
David’s mother Maria, now 89, was Dietrich’s only child. She wrote a biography of her mother in which she revealed the legend would refer to her as ‘The Child’ and never showed her maternal love.
Dietrich hired a lesbian nanny who raped Maria at 13. When Maria confronted Marlene about it later, the diva sneered at her: ‘Well, you’re over it now, aren’t you? You’re not dead. Deal with it.’
SOURCE-DAILYM
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