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WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION
Marlene Dietrich:
The producer had phoned me in New York and offered me the
role. On the same evening I attended a stage performance of
the play on Broadway. I was enthusiastic at the prospect of
playing this role. Naturally, the presentation of 'the other
woman' made me uneasy, and I took all conceivable pains to
transform myself into a person who would be as different as
possible from the person I really was. Since the film would
stand or fall on this transformation, I made the most extraordinary
efforts to become an ugly, ordinary woman who succeeds in
leading one of the greatest lawyers by the nose.
Despite my many attempts I was not satisfied. I applied make-up
to my nose, made it broader with massages, and called on Orson
Welles -the great nose specialist - for help. In the long
shot in which I'm seen going along a railroad track, I have
cushions around my hips and legs. l wrapped pieces of paper
around my fingers to make them look as though they were deformed
by arthritis. And to complete the picture I painted my nails
with a dark lacquer. Billy Wilder made no comment; like all
great directors he gave his performers a free hand in the
matter of costumes.
Yet there was still a major obstacle to overcome: how was
I to handle the Cockney dialect that this woman, sprung from
my imagination, spoke? The studio decided: we would be dubbed,
but I was to say the few lines prescribed in the script.
'Let's play a little trick on them,' Charles Laughton said
to me. 'I’ll teach you the dialect, and you will speak
your lines in the purest Cockney. I'll vouch for its authenticity.
Nobody in Hollywood understands anything about it anyway.'
I went to his house with him. His wife, Elsa Lanchester, was
very nice to me. We sat around the swimming pool, and Charles
Laughton began his instruction. I made rapid progress, since
Cockney with its nasal sounds and its constant grammatical
inaccuracies is quite similar to Berlinese.
But to perform in this dialect was something altogether different.
Charles Laughton would remain at the studio, although his
day's work was done and he could have gone home. He watched
over my performance and my diction like an eagle over its
prey. He assumed full responsibility for this sequence. Billy
Wilder, who was not an expert in this area, readily relied
on Laughton. But he also warned me: 'You'll never get an Oscar
for this. People don't like to be made fools of.'
Excerpt
from Marlene Dietrich: My Life.© 1987 by Marlene Dietrich.
Reprinted by permission of M. Dietrich, Inc.
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