Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich (Berlin 1901 to Paris 1992) was one of the defining film stars and singers of the twentieth century. György Rauscher painted her in Berlin in 1929, the year before The Blue Angel, and the portrait is held at the Komáromi Klapka György Múzeum (/bibliography#szamado-2019, p. 32).
Who she was
Born Marie Magdalene Dietrich in the Schöneberg district of Berlin, she worked through the 1920s in Berlin theatre and silent film before her breakthrough as the cabaret singer Lola Lola in Josef von Sternberg’s Der blaue Engel (The Blue Angel, 1930). Sternberg took her to Hollywood, where Morocco, Shanghai Express, and a run of films through the 1930s made her a global star, as did her recording and cabaret career. She took American citizenship, opposed the Nazi regime, and entertained Allied troops during the Second World War. She remains one of cinema’s enduring style icons.
The Rauscher portrait
Rauscher painted Dietrich during his Berlin years, in 1929, when she was a working Berlin actress and not yet the international name The Blue Angel would make her months later. The portrait entered the collection of the Komáromi Klapka György Múzeum, which holds it today (see /klapka-muzeum). It belongs to the group of Berlin film-and-theatre sitters Rauscher took on as a Scherl Verlag portraitist, described in /biography/berlin-years.
The work record is at /works/marlene-dietrich-1929.