Marlene Dietrich Interviews & Articles

Dietrich, Marlene (1)
[screen star]

On display at the Robert Keyaerts Cadillac Museum in Langeais, near Tours, France, is this Series 452C V-16 town car model from 1933 (Fleetwood style #5525), reported to have been owned by Ms. Dietrich.

Only three such cars were built that year; one of them is known to have been acquired by actress Joan Crawford [see above]; the second could be this car, although I have never seen a photo of the star with it. The third car has not been found.

In the book Marlene Dietrich, by her daughter, Maria Riva, she writes: ...for her thirty-first birthday, my mother bought herself [a very long Cadillac as] a present [this would situate the action in late 1932, at the time Cadillac would be introducting its 1933 models]. ... With her usual perfectionism and inspired help from the famous body designer, Fisher, the Dietrich Cadillac was custom designed and built, then delivered to our door [note that the 1933 and 1934 town cars both were custom designs by Fleetwood, not Fisher]. Long before stretch limousines existed, our new car was so long that no garage, either in America or later in Europe, was deep enough to house it. It's exceptional length was due to the specially constructed trunk, a sort of metal-encased chest of drawers that hung on the back... [the 1933 sixteens rode on a chassis with 149" wheel base; on the other hand, the 1934 models are the longest production cars ever built; their wheel base was 5" longer and their overall length was 20 feet ...without any custom luggage trunk!] ...The floor was carpeted in Tibetan goat [more likely sheepskin]. It looked so glamourous that my mother never had it changed, even though she came to hate it, for it constantly tangled its long hairs around her high heels, making her trip, catalpult into the back seat whenever she entered.

While the date mentioned in Maria's book does suggest the car could have been a 1933 model, the photo of her mother's car, on p.145, is definitely a 1934-35 car. So, unless Marlene owned TWO 16-cylinder Cadillac town cars in quick succession, it is quite possible that Maria got the birthday wrong; more likely it was Marlene's 33rd; indeed, the star is reported to have taken delivery of a 1934 V-16 in early 1935, before her trip to Europe. The body styles are obviously very similar, although the 1935 car had no sidemounted spare wheels and the 1933 does not have the tfavel trunk described in Maria's book.

The car at auction in Las Vegas (left) and now in France (right)

Dietrich, Marlene (2)

1935 Cadillac Series 90. V-16 town car

Marlene toured Europe in 1935 in a 1934 V-16 town car with updated 1935 bumpers and no sidemounted spare wheels (Fleetwood style #5825). Presumably she left it there [in Europe] when she returned to the USA at the outbreak of WW2. The photo (top row below, right) is from the book by the late David Niven entitled The Moon's a balloon. In his other book, Bring on the Empty Horses, Niven recalled that Marlene's Cadillac was as long as a railway carriage. Ms. Dietrich's car appeared also in a news documentary filmed in 1935, when she was in London, where she spent a weekend with Mr. Niven.

In 1963, this car was reported to be owned by Mrs. William Ott of St. Petersburg, FL [Self Starter, Nov.-Dec. 1963, p.13]. Mrs. Ott reportedly bought the car in 1960 from a Mr. George Hormel of Austin, MN who had got it in 1955 from the original owner [Marlene?]. It was owned also at one time by Leonard Poole of Allentown, PA. The British magazine Motor Sport for 11/1962 (p.894) reported that the car was sold at auction, as part of the Sword collection in the UK, for £375 [!!!] to a collector in Australia? In a later ad in Motor Sport, December 1973 [p.1459], the car is mentioned once again. Did Sword buy it from Mrs. Ott or from Len Poole?

It was last reported in a Museum collection in New Zealand [6/1999]. Another fan of Cadillac (David Ireland) kindly supplied the name and address of the NZ Museum - thanks! It is Sir Len Southward's Southward Museum at Paraparaumu. I have been in contact with Stan Bellamore, the museum manager; he supplied the engine and body numbers. The body #11 appears at odds with production records which show that only 4 units of this style were built in 1934; I am assuming, therefore, that the factory grouped this body with others mounted on the V-8 and V-12 chassis that year.

Indefatigable V16 researcher, Terry Wenger, passed on some interesting information about the Dietrich car. He writes: Concerning the Marlene Dietrich car. I thought I read somewhere that the car she posed with was a stand-in; her car has the small hubcaps and exposed wire wheels as shown [as seen in the NZ museum photo, below] when Mrs.Ott owned it. Since Marlene took delivery of the car in early '35, the new bumpers must have been installed. If you look closely at the RH picture, below, the right license bracket is still there, only it has a sign that says that the car was owned originally by Miss Dietrich. The picture you have of a town car owned by James Gaskin Sr. also is Marlene's car, taken in the '70's at Hershey [I have now moved that picture to this entry]. I took several pictures of it at Hershey that year, myself, and it still had the same sign on the RH front license bracket that it did when Mrs. Ott owned it. Thanks for the update, Terry.

Richard Goulden, another Cadillac aficionado, said in September 2000 that there is a photo of Marlene with her car on p.145 of the book Marlene Dietrich by her daughter Maria Riva. In 2007, enthusiast Dirk Van Dorst of Belgium got a hold of the book on my behalf and confirmed that the car shown on p.145 is this car, not the 1933 model shown above.

Left and center: Marlene poses with her new V-16 town car; note the custom trunk is not visible in the center photo
Photo [left]: Kobal Collection, © 1988, Black & White Pictures Ltd., 50-52 Monmouth Street, London WC2H 9DG
Right: the star's chauffeur, Briggs, who used to wear two Colt 45's on his belt ! [Photo: D. Niven]

The car when it was in Mrs. Ott's possession
[the RH license bracket attests to Ms. Dietrich being the first owner]

The car was owned in the seventies by James E. Gaskin, Sr., of Norfolk, VA

The same car, seventy years later, in a New Zealand museum

Dietrich, Marlene (3)

1950s Cadillac Series 75 limousine

Whether or not the star owned the car is a moot point. Certainly,
her status at the time entitled her to expect to be driven around in only the best...