Dietrich love letters made public

BERLIN, Germany -- A set of love letters written by the legendary star Marlene Dietrich have been displayed to the public in Germany on Friday.

A letter, written by the young German actress in 1921 to her boyfriend Willy Michel, expressed her insecurity over the idea that he might have found sombody prettier than her.

"Have you already found a beautiful woman? And someone prettier than me? I feel so empty.... Now I am crying," Dietrich, then 19, wrote to Michel in the letter.

Dietrich had met Michel, a butcher at the time, in Weimar when she was an unknown music student.

While Michel is little remembered in her biographies, her life would later includ some of the world's best-known men and women as lovers.

An account published last year said Dietrich had a one-time fling with U.S. President John F Kennedy in the White House in 1962 and has been romantically linked with Greta Garbo and Frank Sinatra.

An auction house in Hanover, where Michel lived, has made eight letters to Dietrich's former boyfriend public ahead of their planned sale at an auction later this month.

A 1993 auction of Dietrich's personal collection of clothes, jewellery and show business memorabilia sold to a film museum in her native Berlin for $5 million.

"I'm very unhappy, can you believe it," Dietrich wrote in the last letter in the series in January 1922.

Soon after writing the letters, Dietrich's life took a dramatic turn. She appeared in her first film that year, and two years later she married director Rudolph Sieber.

Marlene Dietrich became a legendary femme fatale of the silver screen, making her name by starring in the first German talking film, "The Blue Angel," made in 1929.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Italy's silent divas shine again
September 25, 2000

Marlene Dietrich
Berlin

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.