Marlene - woman, image, icon. Astonishingly beautiful with finely modelled cheekbones, a broad, smooth forehead, eyes that held a knowing tenderness, and a mouth prone to cool mockery. Tailored to please, perfect from her trademark hairstyle to her elegant high heels, she made the women in her audience feel more glamorous, the men more dashing.
She experienced more life and love, more of rapture and loss, than any woman who has ever lived since Cleopatra: from a traumatic Prussian childhood, to the debauchery of Berlin, film success, stardom in 1930s Hollywood and status as the highest paid woman in the world. Yet throughout she remained wry and detached, calculating, in control of her life and herself.