Judy's story is a brilliant thumbnail sketch of Dietrich. It captures the ego, but also the insecurity, of someone desperate to be accepted by her peers. Judy was, of course, extremely competitive, even at her level, which partly explains the way she liked to prick the pretensions of other stars such as Dietrich and Elizabeth Taylor.
My cousin's husband played lead trumpet in the orchestra at the Fountainbleu Club in New Orleans when Dietrich was scheduled to appear on one of her revival tours. Having been a theater major in her youth my cousin thought she would go and more or less "cheer the old girl on." At this point in the anecdote my cousin's face changes completely as she assures you Marlene didn't need any help from her or anyone else. She doesn't have to elaborate on how Dietrich had the audience in her hand from beginning to end. It's all there in her face.
From Marlene's obituary in the Telegraph: "No one who saw her spectacular entrance down the winding staircase of London’s Café de Paris in the 1950s is ever likely to forget it. Sparkling from head to foot with no shortage of white mink, she did not so much descend as glide down like a serpent, disdainful, glamorous, a little threatening. Far from modest, Dietrich relished a record of the applause at these performances. One evening she played this to Noël Coward, explaining: ‘This is where I turn to the right . . . Now I turn to the left.’ When the first side ended, she threatened to turn the record over. Coward erupted: ‘Marlene, cease at once this mental masturbation]’"
