Directed by:
Josef von SternbergCast:
Marlene Dietrich, Herbert Marshall, Cary Grant, Dickie Moore, Rita La Roy, Robert Emmett O'Connor, Gene Morgan, Sidney Toler, Morgan Wallace (more)Plots(1)
Josef von Sternberg returned Marlene Dietrich to the stage in Blonde Venus,both a glittering spectacle and a sweeping melodrama about motherly devotion. Unfolding episodically, the film tells the story of Helen (Dietrich), once a German chanteuse, now an American housewife, who resurrects her stage career after her husband (Herbert Marshall) falls ill; she then becomes the mistress of a millionaire (Cary Grant), in a slide from loving martyr to dishonored woman. Despite production difficulties courtesy of the Hays Office, the director’s baroque visual style shines, as do one of the most memorable musical numbers in all of cinema and a parade of visionary costumes by von Sternberg and Dietrich’s longtime collaborator Travis Banton. (Criterion)
(more)Cast
Larry Steers
USA
Best movies:
The Gold Rush (1925)
Love Crazy (1941)
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
![Charles Morton](http://image.pmgstatic.com/cache/resized/w88h116crop/files/images/creator/photos/159/935/159935006_2a2b98.jpg)
Charles Morton
USA
Best movies:
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
The Invisible Man (1933)
4 Devils (1928)
Eric Alden
USA
Best movies:
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938)
Gone with the Wind (1939)
Reap the Wild Wind (1942)
Robert Graves
USA
Best movies:
City Lights (1931)
Midnight (1939)
Mad Love (1935)
![Glen Cavender](http://image.pmgstatic.com/cache/resized/w88h116crop/files/images/creator/photos/161/254/161254669_fedddd.jpg)
Glen Cavender
USA
Best movies:
The General (1926)
Dark Victory (1939)
Black Fury (1935)
Emile Chautard
France
Best movies:
Design for Living (1933)
Blonde Venus (1932)
Seventh Heaven (1927)
Jerry Tucker
USA
Best movies:
San Francisco (1936)
Murders in the Zoo (1933)
Blonde Venus (1932)
Francis Sayles
USA
Best movies:
Citizen Kane (1941)
Ball of Fire (1941)
Make Way for Tomorrow (1937)
Lloyd Whitlock
USA
Best movies:
Edison, the Man (1940)
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
Reap the Wild Wind (1942)
Gertrude Short
USA
Best movies:
The Show (1927)
The Thin Man (1934)
'G' Men (1935)
Marcelle Corday
Belgium
Best movies:
Flesh and the Devil (1926)
The Scarlet Letter (1926)
Dead End (1937)
Davison Clark
USA
Best movies:
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
Les Misérables (1934) (series)
Love Is News (1937)