Kennedy and Dietrich didn’t change each other’s opinions, but continued to relish each other’s company. He found her enchanting, smart, and irreverent, while Marlene was impressed with the obvious joy Joe took in his children. She would later recall in a letter to Ted Kennedy that what she remembered best was Joe’s genuine laughter, which “would echo from the rocks” overlooking the sea.

“Mad Desire”

After an idyllic month of relaxation, Joe returned to England, where tin hats and gas masks were being distributed throughout the embassy. As Hitler’s army gathered along the Czechoslovakian border, Londoners began digging trenches in public parks for shelter from the bombs they assumed were coming. Then came the announcement, on September 30, that peace was at hand, with Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, France’s Édouard Daladier, Italy’s Benito Mussolini, and Hitler all shaking hands on an agreement that ceded part of Czechoslovakia to Germany in exchange for peace. Across the rest of Europe there was a collective, if short-lived, sigh of relief.

Kennedy’s ultimate goal was to keep America out of what he saw as a European conflict, yet when he advocated “trying to work out something with the totalitarian States,” a round of criticism from the British and American press followed. Joe was sure he was right and everyone else, including his latest lover, Clare Boothe Luce, was wrong, but the next spring the Nazis entered Prague, and war looked ever more imminent.

The Dietrich clan had moved on to Paris for the winter, and when Marlene sailed for America to finalize her citizenship, Maria was sent back to her Swiss boarding school for a few months. Then it was summer again and time to re-unite and depart for the Hôtel du Cap.

Diplomatic complications were not going to keep the Kennedy family from returning to the Riviera in August of 1939. Maria was ecstatic because “for the first time in my life I had friends to greet.” Joe, however, was less than thrilled because this time he had competition for Marlene’s affections not only from Erich Remarque but also from Jo Carstairs, the cross-dressing Standard Oil heiress. Carstairs held the world record as the fastest female speedboat racer, but she made a dramatic arrival at the du Cap on her three-masted schooner. Jo told Marlene she made her “seethe with a mad desire,” according to one of the letters Marlene preserved, but nothing prevented Dietrich from picking up where she had left off with Kennedy the year before. Their families swam and dined together often, and Marlene took to calling the ambassador “Papa Joe” to differentiate him from all the other “Joe”s in her life: his eldest son, Jo Carstairs, and Josef von Sternberg.

No longer concerned about the camera, Marlene let herself go bronze; home movies taken that summer reveal that she was more striking than ever in her white two-piece bathing suit and flowing beach robes. Remarque ensconced himself in his room during the day to write, giving her uninterrupted time each day for both an après-lunch rendezvous with the ambassador and an afternoon outing with Jo on her boat. In contrast to the often jealous Remarque and the besotted Carstairs, Kennedy must have been refreshing. Emotionless in his lovemaking, he was able to cordon off satisfying his sexual appetite as a necessary part of his day. And his Hollywood experience came in handy that second summer.

Dietrich had been off the screen for two years when the producer Joseph Pasternak, who had known her when they were both beginning their careers in Berlin and was now a growing Hollywood power, tracked her down at the du Cap and called her with an offer for a role in a Western he was planning. She was intrigued, but couldn’t imagine herself playing a dance-hall girl and turned to “Papa Joe” for advice. Kennedy jumped into the negotiations and, as if he had never left the business, placed transatlantic calls to Universal, where Pasternak assured him he wanted Marlene so much that there were also job offers for both Rudi and Remarque. Later that evening, Joe proclaimed that the deal was too good to refuse, and so Marlene accepted the offer to play opposite Jimmy Stewart in Destry Rides Again.