Just a Jack Knife

I seem to be in a teutonic mood today - perhaps it was that kind of week - and after Dietrich, it seems an obvious progression to Lenya.

Here, in a truly shocking clip from 1962 (and under the direction of Ken Russell, no less), La Lotte shows us how us how it's done, in two and a half minutes that are an evocation both of the birth of Fascism and of the spirit of Cabaret.

Enjoy, among the shudders...

Three Smart Girls

Some images perfectly capture the moment they were taken; this is one. Eisenstadt snapped these three at a party in Berlin in 1929, when the most famous of them was the woman in the middle: Anna May Wong.

On the left, of course is Dietrich, who by that point had been toiling away for the better of a decade without becoming much more than a slightly risqué leading lady on stage and in unimportant films, a bit of a show-off and a climber. On the right is Leni Riefenstahl, at that point a rising star still four years from finding her niche as the Nazis' cinema darling.

Wong, though, at 24 here, had been a star since her mid-teens, with 30 Hollywood pictures and a handful of European hits behind her. She was a star in cabaret as well, singing wry songs like Noël Coward's "Half-Caste Woman" and showing off her perfect figure in clinging lamé gowns. Talkies kind of did her in, though, forcing her back to Los Angeles and the sort of supporting parts open to even the most beautiful Asian woman in the world.

If you want to know how the story turns out, Richard Corliss wrote an excellent multi-part feature a couple of years ago in Time. It's worth a read.

Lenya Singt Weill

But of course she does. That's what Lenya does - and better than anyone.