Few movie stars have meant as many things to as many different audiences as the iconic Marlene Dietrich. The actress-chanteuse had a career of some seventy years: one that included not only classical Hollywood cinema and the concert hall but also silent film in Weimar Germany, theater, musical comedy, vaudeville, army camp shows, radio, recordings, television, and even the circus. Having renounced and left Nazi Germany, assumed American citizenship, and entertained American troops, Dietrich has long been a flashpoint in Germany s struggles over its cultural heritage. She has also figured...

..".provides a hugely readable, insightful examination of Billy Wilder's American films as the product of transnational cultural exchange." - Monatshefte

"Gemunden's vital decoding of Wilder's translation of himself into the American vernacular offers stimulating new material and perspectives that will no doubt shape Wilder scholarship to come." - Austrian Studies Newsletter

"Billy Wilder is hard to trump, because everything one writes about him is only half as entertaining as his great sense of humor. Gerd Gemunden, however, achieves a small miracle: his A Foreign Affair is a highly...