oh-sewing-circle:

“Marlene Dietrich’s cross-dressing, one of her biographer’s suggests, ‘not only capitalizes on an aspect of the actress’s bisexual nature; it also enables women in the audience to love her and simultaneously establishes…an identification with men.’ Among the extraodinary roster of Dietrich’s lovers over a long and gallant career were a number of women, including the Berlin music-hall performer Claire Waldoff, playright and screenwriter Mercedes de Acosta (who also had an affair with Dietrich’s rival Greta Garbo, and Edith Piaf.

‘She always admitted to me that she preferred women to men.’ said Dietrich’s secretary Bernard Hall after her death. Hall said she had told him ‘When you go to bed with a woman, it is less important. Men are a hassle.’ Needless to say, however, the list of her male lover is a roll call of the famous and the powerful: among them Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Erich Maria Remarque, Maurice Chevalier, Jean Gabin, John Gilbert (for whom she also competed with Garbo), Michael Wilding, Yul Brynner, Frank Sinatra, Eddie Fisher, Generals Patton and Gavin—and even her daughter claims, Adlai Stevenson and Edward R. Murrow.”

-From Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life by Marjorie Garber