Blonde Venus (1932)

Traveling in Germany, an American student (Herbert Marshall) meets a cabaret performer (Marlene Dietrich) and they marry and live in the U.S. But they live in near poverty and when the husband gets seriously ill, she returns to work as a nightclub performer in order to get the money for him to travel to Germany where a successful cure for his illness has been found. But while the husband is away, she falls in love with a smooth talking politician (Cary Grant). Directed by Josef von Sternberg, this ode to mother love isn't his finest hour. King Vidor did it better with STELLA DALLAS (1937). But the film has a gay cult following, mostly because of the sensational Hot Voodoo performed by Dietrich who makes her entrance in a gorilla outfit which is the movie's highlight and her gender bending performing of I Couldn't Be Annoyed in a man's white tuxedo. Other than that, it's a rather mawkish tale of Dietrich's mother suffering and doing anything to keep her child from being taken away from her. It's hard to sympathize with her however. Her husband is fighting for his life in a clinic in Germany and she's screwing Cary Grant! But she's punished for it and we get our "happy" ending. With Hattie McDaniel, Sidney Toler, Sterling Holloway, Cecil Cunningham and young Dickie Moore as Dietrich's son.