Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Catherine Was Great



We're tempted by Sternberg's blonde starlet
An empress who yearns to be harlot
She's laid a battalion
And maybe a stallion
An attempt that has made her turn scarlet.

David Cairns


Josef von Sternberg's The Scarlet Empress (1934) does not show Catherine the Great (Marlene Dietrich) getting amorous in a stable, but the script throws in several teasing allusions to this apocryphal rumor.

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