Dietrich's iconic resonance in the role of Erika von Schluetow in this picture was boosted by having her accompanied in the night club scenes by Friedrich Hollaender, aka Frederick Hollander, who did the same in her films The Blue Angel (1930) and Manpower (1941). As he had done for those two movies, he also wrote her songs in this film, recalling the many other musical numbers he also composed for her in The Song of Songs (1933), Desire (1936), Angel (1937), Destry Rides Again (1939), and Seven Sinners (1940). The song he wrote for Dietrich in Blue Angel, "Falling in Love Again," became her theme song, performed by her hundreds of times in her long concert and cabaret career.

A base drum in the night club scenes advertises The Syncopators, one of the most famous jazz bands in pre-Nazi Berlin and the back-up musicians for Hollaender and Dietrich in The Blue Angel (1930).

According to Dietrich biographer Steven Bach, the songs used in this picture were originally written by Hollaender for the Tingeltangel Club, his failed attempt to create a Berlin-style cabaret in Hollywood.

Wilder had expected this to be the first American film shot on location in war-torn Berlin following armistice, but he was beaten to the punch by RKO's Berlin Express (1948), a thriller directed by Jacques Tourneur.

Dietrich's role in this as the former mistress of a Nazi official, a conniver who will play any side to her best benefit, was in direct contrast to reality. She was, in fact, vocally and vehemently anti-Nazi, and used her fame during World War II to advance the Allied cause against her homeland, for which she was awarded the Medal of Freedom by the U.S. (the first woman to receive one) and inducted into France's Legion of Honor.

Like this picture, Ernst Lubitsch's comedy To Be or Not to Be (1942) was denounced as callous and tasteless for finding humor in Nazism.

Shortly before the release of this film, Dietrich's daughter gave birth to her first child, J. Michael Riva (now an award-winning art director-production designer). Life magazine found the milestone momentous enough to feature the star on its cover with the words "Grandmother Dietrich." This began her image as "the world's most glamorous grandmother," a moniker she at first embraced but eventually grew tired of.

Wilder returned to Berlin years later for another politically-tinged comedy about cultures clashing, this time the communist-controlled East and the capitalist West. One., Two, Three (1961) also used a central romance as a take-off point for its satirical barbs.

by Rob Nixon