Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1436389 in Books
• Published on: 1996-05
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 138 pages

From Kirkus Reviews
This first book by Danish-born, Paris-raised photographer Hanut describes his telephonic friendship with Dietrich over the last few years of her life. Hanut recalls that he first saw Dietrich at one of her stage performances when he was only eight years old. He was terrified by this commanding presence in furs, and his fears were only slightly assuaged when she came over later to speak to his aunt, another film actress, at a postshow gathering. Many years later he wrote to her on a whim, thereby engendering a series of phone conversations that are the raison d`^tre of this slender volume. Much of the book's first half is taken up with Hanut's rather overwrought narrative of his own depressing childhood and youth: abusive father; both parents killed in an auto wreck; raised by a dotty celebrity aunt; drugs, booze, living on the bum across Europe. He never met Marlene in person, but seems to have enjoyed rare confidences from her during their long chats. Their conversations, as recounted herein, range over a wide assortment of topics, touching only briefly on her film career, but dwelling at length on her philosophy of life, her love of Paris, her distaste for America and its culture, her devotion to the poetry of Rilke. The Dietrich that emerges from this book shows flashes of the scathing wit that was one of her cinematic trademarks, as in a series of derisive remarks about Monaco's Princess Stephanie. Most of the time, however, she deals in rather pretentious aper‡us of a purportedly philosophical nature on such high-flown subjects as love and friendship. In that respect she is an accurate reflection of the author, who once sent her a copy of Gibran's verse. The book reeks of sincerity. In describing his initial letter to Dietrich, the author calls it ``a monument of touching imbecility.'' The same may be said of the book. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

More lucid than most humanity has the privilege to be
First it must be said that take what Marlene Dietrich says literaly, without reporting ourselves to the particular humour of germans intelectuals of her generation, Brecht included, is misunderstand it all. It it also well to remember the habits of a class that had "épater les bourgeois" as a habit. With Marlene ich word has many meanings and, some times, a little box contains a bigger one inside and then another, and another one. Few knew how to deal with the notion that truth is the multiple illusions of truth, and play so sharply with it. Most of the times for will of good, even if this good was her path towards the liberty of a precipice edge.
Then it is remarkable the incredibly effective way she educates Hanut by telephone. And, for one time, Marlene achieves her education efforts. Hanut, after she was no more there to scream at him, became not a suicidal desperate boy, but a quite interessing man publishing a series of books, with titles that seem the fruit of a research of himself and wisdom. It is not important if Marlene should agree with the conclusions of this books. It is important that she got him from the pit and made him meet the force to continue to live with dignity and to discover his way. One has to admire the cleverness of her method, hidden in apparent casuality. To do this one may drink, take pills, but one must be more lucid than most of humanity has the privilege to be.

Marlene Dietrich's Grandson comments
As Marlene Dietrich's youngest Grandson, I am often made aware of books written, or even legends told that involve the often herculian efforts and opinions of my Grandmother. I was both pleased and saddened in the case of "I wish you love". Tragically, my Grandmother chose to remain without the care our family intended for her, and as a result spent these years very much without supervision or even basic human contact. The author was one of many people, hardly known, with whom she continued a correspondence or schedule of phone calls to fill this void. For the comfort this gave her, I am grateful. For the chronicled accounts of her comments, I have less gratitude. While there is great enjoyment in seeing her rendered opinions so fathfully in print, one might also understand the sobering reality that they changed oftan, sometimes within a single sentence. Because of her on-going pain associated with her hip and legs, she drank and took pain medication to excess. While this is reflected by her manner in many parts of the book, the natural reverence of the author for Marlene's celebrity has failed to firmly place these conversations in what was, regrettably, the tragic context of her condition. Regardless, for those of us who had the benefit of this insight, the book remains an honest portait of Marlene's style, if not her truth.

An extraordinary story of friendship and love
An unusually fine celebrity memoir surfaces in Eryk Hanut's I WISH YOU LOVE-CONVERSATIONS WITH MARLENE DIETRICH.for several years before Dietrich's death, in 1992, at the age of 91, Hanut, a young dane living in Paris,carried on wide-ranging phone chats with the aged star.Hanut's records of these talks reveal Dietrich as an intelligent woman of fiery opinion, and the author as a sensitive soul who here offers neither hagiography nor indictment ,but a tender,thoughtful appreciation of a woman turned legend PUBLISHERS WEEKLY April 1996