Marlene Dietrich in Residence

In the spring of 1948, film legend Marlene Dietrich took up residence at The Plaza for an extended stay. The actress was looking forward to a rest; she had spent most of the war years entertaining Allied troops (winning the Medal of Honor for her efforts) and had just wrapped her first postwar picture, A Foreign Affair. There was a new man in her life (whose identity remains a mystery to this day) and it was he who sold her on The Plaza, and, in particular, Suite 317–325. Named after its designer, the noted interior decorator Lady Mendl, the four-room apartment came equipped with mirrored walls, an ornate red antique French clock, and bedroom murals of frolicking nymphs hand-painted by the artist Marcel Vertès. (Here, the parlor of the suite.)

Dietrich immediately banished the clock (“Too much gingerbread,” said she) and turned her attention to a more immediate matter: the birth of her first grandchild, who was due in several months. Part of the preparations for the blessed event included the construction of an elaborate wicker bassinet, which Dietrich herself helped to assemble on card tables set up in the parlor of the suite. After the birth, Life magazine photographed her by the window of Room 323 and put this picture on its cover, above the headline GRANDMOTHER DIETRICH (here), an epithet that later evolved into the title “World’s Most Glamorous Grandmother.” Although she secretly despised the sobriquet, Dietrich had no choice but to embrace it publicly.

She left The Plaza in June 1949 to meet with Christian Dior in Paris for costume fittings in preparation for her next picture, Alfred Hitchcock’s Stage Fright. Hitchcock, too, has a history at The Plaza, but he would make his appearance several years later at the filming of North by Northwest.