Shirley Temple imitating Marlene Dietrich’s ‘Hot Voodoo’ number from Blonde Venus (1932), probably ca. 1935.
Tag: hot voodoo
Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus wearing her outfit for the ‘Hot Voodoo’ dance, directed by Josef von Sternberg, 1932 / src: IMDb and Film Forum
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Here, Helen (Marlene Dietrich) as
in the truly freaky and berserk “Hot Voodoo” dance. It plays like a pagan, taboo and primitive beauty and the beast-style ritual, with Dietrich as an albino goddess or priestess shedding her gorilla fur disguise. All these decades later “Hot Voodoo” is still deliriously weird, and perhaps the first incidence of deliberate, knowing camp in popular culture. (It’s easy to imagine von Sternberg and Dietrich looking at each other across the camera and thinking, “Can you believe we’re getting away with this?”), 1932 / src: reflections-on-blonde-venus
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Shirley Temple imitating Marlene Dietrich’s ‘Hot Voodoo’ number from Blonde Venus (1932), probably ca. 1935.
I’ve always been curious about the above photo when it appears online or in books: it’s clearly an entirely different outfit to the black sequinned one Dietrich wears onscreen in “Hot Voodoo.” Is this shot a “wardrobe test” of a potential costume that got rejected? In his book, Bach provides a clue: production of Blonde Venus was a long rancorous ordeal with Sternberg (and Dietrich) feuding with studio heads. (At one point Paramount threatened to sack Sternberg and replace him with another director). There were so many script re-shuffles that “major sequences (including the “Hot Voodoo” number) were completely recostumed and reshot.” So, the famous version of “Hot Voodoo” we’re all familiar with is actually the second reshot version. This pic above was presumably what Dietrich wore in the original scrapped number that was resigned to the cutting room floor. / source: graham-russell
more [+] Marlene Dietrich posts /
more [+] Blonde Venus posts
un regard oblique 