Music: Weltschmen

The Office of Strategic Services was producing propaganda material to be beamed across the battlefronts into Nazi Germany in 1942, but suspected its Hooper rating was low. In casting about for some way to lure more listeners to their radios, OSS remembered Marlene Dietrich. Her voice was far from the greatest in the world, but it had a haunting huskiness that Germans could well remember from such early Dietrich movies as The Blue Angel and from dozens of records (Jonny, Mein Blondes Baby, etc.). Actress Dietrich agreed. OSS picked familiar pop tunes and gave them brand-new German lyrics; Dietrich’s recordings were broadcast to the Third Reich.

Last week she had re-recorded them on a single LP for Columbia, and, whether they had their intended effect on German listeners at the time or not, they are likely to get under a lot of U.S. skins in 1952. It doesn’t matter very much that most U.S. listeners will not understand the words. Dietrich’s voice nudges and teases such old melodies as Time on My Hands, Mean to Me and Taking a Chance on Love until they brood like bittersweet numbers by Edith Piaf.

Since OSS was probing for the Weltschmerz in the German soul, the bouncy original lyrics were worked over until the death-wish showed through. Time on My Hands originally saw “nothing but love in view”; Marlene’s version points out darkly that “the end has to come sooner or later.” Taking a Chance on Love, once a devil-may-care ditty, pictures a cross standing “in the evening gold,” marking the end of life and love. Translated excerpt (a German soldier speaking):

/ must march on (trumpets in the background).

Who knows what will happen?

I go wherever they lead me,

But the song is at an end.

The only U.S. song whose original theme was deemed sad enough: Annie Doesn’t Live Here Any More.