In 1936 Marlene Dietrich was in Paris for the opening of a new Maurice Chevalier musical at the Casino de Paris. Erich Maria Remarque, an ex-beau of Dietrich, also came to the show and the reception afterwards. His date for the evening was a 20-year-old woman, Frederique Baule. But it was Dietrich that Baule left with.
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Frede, as she preferred to be known, spent much of the next few years with Marlene who kept returning to Paris as often as her Hollywood career would allow.
In 1938 Marlene set Frede up in business with a nightclub that was officially called La Silhouette (after Marlene's favourite bar in Berlin), but was generally known as Chez Frede. It catered to lesbians and cross-dressing women, but also to celebrities.
Frede's dress and haircut became quite masculine. Errol Flynn describes her in his autobiography:
Frede, as she preferred to be known, spent much of the next few years with Marlene who kept returning to Paris as often as her Hollywood career would allow.
In 1938 Marlene set Frede up in business with a nightclub that was officially called La Silhouette (after Marlene's favourite bar in Berlin), but was generally known as Chez Frede. It catered to lesbians and cross-dressing women, but also to celebrities.
Frede's dress and haircut became quite masculine. Errol Flynn describes her in his autobiography:
"She dressed better than any man I had ever seen. … her over-all effect that of a sophisticated English schoolboy. Her man's haircut looked better on her than on any man."Apparently La Silhouette was able to stay open during the German occupation. The club did did so well that in the late 1940s Frede moved to a larger place, Carroll's. Marlene of course was present for the opening, and also Erich Maria Remarque and Maurice Chevalier.
- Kenneth G. Mclain. "The Untold Story Of Marlene Dietrich". Confidential, July 1955. Online at: http://lastgoddess.blogspot.ca/2012/11/marlene-dietrichs-confidential-file.html.
- Errol Flynn & Jeffrey Meyers. My Wicked, Wicked Ways. NY: Berkley Publ. Corp, 1979. NY: Cooper Square Press, 2003: 221-3.
- Axel Madsen. The Sewing Circle: Hollywood's Greatest Secret : Female Stars Who Loved Other Women. New York: A Birch Lane Press Book published by Carol Publishing Group, 1995: 150.
- Diana McLellan. The Girls: Sappho Goes to Hollywood. New York: LA Weekly Books, 2000: 227, 244-5, 327-8, 355, 358.