Starring: Marlene Dietrich, Cary Grant, Herbert Marshall, Dickie Moore

Another scorcher from the dynamic Pre-Code power duo behind The Scarlet Empress and Shanghai Express, director Josef von Sternberg’s 1932 drama Blonde Venus stars Marlene Dietrich as a Teutonic singer-turned-housewife lured back to the cabaret stage by her husband’s sudden illness! Doting mother by day and sultry siren by night, Dietrich soon catches the eye of a rich American (Cary Grant), who offers her and her son financial security in exchange for…

Featuring some truly bizarre and iconic numbers – including Dietrich in a gorilla suit, later cut into Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers – Blonde Venus pushed the Pre-Code envelope with its scandalous and sensitive depiction of adultery and thinly-veiled allusions to the world’s oldest profession.