Marlene Dietrich at Expo '67

Patrick McDougall, now 79 and living in Ottawa, offered Montreal his talents as a radio host and interviewer on the CBC in the 60s and 70s.

He has has a funny story about meeting Marlene Dietrich in Montreal in 1967 in his brief and enjoyable memoir of those years in Montreal. Click this link to have a peek.

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I got to pop it in front of more than a hundred journalists in the ballroom of the Shangri-La Hotel in Montreal. It was a super scrum, with Dietrich up on stage seated at a desk with her Musical Director Burt Bacharach at her side.

I remember she was dressed casually in the mannish style she favored.
Below her, ranged in uncomfortable folding chairs, were what had become known by then as “The Expo Press.” A microphone was being passed from hand to hand, and when it came my way, I seized it eagerly.
My first question was dumb enough, God knows. It had to do with Sammy Lerner who wrote the English lyric for her signature song “Falling In Love Again.” I wanted to know if he was related to the Lerner of Lerner and Lowe. Dietrich didn’t know and said so.
I tried to recover. “Here’s a question I thought someone would have asked by now,” I continued smarmily. “Tell me, how do you keep looking so young?”
Her answer came crashing back in that incomparable Germanic monotone : “I am not that oldt."