| | Happy to second your endorsement of Shanghai Express. Besides being a wonderful story with wonderful characters, it's the most beautiful movie visually that I've ever seen. It also has the all-time great line in movie history (you'll know it when it comes up).
Did you know that the movie has some roundabout connections to Rand? von Sternberg and Dietrich were, just after this, set to make a movie of Red Pawn, though the deal fell through. Barbara Branden tells the story. In his autobiography, von Sternberg says Rand told him Shanghai Express was one of her own favorites. It's as close as we get to what the three of them might have done together. Dietrich reportedly attended the Hollywood opening of Rand's play Penthouse Legend, later Night of January 16.
More than a decade later, Rand and her husband bought a house in the Valley that Richard Neutra had built for von Sternberg, although I don't think he was the owner at the time.
(Edited by Peter Reidy on 6/02, 7:30am)
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