Amargosa Opera House ends season with Marlene Dietrich tribute show

A Mother’s Day weekend performance at the Amargosa Opera House will close the season with a rare mix of music, history and desert tourism, as Las Vegas artist Edith Ellithorpe brings her Marlene Dietrich-inspired show, Kaffeeklatsch with Marlene, to Death Valley Junction.

The May 9 program begins with a noon reception inside the Amargosa Hotel, where guests will be offered German pastries, coffee and cold drinks before the 2 p.m. performance in the opera house. Fred Conboy, president of the board of directors of Amargosa Opera House Inc., said the event is meant to give mothers and grandmothers a chance to enjoy both the reception and a live performance in a setting that is unlike anything else in rural Nye County.

Ellithorpe, who was originally from Germany, said the show is not an impersonation but an homage to Dietrich’s life, songs, talents and legacy. She plans to sing many of Dietrich’s songs, add German cabaret pieces and fold in both facts about Dietrich and personal stories from her own life. The performance is also part of a larger effort to keep one of the county’s most recognizable cultural landmarks active as warmer Death Valley weather returns and the season winds down.

That preservation theme runs through the site’s history. Marta Becket discovered the abandoned hall in March 1967 after a flat tire brought her and her husband to Death Valley Junction. She rented the hall for $45 a month, then gave her first performance there on February 10, 1968, before an audience of 12. After the building flooded, Becket spent years painting the murals that now define the venue and helped make the opera house a destination far beyond the tiny desert crossroads.

The hotel portion of the complex was built between 1923 and 1925 as part of the Pacific Coast Borax Company’s civic town center and opened to the public after mining moved away in 1928. The property was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981. Today, the Amargosa Hotel has 16 rooms, no TVs or phones, and the site says it welcomes travelers year-round and is known for some of the darkest night skies in North America. Tours are available daily at 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. for $20 for adults and $10 for children.

Dietrich, born Dec. 27, 1901, in Berlin, became a major star after The Blue Angel in 1930, became an American citizen in 1939 and later toured during World War II to support the U.S. war effort. Her legacy, like Becket’s, fits the Amargosa Opera House’s larger mission: keeping art, memory and visitation alive at the eastern gateway of Death Valley.