MARLENE DIETRICH - HEMINGWAY/DIETRICH LETTERS GO ON SHOW

Love letters sent between pen pals MARLENE DIETRICH and author ERNEST HEMINGWAY have gone public for the first time, suggesting the long-distance lovers were smitten with each other. Movie legend Dietrich's daughter MARIA RIVA donated the 30 letters to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, Massachusetts in 2004 and the passionate prose went on public display on Thursday (29MAR07). In one letter, Hemingway refers to the German-born actress as "my little Kraut", while stating, "You are getting so beautiful they will have to make passport pictures of you nine feet tall," in another. Meanwhile, Dietrich writes, "I have moved your photograph to my bedroom and mostly look at it rather helplessly." The couple met aboard a cruise ship in 1934 and have often been linked as lovers, although Hemingway once insisted to his writer pal A.E. HOTCHNER shortly before his death that he never bedded the actress.