Leni Riefenstahl

[Reza]

NY Post

LENI'S AFFAIR

January 13, 2007 -- UNTIL she died at 101 in 2003, director Leni Riefenstahl was reviled as an evil cog in the Nazi war machine, churning out pro-Hitler flicks like "Triumph of the Will." But a new book suggests she detested one of the Third Reich's chief architects. In "Leni," out in March, Steven Bach reveals she was repulsed by Hitler's Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who would plead for sex despite the metal brace he wore because of a shortened leg. "She referred to him as 'the cripple' in private and was repelled. . . [when] he fell to his knees, clutched at her ankles, and sobbed with desire, or he grabbed her breasts, 'his face completely distorted' with lust," Bach writes. At the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, according to Bach, leggy Riefenstahl scandalized both the Germans and the Americans when she had a secret affair with U.S. decathlon gold-medal winner Glenn Morris. Their passion was literally bared when Morris "grabbed me in his arms, tore off my blouse, and kissed my breasts, right in the middle of the stadium," Riefenstahl recalled. Morris was later hired by 20th Century Fox to don a loincloth for "Tarzan's Revenge."