Pssst! Watch the Turner Classic Movies channel at 7 p.m. Friday, Jan.11, or midnight Jan. 17. Or tape it for later. The station will air for the second and third time the documentary, "Marlene Dietrich: Her Own Song," a show that first ran in prime time during the holiday period. In addition to an entertaining two hours, viewers will get a chance to learn about Wayne State professor Guy Stern's experiences during World War II.

A distinguished professor of German and Slavic studies and former Wayne State University provost, Stern is interviewed in several segments and reminisces about his wartime connection to Dietrich.

A resident of West Bloomfield, Stern, who earned the Bronze Star for his "inestimable service" interrogating German prisoners of war as part of his intelligence assignment, met Dietrich both during the war and again later, and recounted some of his experiences as part of the documentary.

"We had just retreated during the Battle of the Bulge," he says in a recent interview, "to Huy, Belgium, where First Army Headquarters established a POW enclosure in an old castle called the Citadel. Dietrich was entertaining troops about 25 kilometers away, so a friend and I jumped into a Jeep and went to see her in a huge catering hall."

The star of "The Blue Angel" was surrounded back stage by American soldiers, but Stern's job was translator, and that had prepared him for the occasion. He and his friend spoke to Dietrich in German and thus captured the German-born actress's attention. After small talk, they told her of the German POW camp in Huy and offered to take her for a visit.

"In the Citadel," Stern said, "we walked her down a fenced corridor with German enlisted men on the left and officers on the right. When they saw it was Dietrich, the POWs rushed to the barbed wire fence on both sides. Then the head of the military police battalion rushed out in a red face and shouted, 'What's going on here? Get her out of here or I'll have a riot on my hands.'"

The film was produced and directed by Dietrich's grandson, David Riva, who learned of Stern's connection from a mutual acquaintance at Berlin's Museum of Film History. Stern, an expert on exile literature, was a guest professor at the University of Potsdam about three years ago when he toured the museum, met its director and recounted his visits with Dietrich. Riva visited the museum some time later for his documentary, produced to honor his grandmother's100th birthday. Riva learned of his meetings and arranged for Stern and several others to be interviewed for the production in Washington, D.C., on Veteran's Day 2000.

The filming went well, and Riva and his team sent Stern a thank you note for his participation in the documentary: "The film looks great and you are quite wonderful on camera.... You have added the kind of magic to our story which she would have appreciated."

If you miss the showings, watch the TCM listings. It is scheduled to run again at additional times in 2002.