66 Years Ago in TIME

By Elizabeth L. Bland, Sean Gregory, Barbara Maddux, Benjamin Nugent, David Robinson And Rebecca Winters

German director LENI RIEFENSTAHL next week celebrates her 100th birthday with the release of a new film about her underwater photography. In 1936, after she was commissioned by Adolf Hitler to make a film of the Winter Olympics, she was a TIME cover subject:

In 1934 she met Adolf Hitler, who had long admired her work on the screen. He...promptly amazed the German cinema industry by commissioning her to make the official film of last summer's Nurnberg Party Congress in which she directed 800,000 men. When Herr Hitler's crony, Air Minister Goring, married Cinemactress Riefenstahl's crony, Actress Emmy Sonnemann, last year, Hitler was best man. That Realmleader Hitler, a confirmed celibate, has any such intentions concerning Cinemactress Leni Riefenstahl no one suspects for a moment, but that he holds her in high esteem, entertains romantic admiration for her achievements and her character as a prime example of German womanhood, is apparent to everyone. --TIME, Feb. 17, 1936