Maria Riva obit

Maria Riva, Actress and Daughter of Marlene Dietrich, Dies at 100

She appeared in films as a child with her mom before becoming a great star for CBS in the early days of television. 

She was not on the list.

Maria Riva, the only child of Marlene Dietrich who as a rare contract player with CBS was one of the top television personalities in the medium’s early days of live, kinescope broadcasts, died Wednesday. She was 100.

Riva died in her sleep at the home of son Peter Riva in Gila, New Mexico, he told The Hollywood Reporter. She had been living with him since early last year.

William S. Paley’s favorite actress, Riva starred, often as a woman in peril, on such classic anthology series as Studio One, Lux Video Theatre, Suspense and The Philco Television Playhouse and on shows including Danger, Crime Photographer and Climax!

She quit acting in the late 1950s — she often described herself as a “Poor Man’s Dietrich” and admitted she never had a burning ambition to be an actress — but managed her mother’s glitzy one-woman Las Vegas act and global tours for many years.

A few months after Dietrich died in Paris in May 1992 at age 90, Riva published a book about her glamorous movie-star mother. “I consider myself a biographer, not the daughter,” she said in a 2009 chat for the Television Academy Foundation website The Interviews.

“I’m very proud of the fact I was able to step back as a biographer … what was wrong was wrong, what was right was right, what was great was great, what was brilliant was brilliant. [People] don’t understand how it is possible to be a child of an ephemeral creature that is beyond normalcy. It’s very difficult.”

The only child of Dietrich and Rudolf Sieber, an editor and assistant director who later was put in charge of translating films for Paramount in Paris, Maria Elisabeth Sieber was born in Berlin on Dec. 13, 1924.

“But I never thought that was my name, because being the child of a very famous person, I was always ‘Maria, the Daughter of Marlene Dietrich,’” she said. “I actually signed it that way when I was a child.”

When she was 5, she “was imported” to Los Angeles to live with her mother, by then a huge star at Paramount Pictures.

­­Riva played Catherine the Great as a child — Dietrich portrayed the Russian monarch as an adult — in Josef von Sternberg’s The Scarlet Empress (1934), then appeared in another film starring her mom, David O. Selznick’s The Garden of Allah (1936), an early Technicolor release.

Later, she was raped repeatedly by a woman who was the secretary of one of her mother’s lovers, she said.

Riva attended the Brillantmont International School in Switzerland and studied acting as a teenager at the Max Reinhardt Academy in Los Angeles at Wilshire & Fairfax, where the Academy Museum is now.

She then taught and directed there — her students included Elizabeth Taylor’s brother, Howard — acted on the radio with Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater and appeared on Broadway with Tallulah Bankhead in Foolish Notion in 1945.

After a brief first marriage and performing in Germany and Italy for two years as part of a USO troupe, she taught a graduate course in acting and directing at Fordham University and married scenic designer William Riva in 1947, while Dietrich was away in Europe.

When she complained to him about what she was seeing on television, he said to her: “’I’m so tired hearing you criticize this new profession. Why don’t you go and do something to make it better?’ And that’s why I went into television.”

She made her first TV appearance in 1951 on the anthology series Sure as Fate before signing a three-year contract for $250 a week with CBS, which sought to create a movie-style studio system. She acted often alongside John Forsythe and appeared on hundreds of TV episodes.

“There was a saying: You played to Mrs. Glutz in the Bronx,” she said. “People who knew nothing about acting, about the profession, would now get [their entertainment] for free in their home, and they should be glad to get whatever they got. So you played to a very low standard. Which was fine, because I had no talent.”

Still, she received Emmy nominations as best actress in 1952 and 1953, appeared in a “mirror-image” photograph with her mother on the cover of Life magazine in August 1952 and later turned down an opportunity to replace an ailing Imogene Coca on NBC’s Your Show of Shows.

Riva also did TV commercials for Alcoa in which she would demonstrate how to use the company’s new product — that would be aluminum foil — and was paired with famed product pitchwoman Betty Furness when CBS tested color television for the first time.

At the height of her career as the TV industry moved west, she quit, not wanting to return to Los Angeles. “I had grown up in a world where everybody was beautiful, everybody was rich, everybody had everything that everybody else in the world wants, and nobody was really happy. And I learned a very valuable lesson, that it’s not what it looks like on the surface.”

She did tour in stage productions of Tea & Sympathy and Country Girl and noted that, “outside of Jackie Gleason and the great comedians, I was probably the first person that drew people as a television personality into another media.”

Riva returned to acting to play Mrs. Rhinelander — the wife of Robert Mitchum’s character, Bill Murray’s boss — in Scrooged (1988), directed by Richard Donner. Her first-born son, the late J. Michael Riva, was the film’s production designer, and another son, John-Paul Riva, was a production assistant in the art department.

She acted again in All Aboard (2018), a short film directed by grandson J. Michael Riva Jr.

Riva also co-authored a 2001 photography book with previously unseen images of her mother, edited a 2005 volume of Dietrich’s poetry and wrote a 2017 period novel, You Were There Before My Eyes, about a woman who emigrates from Italy to Detroit.

After Dietrich’s death from liver failure, she sold much of her mom’s estate to Berlin to be housed in the city’s Deutsche Kinemathek museum.

She and William Riva remained together until his death in 1999.

In addition to her sons Peter and John-Paul, survivors include another son, David, and her grandchildren, Lily, Ayla, Aidan and Marilee.

A timeless icon of style, Dietrich received an Oscar nomination for her turn opposite Gary Cooper in Morocco (1930) and starred in such films as Blonde Venus (1932), The Devil Is a Woman (1935), Touch of Evil (1958) and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961).

Dietrich and Sieber, who died in 1976, never divorced, even though they lived together for only a few years. Meanwhile, she reportedly had sex with the likes of Cooper, John Gilbert, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Frank Sinatra, Eddie Fisher, James Stewart, Jean Gabin and Yul Brynner. And that was just the men.

While promoting her book about Dietrich, Riva told Diane Sawyer that her mom had this idea for her own funeral: “All the men who walk into the church, and women, who had slept with her would get a red carnation, and all the people who said they had slept with her but hadn’t would get a white carnation.”

Actress

All Aboard (2018)

All Aboard

Short

Evie (Period)

2018

 

Bill Murray in Scrooged (1988)

Scrooged

6.9

Mrs. Rhinelander

1988

 

Target (1958)

Target

7.3

TV Series

Edie

1958

2 episodes

 

The 20th Century-Fox Hour (1955)

The 20th Century-Fox Hour

7.1

TV Series

Anna

1956

1 episode

 

Robert Montgomery Presents (1950)

Robert Montgomery Presents

7.7

TV Series

Alice Reed

1952–1955

3 episodes

 

Appointment with Adventure (1955)

Appointment with Adventure

6.4

TV Series

Mira

1955

1 episode

 

Dan Duryea in Climax! (1954)

Climax!

6.5

TV Series

Marie

1955

1 episode

 

Stage 7 (1955)

Stage 7

7.1

TV Series

Madge Jackson

1955

1 episode

 

Marsha Hunt and John Rodney in Studio One (1948)

Studio One

7.5

TV Series

Miss MitnickMarquesa Leonora AllettiCecil ...

1951–1955

15 episodes

 

Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Rod Serling in Suspense (1949)

Suspense

7.3

TV Series

Anna HoffmannLizaCecilia

1951–1954

5 episodes

 

The Web (1950)

The Web

7.1

TV Series

1951–1954

2 episodes

 

The Story of Ruth

TV Movie

1954

 

You Are There (1953)

You Are There

8.3

TV Series

Catherine

1954

1 episode

 

The Motorola Television Hour (1953)

The Motorola Television Hour

6.8

TV Series

Lisa

1953

1 episode

 

Kraft Theatre (1947)

The Philco Television Playhouse

7.5

TV Series

1952–1953

2 episodes

 

Zachary Scott in Medallion Theatre (1953)

Medallion Theatre

6.4

TV Series

1953

1 episode

 

The Revlon Mirror Theater (1953)

The Revlon Mirror Theater

3.7

TV Series

1953

1 episode

 

Omnibus (1952)

Omnibus

8.2

TV Series

(segment "The Abracadabra Kid")

1953

1 episode

 

Armstrong Circle Theatre (1950)

Armstrong Circle Theatre

7.7

TV Series

1952

1 episode

 

Kraft Theatre (1947)

Kraft Theatre

7.9

TV Series

Mary

1952

1 episode

 

Hallmark Hall of Fame (1951)

Hallmark Hall of Fame

8.1

TV Series

1952

1 episode

 

Crime Syndicate

TV Series

1952

1 episode

 

Crime Photographer (1951)

Crime Photographer

4.9

TV Series

1951–1952

2 episodes

 

Danger (1950)

Danger

7.3

TV Series

1951–1952

5 episodes

 

Lux Video Theatre (1950)

Lux Video Theatre

7.4

TV Series

AlmaHilda

1951–1952

2 episodes

 

Sure As Fate

5.7

TV Series

1951

1 episode

 

The Garden of Allah (1936)

The Garden of Allah

5.8

Young Girl Sewing (uncredited)

1936

 

Grace Moore and Franchot Tone in The King Steps Out (1936)

The King Steps Out

6.2

Girl Playing Violin (uncredited)

1936

 

The Scarlet Empress (1934)

The Scarlet Empress

7.5

Sophia as a Child (as Maria)

1934

 

Writer

Marlene

biography by

FilmingTV Mini Series

 

Producer

Marlene

executive producer

FilmingTV Mini Series

 

Soundtrack

The Milton Berle Show (1948)

The Milton Berle Show

7.4

TV Series

performer: "It's So Nice to Have a Man Around the House"

1953

1 episode

 

Self

Marlene - Le Crépuscule d'un ange (2012)

Marlene - Le Crépuscule d'un ange

7.2

TV Movie

Self

2012

 

The Interviews: An Oral History of Television (1997)

The Interviews: An Oral History of Television

7.3

TV Series

Self

2009

1 episode

 

Why Be Good? Sexuality & Censorship in Early Cinema (2007)

Why Be Good? Sexuality & Censorship in Early Cinema

6.3

Self

2007

 

Hello Paradise (2004)

Hello Paradise

7.0

TV Series

Self

2007

1 episode

 

Beckmann (1999)

Beckmann

3.0

TV Series

Self

2005

1 episode

 

Marlene Dietrich: Her Own Song (2001)

Marlene Dietrich: Her Own Song

7.8

Self - Interviewee

2001

 

The Line King: The Al Hirschfeld Story (1996)

The Line King: The Al Hirschfeld Story

7.3

Self (voice)

1996

 

Marlene Dietrich: Shadow and Light

7.2

TV Movie

Self - Dietrich's Daughter and Biographer

1996

 

Josef von Sternberg, the Man Who Made Dietrich

8.1

Short

Self

1994

 

Marlene Dietrich in Nachlass Marlene Dietrich (1993)

Nachlass Marlene Dietrich

TV Special

Self

1993

 

Kultur im Gespräch (1990)

Kultur im Gespräch

TV Series

Self

1993

1 episode

 

Ad Lib (1986)

Ad Lib

TV Series

Self - fille de Marlene Dietrich (1993)

1986–1995

 

5th Annual Celebrity Parade for Cerebral Palsy

TV Special

Self

1955

 

The Martha Raye Show (1954)

The Martha Raye Show

6.5

TV Series

Self

1955

1 episode

 

4th Annual Celebrity Parade for Cerebral Palsy

TV Special

Self - Host

1954

 

WOR-TV's Kid Telethon

TV Special

Self

1954

 

The Milton Berle Show (1948)

The Milton Berle Show

7.4

TV Series

Self - Actress

1953

1 episode

 

Let's Take Sides

TV Series

Self - Guest

1953

1 episode

 

Ed Sullivan in The Ed Sullivan Show (1948)

The Ed Sullivan Show

7.9

TV Series

Self

1953

2 episodes

 

Your Show of Shows (1950)

Your Show of Shows

8.6

TV Series

Self - Guest Performer

1952

1 episode

 

The Ken Murray Show (1950)

The Ken Murray Show

6.7

TV Series

Self

1952

2 episodes

 

Die glückliche Mutter

Short

Self

1928

 

Archive Footage

Compression (1995)

Compression

7.0

TV Series

Self (archive footage)

2023

1 episode

 

Hour of Stars (2002)

Hour of Stars

5.3

TV Series

Anna (archive footage)

2002

1 episode

 

Biography (1987)

Biography

7.7

TV Series

Self (archive footage)

2000

1 episode

 

Legenden (1998)

Legenden

6.6

TV Series

Self - Daughter (archive footage)

1998

1 episode