Maria Riva, the only child of the German film star Marlene Dietrich, died in the American state of New Mexico at the age of 100. TASR informs about it with reference to the DPA agency, to which her son Peter Riva confirmed it on Thursday. Riva was born Maria Elisabeth Sieber on 13 December 1924 in Berlin – a year and a half after Dietrich’s marriage to assistant director Rudolf Sieber. Dietrich became famous in 1929 with the film Blue Angel, which launched her star career.
Riva grew up mostly in the United States as an only child in an adult world. As a child, she attended acting classes and played small roles, including alongside her mother in the historical film The Red Empress (1934). She later got bigger roles and was nominated for an Emmy, but then left acting to take care of her mother. In 1947, she married set designer William Riva, with whom she had four sons.
“I never really had a mother,” Riva said in Berlin in 1992 when she launched her book My Mother Marlene there a few months after Dietrich’s death. “I wanted to present the image of the goddess Marlene in a different light, so I simply wrote the truth,” she told the DPA agency at the time.
“I couldn’t go to school, I didn’t have any friends, I couldn’t go to any parties,” said Riva. Dietrich wanted to have her little daughter with her all the time and thus improve her image as a loving mother. “But I would never have thought of taking my mother’s hand, cuddling with her,” she added. David Riva said his mother later regretted the criticism she subjected Dietrich to in her book. She truly admired her mother and had great respect for her talent and discipline, he added.
