| Maria Riva | |
|---|---|
Maria Riva in 2005. |
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| Born | Maria Elisabeth Sieber 13 December 1924 Berlin, Germany |
| Occupation | Actress, memoirist |
| Years active | 1934–2005 |
| Spouse | Dean Goodman (1943–1944; divorced) William Riva (1947–1999) |
Maria Riva (née Sieber; born December 13, 1924) is a German-American actress who primarily worked on television in the 1950s. She is the daughter of the actress Marlene Dietrich, about whom she wrote a memoir published in 1994.
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Riva was born in Berlin as the only child of actress Marlene Dietrich and film production assistant Rudolf Sieber. In 1930, when she was 6 years old, she moved with her mother to Los Angeles.
In 1934, aged 9, she had a small role in Josef von Sternberg's film The Scarlet Empress, based on the life of Catherine the Great, in which she played Catherine as a child. She was also an extra in the 1936 David O Selznick production, The Garden of Allah.
She received acting training and during the Second World War entertained Allied troops in Europe for the USO. She also acted in theatre and summer stock (including a production of Tea and Sympathy). Riva appeared at the Longacre Theatre on Broadway in the 1954 production The Burning Glass, opposite Cedric Hardwicke and Walter Matthau[1]
After a brief marriage to Dean Goodman (whom she had married in 1943) ended in divorce, she married scenic designer William Riva in 1947;[2] they had four sons. With the birth of her first child, J. Michael Riva (now a film production designer) in 1948, the press dubbed Dietrich "the world's most glamorous grandmother".[3] Her second son, Peter Riva, President and Owner of International Transactions, Inc., is her literary agent.
During the 1950s, Riva appeared in "over 500 live teleplays for us at CBS..." said Bill Paley, all broadcast from New York. Some series she guested on include The Milton Berle Show, Lux Video Theatre, Hallmark Hall of Fame, Your Show of Shows, Suspense and Studio One. She received Emmy nominations as best actress in 1952 and 1953, respectively. She semi-retired from acting in the mid-50s, but made a cameo appearance as Mrs Rhinelaner in Bill Murray's 1988 Dickens parody, Scrooged.
In 2001, she was interviewed for Her Own Song, a documentary about Marlene Dietrich.
After her mother's death in 1992, Riva's memoir of life with her mother was published in 1992 by Bertelsmann in Germany and Alfred A. Knopf in New York (and 14 other languages). She also edited a volume of Dietrich's poetry, Nachtgedanken, which was published in Germany and Italy in 2005.