Maria Riva, the acclaimed actress and author, and the only daughter of the legendary Marlene Dietrich, passed away on Wednesday in Gila, New Mexico, at the age of 100. Her groundbreaking biography of her mother, published a year after Dietrich’s death in 1992, candidly revealed the heavy price of her mother’s immense fame.
Her son, Peter, confirmed her passing from his home, where she had resided for the past eighteen months.
Born in Berlin, Ms. Riva’s father, Rudolph Sieber, a charismatic assistant director, had initially cast Dietrich in one of her early film roles. Their marriage in 1923 preceded a childhood largely spent amidst the glamour of Hollywood’s Paramount Pictures backlots, as her mother’s star ascended.
Formal schooling was deemed unnecessary by Dietrich, who reportedly found English vulgar and Americans even more so. Instead, she kept her daughter, whom she referred to as ‘The Child,’ constantly by her side, serving as a personal assistant and handmaiden.
Interestingly, it was Josef von Sternberg, the Viennese director, Dietrich’s mentor and lover, who introduced Ms. Riva to essential American film terminology like ‘soundstage,’ ‘makeup,’ and ‘wardrobe department.’ Sternberg was instrumental in transforming Dietrich into an international star, securing her a Hollywood contract after their collaboration on ‘The Blue Angel’ (1930), the first of their seven films.
Maria quickly became adept at managing her mother’s elaborate costumes and props, signing publicity photos, and maintaining silence on film sets. Dietrich’s costume designer even created a special uniform for her, along with the title ‘attendant to Miss Marlene.’ For a long time, Maria believed her full name was ‘Maria Daughter of Marlene Dietrich.’ Her true age remained a mystery to her, constantly shifting to match her mother’s fluctuating, younger-than-real age.
Their family life was, to put it mildly, unconventional. Mr. Sieber, who lived in Paris, would occasionally visit, bringing his meek Russian mistress, Tami. His duties included managing Dietrich’s finances, supervising Ms. Riva’s behavior, and archiving his wife’s extensive collection of letters— all of her letters, most of which were from her numerous lovers, arriving constantly and often read aloud by Dietrich. Maria cherished these visits, as they brought her affection from Tami, the household’s nurturing figure, who served as both Maria’s nanny and her parents’ housekeeper.
“Dietrich was the queen,” Ms. Riva recounted in a 1994 interview. “My father was her major-domo, her lovers were her suitors, and I was the lady in waiting. I didn’t think it was strange; I had nothing to compare it to.”
Without school, Maria had no friends her own age. Her closest companions were certain less fawning lovers of Dietrich, such as the English actor Brian Aherne, who secretly brought her Shakespeare plays, and her bodyguards. These guards were ever-present after a kidnapping threat emerged in the wake of the Charles Lindbergh baby abduction; one even gifted her a pet frog.
Around age 12, Maria had her first true interaction with children when invited to Judy Garland’s birthday party. She was overcome with terror, unsure how ‘normal’ children behaved. She and Judy found common ground, bonding on the porch over their similarly confined upbringings, while the other guests, strangers to Judy, adeptly navigated adolescent slang and a peculiar game called spin the bottle.
Throughout Maria’s teenage years, her mother’s numerous male and female companions would discreetly depart before dawn, maintaining the elaborate pretense that they were merely ‘good pals’ to ‘The Child.’ Among these early paramours were Josef von Sternberg, Maurice Chevalier, Gary Cooper, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and the poet-playwright Mercedes de Acosta, who was also known to be a lover of Greta Garbo.
These visitors frequently reappeared for breakfast, impeccably dressed in their street clothes. Dietrich showed as much passion for her cooking as she did for her nocturnal liaisons. Maria speculated that this charade eventually became tiresome for everyone involved, as her mother increasingly began to house her with governesses in various hotels and rented homes.
Dietrich’s romantic conquests were legendary, spanning figures from General George S. Patton to Colette and Adlai Stevenson, a list that grew considerably over the decades. During a stint in London, Ms. Riva wrote, there might be Michael Arlen for breakfast, Christopher Fry for lunch, Kenneth Tynan for tea and “a sexy new Swedish blonde to supper.”
John Wayne, who co-starred with Dietrich in three films during the early 1940s, was a notable exception, seemingly immune to her allure. Years later, when Maria asked him why he hadn’t fallen for her mother’s charms, he simply replied, ‘Never liked being part of a stable.’
Despite her active romantic life, Dietrich reportedly wasn’t fond of the physical act itself, at least not with men. She preferred fellatio, or even better, impotent men. She confided to her daughter, ‘They are nice. You can sleep and it’s cozy.’
Maria’s nights, however, were far from cozy. For over a year, she endured repeated sexual abuse from one of her governess-companions. This led to her becoming a teenage alcoholic and developing suicidal tendencies. She entered a brief marriage in her late teens.
By the age of 20, Ms. Riva was divorced, heavily dependent on alcohol, and adrift in San Francisco. She found work with a compassionate drag performer, noting, “A trained-by-Dietrich dresser can function very nicely as handmaiden to a female impersonator of Sophie Tucker.” This performer provided her with care, food, and shelter during a time when she was surviving on ketchup and bourbon. Despite this support, she began accumulating sleeping pills, still battling suicidal thoughts.
However, a turning point came when a friend introduced her to Karen Horney’s seminal work, “The Neurotic Personality of Our Time.” This book, by the German psychoanalyst and anti-Freudian, delved into the social roots of emotional distress, and Maria credited it with saving her life.
“I found myself in it,” she recounted to The Chicago Tribune in 1993, which brought her immense comfort and a sense of belonging.
Maria got sober, relocated to New York City, and dedicated herself to a demanding acting career. She toured Europe with a U.S.O. company until the war’s conclusion, then returned to New York. It was at Fordham University, while directing a play with producer Albert McCleery, that she met and fell in love with set designer William Riva. They married in 1947.
Despite Dietrich’s disapproval of the marriage, she remained a constant and domineering force in the Riva household, particularly in the nursery after the birth of Maria’s first child, Michael, in 1948. However, when Life magazine featured Dietrich on its August cover, hailing her as ‘The Most Glamorous Grandmother,’ she was reportedly vexed. “It automatically makes my age a subject for great discussion,” she told The New York Times in 1952. “That is ridiculous. It is quite common to have grandchildren at 35.” At the time, she was 51.
“What is it like, to have a mother no one knows?” Ms. Riva poignantly wrote later. “Must be nice.”
Maria Elizabeth Sieber was born in Berlin on December 13, 1924. However, it wasn’t until her father’s death in 1976, upon discovering her birth certificate among his documents, that she learned her true age. Rudolph Sieber and Marlene Dietrich, notably, never formally divorced.
Maria did manage to attend a Swiss finishing school for a few years. Yet, in typical fashion, Dietrich would call her daughter incessantly, often disrupting exams and hockey games, evidently struggling with the absence of her devoted handmaiden. Maria also honed her acting skills at director Max Reinhardt’s workshop in Hollywood.
Following her marriage, Ms. Riva established herself as a prolific television actress, starring in over 500 teleplays and numerous commercials under contract with CBS. She also toured extensively in theatrical productions. However, after the birth of her fourth son, David, in 1961, she retired from acting to prioritize her family. She remained active in volunteer work, participating in telethons for cerebral palsy, a cause she took up at the suggestion of Yul Brynner (another of Dietrich’s admirers). Additionally, she produced her mother’s cabaret performances for as long as Dietrich was able to command the stage.
Maria Riva is survived by her sons Peter, Paul, and David, along with eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Her husband, William Riva, passed away in 1999, and their son Michael died in 2012.
Dietrich’s final years were spent in solitary confinement within a squalid Paris apartment, a choice not driven by poverty or neglect. She shunned visitors, and, debilitated by various ailments, she neglected personal hygiene, often resorting to household items as makeshift bedpans. Her days were consumed by phone calls with fans and former lovers, a haze of pills, alcohol, and questionable remedies, as she meticulously spun fantasies and reshaped truths, desperately trying to maintain her legendary image.
In 1993, a year following Dietrich’s passing at 90, Maria Riva released “Marlene Dietrich,” a biography many years in the making. The book was met with widespread critical acclaim and generated immense public interest.
Molly Haskell, reviewing the book for The Times, lauded it as “the ultimate act of demystification, a startling and riveting work.”
“I think those of us who live with great fame have to say that it is a trick of survival and that a lot of us don’t like it,” Ms. Riva shared with Diane Sawyer in a 1993 television interview, emphasizing that writing the book was an absolute necessity for her.
Reflecting on her childhood of virtual servitude, Maria Riva declared, “Power must not be allowed to triumph all the time. It mustn’t be forgiven no matter what it does, because it’s beautiful, because it’s famous, because it’s powerful.”