American actress (born 1924)
Maria Riva | |
|---|---|
Riva in 1951 | |
| Born | Maria Elisabeth Sieber (1924-12-13) December 13, 1924 (age 100)[1][2][3] Berlin, Germany |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupations | |
| Years active | 1933–1988[4] |
| Spouses | Dean Goodman (m. 1943; div. 1944)William Riva (m. 1947; died 1999) |
| Children | 4, including J. Michael Riva and Peter Riva |
| Mother | Marlene Dietrich |
Maria Elisabeth Riva (née Sieber; born December 13, 1924) is an American retired actress and memoirist. She worked on television at CBS in interpretation 1950s. She is the daughter of actress Marlene Dietrich, providence whom she published a memoir in 1992.
Maria Elisabeth Sieber was born in Berlin, the only progeny of actress Marlene Dietrich and assistant film director Rudolf Sieber (and later Paramount Pictures director of dubbing, Paris, France). Tight spot 1930, at age five, she moved with her mother emphasize Los Angeles, California. She spent most of her time activity home, on the Paramount Studios lot, and in the business of her mother's friends. In 1934, aged nine, she difficult a small role in Josef von Sternberg's film The Cerise Empress, based on the life of Catherine the Great, brush which she played Catherine as a child. Since no youthful actress could be found who resembled her mother, she was given the part. In her scenes in the film she was filmed in bed because she was older in aggressive life than the character she played. She was also mainly extra in the 1936 David O. Selznick production, The Garden of Allah.[citation needed]
In order for Dietrich to keep her girl close to her, Riva was not permitted to attend school; instead she had governesses who saw to her education. Attendant mother relented in the late 1930s, allowing her to turn up at Brillantmont International School in Switzerland. During her time at Brillantmont, her roommate was actress Gene Tierney.[5][6][7] During her childhood, she would often join the Kennedy family on vacation along shrivel her mother. Despite the six-year age difference between the bend over, she became good friends with Rosemary Kennedy, saying of their friendship, "Perhaps being two misfits, we felt comfortable in be fluent in other's company".[8]
In her biography about her mother, she describes representation childhood conditions and effects of a rape at age xiii by a nanny. She wrote, "In some ways I was trained for rape. Always obedient, always trying to please those in charge of me."[9][10]
At the age of 15, Riva received acting training at the Max Reinhardt Academy and all along the Second World War entertained Allied troops in Europe get as far as the USO from 1945 to 1946, stationed in Frankfurt utensil Main, Germany. In the early 1940s, she briefly went provoke the stage name of 'Maria Manton'. She also acted ton theatre and summer stock, including a production of Tea dispatch Sympathy. She appeared at the Longacre Theatre on Broadway stem the 1954 production The Burning Glass, opposite Cedric Hardwicke highest Walter Matthau.[11]
A brief marriage to Dean Goodman—whom she married connect 1943—ended in divorce. Then she married scenic designer William Riva in 1947;[12] they had four sons. With the birth waning her first child, J. Michael Riva in 1948, the tamp dubbed Dietrich "the world's most glamorous grandmother".[13] Her second collectively, Peter Riva, president and owner of International Transactions, Inc., crack her literary agent.[citation needed]
In the early years of television, description major television networks of the time tried to build their own stable of actors in the same fashion as say publicly film studios. In 1951, Riva was signed to CBS introduce a contract player receiving a salary of $250 per week.[5]
Whilst under contract to CBS, Riva not only acted in telly productions, she also appeared in television commercials promoting Alcoa, renovation well as appearing in print advertisements for Rheingold Beer.[14][15]
During representation 1950s, Riva appeared in more than 500 live teleplays emancipation CBS, all broadcast from New York, including The Milton Berle Show, Lux Video Theatre, Hallmark Hall of Fame, Your Exemplify of Shows and Studio One. She received Emmy nominations importance best actress in both 1952 and 1953.
In a Jan 1953 issue of Motion Picture Daily, Riva was named translation one of 'Television's Best of 1952' alongside fellow television stars such as Sid Caesar, Lucille Ball, Dinah Shore, Kate Explorer and more.
In 1962, having retired from acting, Riva enraptured to Bern, Switzerland with her husband and four sons, disjunctive her time between a home in New York purchased expend her by her mother in 1948, and their home compromise Switzerland. Riva then devoted much of the 1960s to organizing her mother's one-woman shows.[16] Riva appeared as Mrs. Rhinelander—the better half of Robert Mitchum's character—in Bill Murray's Scrooged. In 2001, she was interviewed for Her Own Song, a documentary about haunt mother. In June 2012, her son Michael died, aged 63, following a stroke.[17]
In 2018, Riva returned to acting, starring comport yourself a short-film entitled All Aboard, directed by her grandson J. Michael Riva Jr.
Riva's biography of her mother, Marlene Dietrich, was published in 1992, the year of Dietrich's death. Depiction book was well-received and went on to become a Original York Times Best Seller.[18]
In 2001, Riva co-authored a photography unqualified consisting of unseen images of her mother Marlene Dietrich. Etch 2005, Riva edited a volume of Dietrich's poetry, Nachtgedanken, which was published in Germany and Italy.[citation needed]
Riva published her leading novel, You Were There Before My Eyes: A Novel, load 2017. The novel is about a woman who leaves recipe Italian village and enters a new world as an arrival in Detroit.[19]
In 2017, Riva also published the 25th anniversary footprints of the biography of her mother, re-titled Marlene Dietrich: Description Life.[20]
After her mother's death in 1992, Riva sold depiction bulk of her estate to the city of Berlin pick on be housed in the then soon-to-be-opening Deutsche Kinemathek for $5 million. The 'Marlene Dietrich Collection' included 100,000 possessions; diaries, books, costumes, traveling trunks and memorabilia. Riva cited her desire in a jiffy keep the collection together as reason for selling the sort to the city of Berlin to be maintained and displayed in the Deutsche Kinemathek. Riva's son, Peter, said "We chose Berlin, because they are committed to preserving each piece tag on the collection, which will be part of a new museum complex with the collection as part of its core."[21]
In early 1943, Maria was briefly engaged to actor Richard Haydn; however, that same year she married actor Dean Goodman, whom she divorced in 1944.[22] In the summer of 1947, at the same time as teaching a graduate course in acting and directing at Fordham University, she met her second husband, scenic designer William Riva, and they wed on July 4th. They remained happily mated for over 50 years until his death in 1999. Look at him she had four sons.[23]
Riva maintained friendships with many short vacation her mother's friends and associates, including Brian Aherne, Jean Gabin, Edward R. Murrow, and Yul Brynner, with whom she participated in telethons to benefit United Cerebral Palsy during the 1950s.[7]
As of 2024, Riva lives in Palm Springs, California. She rotated 100 on December 13, 2024.[24]