Actress and writer Maria Riva died in her sleep in Gila, New Mexico — she was 100 years old. Born in Berlin on December 13, 1924, she had been living in the home of Peter Riva since last year, the second of four children born from her marriage to William Riva (1919-1999), a decorator and set designer whose career developed mainly on television in the 1950s-60s.
At the same time, Maria Riva was also a figure on the small screen, quite popular with the American public. His name became linked to productions typical of those early times of consolidation of television languages (and growing competition with movie theaters), some halfway between theatrical staging and filmed drama, such as Studio One (1951-55), The Philco Television Playhouse (1952-53) or The 20th Century Fox Hour (1956).
In truth, over the years, these artistic references always appeared as the “rest” of his family biography, which was also inevitably mythological. This is because Maria Riva — baptized as Maria Elisabeth Sieber — was the only daughter of Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992), born from her marriage to cinematographic assistant Rudolf Sieber (1897-1976). In fact, it was he who introduced Marlene to Josef von Sternberg (1894-1969), a filmmaker who would later direct her in a legendary collection of seven feature films, beginning with The Blue Angel (1930).
It was precisely the impact of The Blue Angel which made Marlene one of the biggest “stars” in Hollywood, leading him to move to the USA. Thus, from the age of 5, little Maria grew up in the Paramount studio environment — in order to keep her close to her, Marlene even decided that her daughter would not attend school, ensuring her education through several hired teachers. It was only at the end of the 30s that Maria discovered the first (and only) educational institution she attended: it was the Brillantmont International School in Lausanne (Switzerland), where she was a classmate of Gene Tierney, another great symbol of the same era, especially from his interpretation in Laura (1944), de Otto Preminger.