Trivia

While attending boarding school in Switzerland in the late 1930s, her roommate was actress Gene Tierney.

Was good friends with Carol Channing.

Called her mother Marlene Dietrich "Massy".

Played Marlene Dietrich's character as a child in The Scarlet Empress (1934).

Has four sons.

In order for Dietrich to keep her daughter close to her, Riva was not permitted to attend school; instead she had governesses who saw to her education. Her mother relented in the late 1930s, allowing her to attend Brillantmont International School in Switzerland.

In 2018, Riva returned to acting, starring in a short-film entitled All Aboard, directed by her grandson J. Michael Riva, Jr.

Mother-in-law of Wendy Riva.

Is portrayed by Josefina Vilsmaier, Theresa Vilsmaier, Janina Vilsmaier and Ute Cremer in Marlene (2000).

In May 1954, gossip columnist Erskine Johnson reported that Riva was Cecil B. DeMille's number-one choice for the part of Sephora, Moses' wife, in The Ten Commandments (1956). The role eventually went to Yvonne De Carlo.

After her mother's death in 1992, Riva sold the bulk of her estate to the city of Berlin to 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 to keep the collection together as reason for selling the collection 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 in the collection, which will be part of a new museum complex with the collection as part of its core.".

Engaged for several months of 1943 to Richard Haydn.

Wrote a biography about her mother, Marlene Dietrich, was published in 1992, the year of Dietrich's death.

The daughter of actress Marlene Dietrich, she worked on television at CBS in the 1950s and published a memoir on her mother in 1992.

She received Emmy nominations as best actress in both 1952 and 1953.

She was the only child of actress Marlene Dietrich and assistant film director Rudolf Sieber (and later Paramount Pictures director of dubbing, Paris, France).

In 1934, aged nine, 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. Since no young 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 real life than the character she played.

Whilst under contract to CBS, Riva not only acted in television productions, she also appeared in television commercials promoting Alcoa, as well as appearing in print advertisements for Rheingold Beer.

Maria Riva was an American actress and memoirist.

In the summer of 1947, while 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 4. They remained happily married for over 50 years until his death in 1999. With him, she had four sons.

Riva's biography of her mother, Marlene Dietrich, was published in 1992, the year of Dietrich's death. The book was well-received and went on to become a New York Times Best Seller. In 2017, Riva also published the 25th anniversary edition of the biography of her mother, re-titled Marlene Dietrich: The Life.

Contributed the captions to the 2001 book, Marlene Dietrich: Photographs and Memories; From the Marlene Dietrich Collection of the FilmMuseum Berlin, which consists of previously unseen images of her mother.

She also acted in theatre and summer stock, including a production of Tea and Sympathy. She appeared at the Longacre Theatre on Broadway in the 1954 production The Burning Glass, opposite Cedric Hardwicke and Walter Matthau.

Riva published her first novel, You Were There Before My Eyes: A Novel, in 2017. The novel is about a woman who leaves her Italian village and enters a new world as an immigrant in Detroit.

She contributed the captions to the 2001 book, Marlene Dietrich: Photographs and Memories; From the Marlene Dietrich Collection of the FilmMuseum Berlin, which consists of previously unseen images of her mother.[19] In 2005, Riva edited a volume of Dietrich's poetry, Nachtgedanken, which was published in Germany and Italy.

In a January 1953 issue of Motion Picture Daily, Riva was named as one of 'Television's Best of 1952' alongside fellow television stars Sid Caesar, Lucille Ball, Dinah Shore, Kate Smith, and others.

During her childhood, she would often join the Kennedy family on vacation along with her mother. Despite the six-year age difference between the two, she became good friends with Rosemary Kennedy, saying of their friendship, "Perhaps being two misfits, we felt comfortable in each other's company".

In 1962, having retired from acting, Riva moved to Bern, Switzerland with her husband and four sons, dividing her time between a home in New York, purchased for her by her mother in 1948, and their home in Switzerland. Riva then devoted much of the 1960s to organizing her mother's one-woman shows.

In the early years of television, the major television networks of the time tried to build their own stable of actors in the same fashion as the film studios. In 1951, Riva was signed to CBS as a contract player receiving a salary of $250 per week.

At the age of 15, Riva received acting training at the Max Reinhardt Academy and during the Second World War entertained Allied troops in Europe for the USO from 1945 to 1946, stationed in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

In the early 1940s, she briefly went by the stage name of 'Maria Manton'.

In 2017 she published the 25th anniversary edition of the biography of her mother, re-titled Marlene Dietrich: The Life.

In 2005 she edited a volume of Dietrich's poetry, Nachtgedanken, which was published in Germany and Italy.

During the 1950s, Riva appeared in more than 500 live teleplays for CBS, all broadcast from New York, including The Milton Berle Show, Lux Video Theatre, Hallmark Hall of Fame, Your Show of Shows and Studio One.