Born Maria Elisabeth Sieber in 1924 Berlin, she was the only child to result from the marriage between assistant director and producer Rudolf Sieber and Marlene Dietrich (they were legally married until his death in 1976, despite her numerous infidelities).
At age 5, Dietrich took Riva to live in Los Angeles and she spent most of her childhood at Paramount Studios, as Marlene always wanted to keep her close and did not let her go to school (she was educated by governesses). As she grew up, Riva was able to temporarily leave her mother’s orbit to study at a boarding school in Switzerland, where she shared a room with actress Gene Tierney. And when she returned to the United States in summer, she used to spend her vacations with the Kennedys, and she formed a great friendship with Rosemary Kennedy.
Riva followed in her mother’s footsteps in the world of acting. At age 9, played the daughter of Dietrich’s character in Caprice Royale (1934), a film directed by Josef von Sternberg (who was also Dietrich’s lover) based on the life of Catherine the Great.
Marlene Dietrich and Maria Riva in 1945.Bettmann/Getty Images
As a teenager, Riva trained as an interpreter at Max Reinhardt’s academy, and in the mid-1940s, during the final phase of World War II, she returned to her native Germany to entertain the Allied troops. At that time, she was also engaged to British actor Richard Haydn, although she eventually married another performer, Dean Goodman, but the marriage was short-lived (it barely lasted a year). In the summer of 1947, while teaching acting classes at Fordham University, she met the love of her life, set designer William Riva, to whom she was married until his death in 1999 and with whom she had four sons.
