1. Maria Elisabeth Riva is an American retired actress and memoirist.
21 Facts About Maria Riva
1. 2.
Maria Riva worked on television at CBS in the 1950s.
3.
Maria Riva is the daughter of actress Marlene Dietrich, about whom she published a memoir in 1992.
4.
Maria Riva spent most of her time at home, on the Paramount Studios lot, and in the company of her mother's friends.
5.
Maria Riva was an extra in the 1936 David O Selznick production, The Garden of Allah.
6.
In order for Dietrich to keep her daughter close to her, Maria Riva was not permitted to attend school; instead she had governesses who saw to her education.
7.
Maria Riva's mother relented in the late 1930s, allowing her to attend Brillantmont International School in Switzerland.
8.
At the age of 15, Maria 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.
9.
Maria Riva acted in theatre and summer stock, including a production of Tea and Sympathy.
10.
Maria Riva appeared at the Longacre Theatre on Broadway in the 1954 production The Burning Glass, opposite Cedric Hardwicke and Walter Matthau.
11.
In 1951, Maria Riva was signed to CBS as a contract player receiving a salary of $250 per week.
12.
Maria Riva received Emmy nominations as best actress in both 1952 and 1953.
13.
In 1962, having retired from acting, Maria 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.
14.
Maria Riva then devoted much of the 1960s to organizing her mother's one-woman shows.
15.
In 2018, Riva returned to acting, starring in a short-film entitled All Aboard, directed by her grandson J Michael Riva Jr.
16.
In 2001, Maria Riva co-authored a photography book consisting of unseen images of her mother Marlene Dietrich.
17.
In 2005, Maria Riva edited a volume of Dietrich's poetry, Nachtgedanken, which was published in Germany and Italy.
18.
Maria Riva published her first novel, You Were There Before My Eyes: A Novel, in 2017.
19.
In 2017, Maria Riva published the 25th anniversary edition of the biography of her mother, re-titled Marlene Dietrich: The Life.
20.
Maria 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.
21.
In early 1943, Maria Riva was briefly engaged to actor Richard Haydn; however, that same year she married actor Dean Goodman, whom she divorced in 1944.