GILA - Maria Riva, actress, author, and devoted guardian of her mother Marlene Dietrich’s legacy, died on October 29, 2025, at her home in Gila, New Mexico. She was 100.
Born Maria Elisabeth Sieber on December 13, 1924, in Berlin, she was the only child of Marlene Dietrich and Rudolf Sieber. Raised amid the glamour of Hollywood, Maria appeared briefly as a child in The Scarlet Empress (1934), playing a young version of her mother’s character.
In the 1940s and ’50s, Riva became a respected television actress, appearing in hundreds of live CBS productions such as Studio One and Lux Video Theatre, earning multiple Emmy nominations.
After leaving acting in the early 1960s, she turned to writing and preservation, publishing the acclaimed 1992 biography Marlene Dietrich, which offered an intimate, honest portrait of her legendary mother.
She married production designer William Riva in 1947, and they had four sons, including the late Oscar-winning production designer J. Michael Riva. In her later years, Maria oversaw the transfer of her mother’s extensive archive to the Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin, ensuring Dietrich’s legacy would endure.
A woman of intelligence, candor, and quiet strength, Maria Riva bridged the golden age of Hollywood with the modern era—an artist in her own right who lived a century in the shadow of legend yet stood firmly in her own light. Rest in peace, Maria—your story, like your mother’s, belongs to Hollywood forever.
By Allan R. Ellenberger - The Hollywoodland Revue
