Actress and literary matricide Maria Riva—daughter of Marlene Dietrich—died on Oct. 28. She was 100. Born in Berlin to Dietrich and her husband, director Rudolf Sieber, she came to the US with her mother, and in the 1950s began acting on TV (she was also a Rheingold Beer Girl). Through the ’50s she appeared on such shows as Suspense, Studio 1, You Are There, and the unfortunately titled Climax!, but her career never really took off. After that, she pretty much devoted herself to being Dietrich’s Daughter, and when her mother died in 1992, Riva published a bio of her—not quite as bad as the hatchet jobs on Joan Crawford or Bette Davis, it was still a prime example of a star’s daughter who wanted to be Mommy, but did not have the talent or drive. The book was filled with dubious details and vituperative “facts,” infuriating Dietrich’s fans. Chanteuse Ute Lemper—her words, not mine—said that “the bitch daughter blames her mother for everything. And to employ that in a financial and public way like she did, disgusting!”
