Overview
- Riva’s death was confirmed by her son, Peter Riva, who said she had been living with him since early last year.
- An early live-television mainstay under a CBS contract, she appeared in hundreds of dramas and earned Best Actress Emmy nominations in 1952 and 1953.
- She left acting in the late 1950s to manage her mother’s stage career and later authored the 1992 bestseller Marlene Dietrich, positioning herself as her mother’s biographer.
- After Dietrich’s death in 1992, Riva sold much of the star’s estate to Berlin for preservation at the Deutsche Kinemathek, expanding public access to the collection.
- She is survived by sons Peter, John‑Paul (J. Paul) and David, and grandchildren; her eldest son, production designer J. Michael Riva, died in 2012.