Some 50 mourners, together with her daughter, Maria Riva, attended Marlene Dietrich’s funeral service in 1992. That day in Berlin, Maria blew a final kiss to her mom’s coffin, however she had sturdy phrases for her grandmother, who was buried within the plot subsequent to the legendary star.
“She stated, ‘Now you’ve acquired her again. Train her tips on how to love,’” remembers Maria’s son, Peter Riva, to Nearer.
Marlene, the luminous, free-spirited Golden Age actress, all the time pushed boundaries. Her stardom allowed her to reside as she happy — taking lovers of each sexes and sporting trousers in Paris regardless of the specter of arrest — however Marlene’s self-involvement made life onerous for her solely baby, Maria, 97. “On the age of three, I knew fairly undoubtedly that I didn’t have a mom, that I belonged to a queen,” stated Maria in Marlene Dietrich: A Life.
Maria spent her childhood on the Paramount lot, the place she was tutored as an alternative of going to high school with children her personal age. Skilled to be her mom’s attendant, Maria guarded the door as Marlene vomited to remain skinny, helped her tape up her breasts and watched her work to alert her to any imperfection. Alongside the way in which, the kid absorbed her mom’s dismissive opinion of different actors. Marlene known as Charlie Chaplin a“low-class circus performer,” Joan Crawford, a “horrible, vulgar lady with pop eyes,” and her chief rival, Greta Garbo, “a merciless Swede” with a sexually transmitted illness.
