“But I think the turmoil of her times removed her from the ability to really know what love was.” “My grandmother could fall in love 10 times a day with a song, a beautiful flower, a man, a woman - she would have romantic schoolgirl crushes,” he says. Marlene was rumored to have had affairs with Hollywood stars including Gary Cooper, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., James Stewart and Yul Brynner, but her grandson notes that lasting love eluded her.
The pair, who wed in 1923, remained married until his death in 1976, even though they were unfaithful to each other. Marlene immigrated to America with her husband, Rudolf Sieber, an assistant director and the father of their daughter, Maria. But the moment she could oppose them, she did by becoming an American citizen in 1939.” “She was offered to virtually become the queen of Germany,” says Riva. By then, she was on her way to becoming an international star - one that the Nazi party wanted on its side. In 1930, Marlene revisited her Berlin years by cross-dressing in a men’s tuxedo in her first American film, Morocco, which caused a sensation. There was an androgyny built into what was needed for entertainment at the time.” “Sometimes she’d dress as a man, sometimes a woman. “All the young available men had been killed, so she’d dance with women,” Riva says. “When anybody starts discriminating against another person, be it for race, color or religious belief, that was an anathema to her.” Marlene’s teenage dreams of playing violin were dashed by an injury, so she became active in the era’s vaudeville-style theater where she embraced new freedoms. “That was critical to understanding who she was,” Riva explains.
Born into an aristocratic family, Marlene was a product of the enlightened Weimar culture that thrived in Berlin before World War II.