- - Screen Siren Marlene Dietrich's Daughter Met Rosemary Kennedy Before Her Disastrous Lobotomy, Credited Family for Escape from WWII

Liz McNeilNovember 11, 2025 at 1:00 AM

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Rosemary Kennedy -

Maria Riva, Marlene Dietrich's daughter, who died Oct. 30 at 100 years old, once met Rosemary Kennedy on the beach of the French Riviera

In 2020, Riva shared her memories of the Kennedy's eldest daughter and recalled "feeling a kindness towards her"

When she later learned of Rosemary's lobotomy, she called it, "too much of a tragedy"

Marlene Dietrich's daughter, Maria Riva, who died Oct. 30 at 100 years old, lived a life that spanned two centuries, a bridge to a time long gone. Riva was one of the few people who'd known Rosemary Kennedy, the eldest daughter of Joe Kennedy and his wife Rose Kennedy, before the disastrous 1941 lobotomy that left her with the mental capacity of a toddler. In a 2020 interview, she discussed the day that they shared.

Riva, the only child of screen siren Marlene Dietrich, met the Kennedy family in 1938 in the South of France where both families had traveled for vacation. “There were nine children and because they all smiled and they looked happy and they represented the country -- it was something that everyone envied," said Riva who was 15 years old at the time.

"I was a movie star's child and she [Rosemary] was royalty. But she didn't know it, but I knew it."

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Actress Maria Riva

As Riva recalled, "I was swimming with [her siblings] Bobby and Jack and the Patricia at the Eden Roc Hotel and I think somebody said, 'Why don't we send Dietrich's daughter over to Rosemary? Maybe they can get along.' I think maybe somebody had a bright idea of maybe finding somebody to keep her company."

"I think...nobody knew who to call for Rosemary to talk to," she said. "I thought it was a special reward for me, to be honest."

She recalled Rosemary, 20, who was intellectually disabled, sitting alone on the beach under a tent to protect her skin while her siblings swam. "She would puff up like a bee sting if she sat in the sun too long," said Riva.

"My only impression, and I think I said it in the book, [her 1991 memoir of her mother, Marlene Dietrich: A Life] was that she was not as beautiful and as 'perfect' as her sisters Eunice or Patricia or Jean."

"I felt a kind of kindness towards her that I probably wouldn't have felt had she not looked different from her brothers and sisters," she said. "It was the time, when those things were important to people."

"She was the 'ugly duckling' of a magnificent family," as Riva put it. "Before anything happened to her. These were brilliant, shiny, attractive people, full of life and vigor and Irish charm, if you want to make it Irish. I mean, it dripped from their shoulders, charm."

After swimming with Bobby and Jack, she lated joined the family for dinner. "They were kind enough to accept me," she said.

"They were a family, for me, who did not have a family as per se, as we now think of family or what I call a Hallmark or Disney family," as she put it. "They were absolutely out of reach. They were also very interesting, because they were intelligent. I thought they were absolute perfection, and I would have given anything to be part of them."

She described JFK as having "an Apollo quality - if you ever met Jack, you would absolutely follow him to the ends of the earth."

However, she didn't call her relationship with the siblings a friendship, moreso, a "summer acquaintance."

"I was accepted by the Kennedy children, Eunice and Patricia and Jean and Bobby," she recalled, "But I knew my station. I mean, being at the Kennedy's for dinner? Fortunately I'd been trained how many forks to use. Because you represented your family by your behavior. So you had good manners and you spoke when you were spoken to but not before. I think that I felt I was a fish out of water. I remember being uncomfortable, but then I was always uncomfortable when I was put in a position where I had to prove my good breeding."

She also credited Joe Kennedy Sr, who had an affair with her mother, with warning the star to leave Germany before World War II broke out. "It was the father who saved my life basically," Riva said. "If he had not told my mother, 'Get the hell out of Europe,' at the time he did, I might've gotten stuck. And being Dietrich's daughter, certainly Mr. Hitler would have liked that."

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The Kennedy Family in 1938

As she recalled, "Don't forget. In the summer of '38, only the very intelligent people knew what was coming. These were people who were summering in the most exclusive summer hotel that existed. But it was the epitome of that kind of life that will never come again."

"It's a fascinating time when people think that they're in charge and they're not."

When Riva later learned of Rosemary's lobotomy, a decision made by her father, she said, "It wasn't my place to make a judgment. Once you're in that kind of terrible drama in a family, you cannot really judge anything until God forbid it should happen to you. It's just too much tragedy."

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