EVANGELINE

María Dolores Asúnsolo López was born 3 August 1904 in Durango, Mexico. Twenty-six years later she would be described by many as “the most beautiful woman in Hollywood,” at a time when Garbo and Dietrich were her closest competition. Dolores del Rio’s journey from Mexico to the movie capital of the world was straight out of a fairy tale.

Even her early years seem rather fantastic. Her parents, Jesús Leonardo Asúnsolo and Antonia López Negrete y López, were from wealthy, land-owning families during the business-friendly era of President Porfírio Díaz. Moving to the capital of Durango from Chihuahua, her father became a bank executive and married into one of the most powerful families of Mexico. Less than two years later Jesús and Antonia brought their only child into the world. María Dolores was baptized by the archbishop of Durango, who coincidentally was her uncle. 

During the reign of the dictator Porfírio Díaz, such upper class families thrived and led idyllic lives. Dolores and her parents had a mansion in the city of Durango and a country home which they visited frequently. Sunday rides around town, parties, teas, and dinners, such were the activities that Dolores experienced at a very early age.

But there was rot within this upper class structure. One of Dolores’s maternal relatives, who oversaw one of the family properties, saw no problem in attempting to rape one of the young girls living and working on the ranch. When Martina Arango cried out in desperation, her brother Doroteo came to her rescue brandishing a pistol. Although successfully stopping the attack, the young man was banished from the ranch. Eventually changing his name to Francisco [“Pancho”] Villa, he rode into the history books as a dominant figure of the  Mexican Revolution, which erupted in 1910. The capital city of Durango was high on his hit list. When he rode into town, most of the upper class fled – Dolores’s father went to Texas and the mother and child to family members in Mexico City. One of their relatives was Francisco Madero, on the verge of becoming the President of Mexico after deposing Díaz. Coincidentallyt Pancho Villa was Madero’s ally in northern Mexico.

Two years later the Asúnsolo family was reunited. They were not without resources. Dolores was put into a very conservative convent school run by French nuns. Somehow the Revolution didn’t immediately separate the upper class from their beloved French culture. That break would come in the 1920s with a resurgence of interest in Mexico’s indigenous past. In this school Dolores learned how to dress and speak well, “practice discretion,” and be a devout Christian who would make a good upper-class wife. The child’s acute intelligence was rapidly apparent and she loved to study and learn.

After attending a performance by the Russian ballerina Ana Pavlova, the teenager decided she must become a dancer. She had been dancing almost as soon as she could walk, but now she wanted to apply herself seriously to the art of the dance. She took ballet lessons with Felipita López. Adding such moves to her natural grace, the young girl attracted a lot of attention, especially from men. A trip to Europe with her parents made the young girl realize that people thought she was beautiful. They were right.

In 1921, an elite group in the Mexican capital decided to organize a benefit for a local hospital. They chose Dolores to perform “Spanish” dances. The organizer of the benevolent group, Jaime Martínez del Río y Viñent, was captivated. Son of a wealthy family who had lost nothing during the Revolution, Jaime had been educated in England and had spent some time in Europe. More interested in the arts than in business, he sang, played piano, had friends from the Spanish aristocracy, and demonstrated an “exquisite sensibility,” which caused suspicion about his “masculinity.” However, Dolores was captivated by his interest in her and by his conversation about art and artists.

When he asked for the young girl’s hand in marriage, her parents accepted. After a two-month courtship, Dolores married Jaime on 11 April 1921. He was 34. She was 16. Her husband designed her wedding gown, not a common task for grooms. Their honeymoon in Europe lasted two years! During that time the young bride entered an entirely new and exciting world, one far removed from the stifling restraints of the conservative Mexican upper class. Jaime’s connections and his wife’s beauty and intelligence got them invited into the homes of the European social and artistic aristocracy. The King of Spain was so taken by the young beauty that he found many reasons for Dolores and Jaime to visit the palace, so much so that the queen got jealous and gossip flew around the court.

In 1924, the couple reluctantly returned to Mexico, accompanied by a new automobile and Jaime’s Spanish man-servant Felix. They decided to live on Jaime’s country estate, where cotton was the main crop. Life in the country, perhaps idyllic at first, quickly became boring to the couple who began to miss their glamorous circuit of parties, concerts, museums, and art studios. The two concocted a plan to limit their stay in Mexico to two years, during which time  Jaime would make a fortune from cotton crops, and then return to Europe. However, when the bottom fell out of the cotton market, Jaime lost his entire fortune. Another loss was suffered when Dolores miscarried. She was told never to try to have another child. 
With their money gone, the couple returned to Mexico City in 1925. But always interested in what was new in the arts (and a lot of wonderful new things were happening in Mexico City through the birth of indigenismo – a fascination with the country’s pre-Colombian cultures and present Indian communities), the del Rios made many new friends with other innovative young people. Adolfo Best Maugard was the center of a thriving cultural circle. At one of his many parties Dolores and Jaime met a visiting American film director, Edwin Carewe. Dolores was persuaded to dance for the gathering and, like Jaime and the king of Spain, Carewe fell hopelessly in love despite being with his brand new wife Mary Atkins on their honeymoon.

The native-born Texan was already a respected director in Hollywood, where he had worked since 1914. In Dolores he saw not only an object of desire but perhaps his meal ticket to the upper echelons of Hollywood. Like so many producers and directors, Carewe began openly courting the young woman and invited her to come to Hollywood for a screen test (“and, oh, by the way, maybe we can get a screenwriting job for your husband”). That’s all Jaime needed to hear since he had harbored dreams of becoming a Hollywood screenwriter. This seemed to be a way out of their present financial embarrassment. Or, at the very least, it might be fun. Dolores was thrilled by the idea but fearful of her parents’ reaction. Surprisingly her mother was enthusiastic, running completely counter to the reaction of much of the rest of the Mexican upper class who equated acting (film and stage) with prostitution. They were very suspicious of Jaime’s motives, also, for it was unheard of for a man of his social status to entertain the thought of his wife potentially being stared at by millions of men sitting in the dark. But the del Ríos boarded the train and arrived in Los Angeles five days later. It was August 1925 and Dolores had just turned 21.

Contracts were signed with Carewe as her agent, manager, producer, director (and would-be-seducer) and her fate was sealed. She was to get $250 weekly to start with, not enough to live in style yet, but enough to rent a small house, buy a car, and have one servant. Dolores asked her mother to lend her some jewels and send money for clothing. The very next day after their arrival Carewe placed Dolores in front of the camera for 24 hours, during which time she walked, danced, embraced, kissed, laughed, ran, cried, flirted, and revealed a whole range of emotions. She was exhausted but hopeful. True to his passion for her, Carewe spent days editing her screen test to show to studios. He saw her beauty and eroticism but wanted to be sure that others could see it on a strip of celluloid, also. Before she had a single movie project, Carewe hired Henry Wilson to publicize the arrival of the new screen beauty. Much was made of her Mexican aristocratic background, her education by nuns, and her dancing talents. Her name was shortened to “Dolores Del Rio” (with an incorrect capital “D” on “Del”). To keep the husband out of the way, Carewe sent Jaime off to “study the various aspects of filmmaking.” Dolores was given an arduous daily routine of studying English, swimming, gymnastics, diction, singing, and acting as well as walking, dancing popular American styles, and horseback riding. She loved all of it. Wilson lied and sent out press releases indicating how wealthy Dolores and husband were (true in the past, presently not so, but soon to be true again because of Dolores’s labor and success).

Her first movie, naturally directed by Carewe, was JOANNA, for First National (eventually part of Warner Bros). The other actors barely civil to her since Dolores was an unknown. She played the Spanish/Brazilian Carlotta de Silva. When Dolores saw the final cut of the film, she was horrified, not with her acting or appearance, but because not only had many of her scenes been deleted, but also her name in the credits appeared as “Dorothy del Rio.” Carewe said he would get the name corrected. As far as the cuts, he convinced her that he had used only the scenes in which she looked most radiant. He would not let anything less than perfection be seen by the American public. 

More determined than ever to conquer this art and industry, Dolores accepted her next role – HIGH STEPPERS, which began filming on 23 December 1925. There was only a one-day break for Christmas, which the del Ríos spent with the Carewes. For this, only her second film, Dolores received 3rd billing. On 25 January 1926 she began her third film, THE WHOLE TOWN’S TALKING, directed by Edward Laemmle, nephew of the founder of Universal Pictures and the star system. Carewe then directed her in PALS FIRST, where she received top billing.

Del Río’s first major film was WHAT PRICE GLORY?, directed by Raoul Walsh, an A-list director. Her salary for this film was $30,000 to be paid by Fox Films. Although she was desperately tired after working non-stop since her arrival in Hollywood, she eagerly accepted the role. The cast and crew were impressed with her discipline as well as beauty. For the first time, reportedly, she forgot about the camera and concentrated on her acting in the coveted role of Charmaine de la Cognac, a “passionate and sincere” French woman. Immediately after this film she was rushed off to play “Carmelita,” a high society woman on the French Riviera, in NO OTHER WOMAN.

Dolores and Jaime traveled to New York for the grand premiere of WHAT PRICE GLORY? (27 Nov 1926). The reviews of her performance were excellent. She could now consider herself a star and a respected actress. While in New York City, she met Miguel Covarrubias, a magnificent young artist who had left Mexico in 1923 to find fame and fortune in America, starting with Vanity Fair. 

Her next film project, RESURRECTION, was adapted from the novel of Leo Tolstoy by his son, Count Ilya Tolstoy. Already filmed three times before, RESURRECTION, now directed by Carewe, focused on the story of Katyusha, a servant girl who becomes involved with a prince. At the premiere of RESURRECTION in Los Angeles, del Río was greeted by wild applause.

With stardom assured and a good weekly income, Dolores built a house at 1903 Outpost Drive, one very much in the style of her family home in Durango as well as fitting in well with other Mexican/Spanish homes in Los Angeles. It was emphatically a star’s home.

The next project was almost inevitable – THE LOVES OF CARMEN, directed by Raoul Walsh, who had made an earlier version with the vamp Theda Bara in 1915. Upon the release of this new version, Del Río was deemed the most beautiful of all the Carmens. Her background in dance certainly added to her convincing portrayal. Next came THE GATEWAY OF THE MOON, in which her role was as a “half-Indian” in the Amazonian jungles.

By now she had worked two years non-stop and had made an astonishing eight films. Hollywood only looked glamorous in those days; in reality it was lots of hard work, six days a week. Dolores wanted to rest, but MGM needed a substitute actress for their new film, THE TRAIL OF ’98. Renee Adoree, the star slotted for the film, had begun to show signs of tuberculosis and had to be replaced. Del Río was invited to play the young woman who accompanied her blind grandfather and other relatives on the Gold Rush in the Yukon in 1898. Dolores was so intrigued by the chance to work with respected director Clarence Brown that she accepted, despite her exhaustion. The artistic director on this film was Cedric Gibbons, a man who would soon figure more prominently in Dolores’s life. Although del Río collapsed on the set at one point, she recovered and vowed to finish the picture. Her acting in THE TRAIL OF ’98 appears a bit overwrought for my tastes, but she handled herself well in extremely difficult circumstances and was naturally quite beautiful even when buried under layers of clothing and sometimes “snow.”

After filming was completed, she and Jaime took a well-deserved vacation in Hawaii. She felt that there she and Jaime could reanimate their marriage, but he was obviously suffering from having inevitably become “Mr. Dolores del Rio.” He could not find his way into the Hollywood film industry no matter how hard he tried.

Back in Hollywood Dolores began pre-production for another Carewe film, RAMONA, adapted from a popular novel about life in California at the time of the arrival of Anglo-Americans, who began taking land away from the original Spanish/Mexican/Indian settlers, either through marriage, purchase, or outright theft in the courts. RAMONA was completed at the end of 1927, just at the time that Hollywood was in a panic over sound films. THE JAZZ SINGER, with Al Jolson, had just been released in October. All the international actors and even those from the outer boroughs of New York City (like Clara Bow, with her heavy Brooklyn accent) were worried about how their voices would record. To overcome their fears, Dolores and several other major Hollywood stars went on the “Dodge Brothers Hour,” a radio show where they showed off their voices. Not only did Dolores talk to America, but she also sang “Ramona,” the song which became identified with her and which sold a lot of records. RAMONA, the movie, was a huge success, critically and at the box office.
 
But her personal life was in shambles. Jaime, completely disgusted with standing in his wife’s shadow, left for New York where he planned to collaborate on a play provocatively titled From Hell Came a Lady. Dolores started filming THE RED DANCE, her third with Raoul Walsh and a kind of reprisal of RESURRECTION, since once more she would play a Russian peasant in love with an aristocrat. After the unfortunate failure of Jaime’s play in New York, he wrote that he wouldn’t be returning to Los Angeles but would go to Europe instead. Dolores decided to get a divorce. With a lawyer recommended by the overly eager Edwin Carewe, she traveled to Baja California (Tijuana, most likely) and secured a divorce which would be recognized in both Mexico and the US.

Then she rather naively accepted Carewe’s offer to sail along the US and Mexican coast on his yacht, where the older man expected to seal their romance. But, perhaps metaphorically, the yacht broke down in the Gulf of California (“You’re a good old wagon, daddy, but you done broke down”) and the occupants had to ignominiously disembark in Mazatlán. Not only did the director fail in his romantic advances toward Dolores, but he was unable to get his own Mexican divorce from the wife who had met Dolores on that fateful trip to Mexico City in 1925. Back in Los Angeles, del Río was told by her studio, United Artists, to hurry up and finish her next film REVENGE so she could go on a European promotional tour for RAMONA.
 
At the age of 24 Dolores del Río was considered one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood (therefore in the US and wherever movies could be seen). She was quickly becoming rich in her own right and had a fairy-tale life envied by many. When she left New York for Europe by ship, she took many suitcases and trunks packed with beautiful clothes. By chance in London she ran into former husband Jaime in the lobby of the Hotel Savoy where she was staying. They had a pleasant conversation over tea and she was reminded just how important he had been in her formation – with the first trip to Europe, etc. But they didn’t do like so many divorcees – fall in love again. They both seemed to realize that there was no returning to the past. She wouldn’t give up her career and he had none.

With the successful European tour behind her, Dolores was met in New York by reporters asking offensive questions about her relationship with Edwin Carewe. She stated clearly that he was a great director, a fine gentleman, a wonderful producer, a great artist, but that they were simply friends and professionals working together in the same art, the cinema. “I am not going to marry Mr Carewe or anyone ever again.” She may have meant all of that at the time she said it, but fate would pull her into another relationship within a few years. Unfairly the newspapers soon attacked her “arrogant answers” to their “legitimate questions.” The gossips and rumormongers were just as active then as now.
Safely back in Los Angeles, Dolores received an urgent telegram informing her of Jaime’s illness in Germany. However, by the time she received the news, he was already dead. Some said it was suicide by poison. He had entered a hospital in Berlin, had minor surgery or a medical procedure (all very mysterious), and had died a few days later “from blood poisoning.” Two friends were by his bedside as well as a priest sent from Spain by Jaime’s worried family in Mexico. Stupid  stories began circulating in the international press that Dolores would attend the funeral in Mexico and then immediately enter a convent. Instead, her mother persuaded her not to come to Mexico for the funeral. Doubtlessly Jaime’s family somehow held the young movie star responsible for the death of their 41-year-old relative.

Jaime del Río doubtlessly felt like a horrible failure in life – loss of the cotton fortune, serving as “Mr Dolores del Río, and having no luck with writing. Going with Dolores to Hollywood had been a grand gesture but a horrible mistake for the proud man. He was in some ways a minor version of Mauritz Stiller, the Swedish film director, who came to Hollywood with Garbo. Despite the promises of the studio bosses, Stiller was fired after trying to direct her in an American film. After a few other directing attempts in Hollywood, he returned to Sweden where he soon died at the age of 45. Jaime del Río didn’t even have that level of partial success. Studio bosses in the 20s were very adept at importing talent, often in pairs and then dropping the less talented or less desirable partner.
 
With the death of Jaime weighing heavily on her mind, Dolores almost immediately went into production on the film EVANGELINE. The poetic search for a lost lover must have resonated deeply with the young actress. 

Upon completion of the exquisite, well-crafted EVANGELINE, directed by Carewe, her studio, United Artists convinced her to separate herself artistically and professionally from Carewe, who still held an exclusive contract with the actress. Despite his fury, as much that of a man scorned as an investor losing his investment and a Pygmalion losing his Galatea, Dolores paid Carewe a substantial settlement out of court and began truly looking toward liberation.

Both men who had molded her artistic life were gone, one dead, one fired. She decided it was time to modernize her image in keeping with her new feelings of freedom. Her hair, which by now almost reached her waist, was cut to shoulder length, much to the satisfaction of studio boss Joseph Schenk. It was a brilliant decision on her part to mark her transition to talking movies and newly found freedom by having a new image.

Reviews of EVANGELINE were generally quite glowing. One critic for Picture Play said that it was her best acting since RESURRECTION. She recorded the title song for RCA Victor, who sold many copies, just as had happened with her recording of “Ramona.” Indeed, this confident young woman was ready for a new decade and a new way of acting, verbally as well as visually. 
To her bungalow on the United Artists lot she invited important columnists such as Adela Rogers St. John, to whom she openly talked about her life and attitudes: “For the first time in my life I am myself, I do what I want to do, I enjoy life and happiness which I never had as a young woman because I married too quickly, scarcely two weeks after graduating from parochial school. I want to have a romance, laugh and talk about nothing important. I am now regaining lost time.”

Even with the economic crash of 1929, Del Rio’s investments were not affected and she continued growing richer, now with a weekly salary of $9,000, work or no work. Despite some legal problems with an unscrupulous lawyer she had used during her contract with Carewe, she eagerly went into her next film and first talkie, THE BAD ONE, in which she played Lita, a young virgin living and working in a whorehouse in Marseilles. It was not a pleasant experience. Filming early talking pictures really put a crimp in everyone’s acting style – microphones were hidden around the set (still no overhead booms following the actors), and the performers had to stand near the microphones and enunciate precisely. However, Del Río’s voice was clear and not nearly so accented as Garbo’s. They would both survive the technical revolution and have another decade of work in Hollywood.

But the more success Dolores had in her professional life, the more the  “journalists” kept harping on what a hindrance her extreme beauty must be. She was unfairly getting the reputation of being a heartbreaker, and one writer described her as “inhumanly beautiful.” Certainly sour grapes were being squeezed by the bushel. 

Fortunately Dolores del Río had many authentic friends within the film community. One day in July 1930 she received a note from actress Marion Davies, best known as the paramour of powerful newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, who still had a wife on the East Coast. The note was an invitation for Dolores to visit their palatial estate San Simeon. Instructions indicated that del Río was to go to the Glendale train station, secure a ticket from an unmarked ticket window, board the train and enjoy the ride in a private room, where all her needs would be taken care of. Arriving in San Luis Obispo at two in the morning, Dolores alighted to find a fleet of limousines awaiting various Hollywood celebrities, all to be taken in a caravan up the hill to the mansion and its surrounding houses full of startling antiques and servants. At the dinner table later that day Dolores met Cedric Gibbons, artistic director of MGM – 37 years old, of Irish descent, son and grandson of famous architects in New York, and already fabulously wealthy and famous. He gave the world “the MGM look,” based on his version of art deco. It was Gibbons who had asked his friends Hearst and Davies to invite del Río to the estate. As he had hoped, the two fell madly in love. When they returned to Los Angeles it was obvious that what Dolores had desired had come to her – romance.
They had a whirlwind courtship enjoying the nightlife of Hollywood. When Cedric asked her to marry him, Dolores accepted. Her mother, who now lived with her, and her father, visiting from Mexico, accompanied their radiant daughter to the mission church of Santa Barbara where she married Gibbons. Initially the couple lived in the beautiful home that Gibbons had designed for himself a few years earlier (757 Kingman Dr.) – all white, austere, featuring various levels, lots of glass bricks, and chrome, surrounded by gardens and sporting a tennis court and swimming pool. But Dolores wanted to be in her own home on Outpost Drive, so they moved there, much to Gibbon’s distress.

It was there that Dolores fell seriously ill with a severe kidney infection. Doctors feared for her life and instructed her to rest for an extended time. All the activities of the previous five years had finally caught up with her. Despite her happiness her body could no longer go on as it had. For her recuperation Gibbons designed a small beachside home in Malibu. Gibbons was at her side as often as work allowed, but her mother was always there.

During that time of rest Dolores decided to sell her home and return to the beautiful, cultured, but rather cold home of Gibbons. There, Gibbons built a ground-level bedroom for Dolores while his bedroom was right above. A secret staircase joined the two levels, but only she could control the opening. He would knock on the floor of his room and if she wished to receive him, she could open a special mechanism which allowed the stairs to descend. Ah, the fantasies of the wealthy and creative. Now who’s eating sour grapes?

During her convalescence del Río was shocked to see that Carewe was remaking RESURRECTION, now with Lupe Vélez, not exactly del Río’s enemy but certainly not a friend either. This was his rather ugly form of revenge. Adding to del Río’s concerns, studios who forced actors to make 3-4 films a year did not look favorably on contract actors who didn’t work at all. Gibbons encouraged Dolores to hire the drama/voice coach Oliver Hindsell. She enjoyed working with him and became excited about returning to studio work. She began with GIRL OF THE RIO, in which she played a young Mexican woman working in a border-town cabaret. This inauspicious return was followed by a very significant film for her, BIRD OF PARADISE, co-starring Joel McCrea, a relatively recent matinee heartthrob, and directed by the powerful King Vidor. The film’s producer, David O. Selznick, contracted Broadway dance prodigy Busby Berkeley to choreograph the “native” dances. Dolores’s costumes as Luana were quite revealing, especially in side shots. In swimming scenes she appeared to be nude. In fact, after filming was over, she began to use a two-part bathing costume, photographs of which started a craze among women in the US and elsewhere. All this suggestive flesh baring was quite provocative for the time and wouldn’t be permitted by stricter production codes just two years later. Selznick didn’t have much of a story for the film, but he wanted to be sure that it ended with the young beauty jumping into a volcano. Those powerful movie moguls of the 20s and 30s were able to have films fashioned from their sometimes strange fantasies and passions. BIRD OF PARADISE regained more praise from newspapers and magazines for del Río, as much for her acting as for her “exotic” beauty. She quickly became an erotic symbol of the 30s, more so evan than in the 20s.

With RKO, the floundering studio which made BIRD OF PARADISE, not recouping their costs immediately, they rushed del Río into another film, FLYING DOWN TO RIO, in which she played a young Brazilian socialite. That film coincidentally introduced Broadway dance sensations Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire to the film public. However, RKO was becoming increasingly worried about their financial situation in 1933 and released del Río from her exclusive contract. They made a mistake because FLYING DOWN TO RIO turned out to be a huge success.

Selznick, who had moved over to MGM, saw another opportunity to work with Dolores and offered her a role in VIVA VILLA! (please add another exclamation point for his stupidity and cultural insensitivity!). The very Pancho Villa who had driven Dolores, her mother, and her father, and other wealthy friends out of Durango was now being mythologized by Hollywood. With no hesitation, she turned down the offer for, as she said, “razones Mexicanas.”

At one of his own parties, Jack Warner, head of production of Warner Bros, offered del Río a two-picture contract for WONDER BAR and MADAME DU BARRY. Lloyd Bacon, a veteran director, would direct her in the latter, a musical comedy in which del Río joined Ricardo Cortez in a dance duo, with choreography once more by Busby Berkeley. Her tango, which ended with her murder of a villain, startled audiences with its mixture of eroticism and death. The film proved to be a big success for WB, quickly followed by MADAME DU BARRY, which caused lots of problems with the censors. 

After completing the two films, Dolores left for Mexico City in 1934 to participate in the inauguration of the beautiful Palacio de Bellas Artes, a theater and artistic showcase whose construction had begun during the Porfiriato in 1904, coincidentally the year of Dolores del Rio’s birth. However building of the marble palace of art was interrupted by the Revolution and various economic downturns. Only now in 1934 was it finished and ready to open all its galleries and performance spaces. The interior was resplendent with murals by Diego Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros, all artists whom Dolores met during her first trip back to Mexico City in nine years. Accompanied by her dashing husband, she was feted everywhere. The Mexican press, which had criticized her for “abandoning her country” and “speaking ill of Mexico,” realized that earlier writers had lied. In her search for fame and fortune, she had never denied being Mexican and was in fact rightfully proud of her heritage. This trip, perhaps unknown to her, would pave the way for her return in the 40s when she would begin a second film career.

The Hollywood she returned to later that year was gripped in the first wave of right-wing witch-hunts for “Communists.” The House Un-American Activities Committee, mostly interested in lots of free publicity, held hearings in which they accused Hollywood stars of being Communists, at the time of the rise of fascism in Germany (a shell game perhaps to avert attention from the right to the left?). Dolores was on their radar for having done nothing more than attend screenings of “dailies” of Sergei Eisenstein’s QUE VIVA MEXICO!, produced by Upton Sinclair, a noted leftist and 1934 Democratic candidate for governor of California. Also, the newly strengthened Hays Code was put into force in 1934. It was the most stringent, limiting form of censorship of American movies ever enforced. The first sacrificial lamb to these new standards of “decency” and conservative “socio-political correctness” was MADAME DU BARRY, chopped up and left to die a horrible death in the press.

With the failure of MADAME DU BARRY, Dolores busied herself with serving a weekly Sunday brunch for guests like Garbo (who did indeed often go swimming alone away from the other guests and who stated her open admiration for Del Rio’s navel), Fay Wray, and Constance Bennett. 

In 1935 Warners asked Dolores to do another musical comedy – IN CALIENTE, with direction by Lloyd Bacon and choreography by Busby Berkeley. Its premiere in New York on 27 June 1935 didn’t do much for the actress’s declining box office figures. I LIVE FOR LOVE, with Berkeley directing but with no dance numbers, failed, also. Her final Warner Bros film was THE WIDOW FROM MONTECARLO.

By now it seemed that the better roles were going to actresses like Olivia de Havilland and Bette Davis. So, Dolores went to England to be in ACCUSED, produced by the British branch of United Artists. Her inexplicable decline continued with THE DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND, made in 1937 for Columbia. By then she wasn’t under contract to any studio and her salary was decreasing. For Fox she made the spy thriller LANCER SPY and the adventure movie INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENT.

Fortunately her marriage with Gibbons continued to be loving and supportive. They certainly didn’t need her income. But she really wanted to work. However, when an opportunity first arose from Mexico, she turned it down. Two producers visited her in Los Angeles and talked about LA NOCHE DE LOS MAYAS, which would be directed by her cousin Julio Bracho, who was wanting to start a career in the Mexican film industry. World-famous composer Carlos Chávez was slated to write the music for this film which would take place in various Mayan locations. When they said they could pay her $24,000 she reportedly said, while sitting in her beautiful home, “What could I buy with that?” The two men left feeling dejected, believing they had offered a princely sum. Ironically one of her later Mexican films, DESEADA (1951), would be set in Chichén Itzá, the famous Mayan religious site.
While Cedric Gibbons was busy 18 hours a day designing all the glorious sets for THE WIZARD OF OZ, he recommended Dolores for the main female role in MGM’s AROUSE AND BEWARE (eventually retitled THE MAN FROM DAKOTA). She was happy to be working again, but the film proved to be another failure. By now, with an unending string of flops, del Río, along with Garbo, Katherine Hepburn, and Joan Crawford, was branded “box office poison.” The war years would bring new stories and new styles, and women like Ingrid Bergman and Lauren Bacall would redefine feminine beauty on the screen.

Fortunately or not, another man was about to enter Dolores del Río’s life. The young genius Orson Welles, straight from his New York fame with Mercury Theater (on stage and radio), arrived in Hollywood in July 1939. On 21 August he signed a contract with RKO who granted almost total freedom in whatever project he wanted to do. He first proposed a film made from Conrad’s HEART OF DARKNESS, but the impending war and the proposed budget made him set that aside. Instead, he would work on CITIZEN KANE, the film that made him a Hollywood legend.

Dolores attended a party given by Jack Warner, where she met Orson Welles and fell completely under his spell. He was young, intellectual, and seductive. Ten years younger than del Río, he had been in love with her ever since seeing BIRD OF PARADISE – when he was 17 years old. Coincidentally with her new romance, del Río was shocked to hear that Edwin Carewe had committed suicide, reminiscent of Jaime’s possible suicide.

Confused by her lack of a film career and controlled by her new love of Orson, Dolores moved out of Gibbons’ house and asked for a divorce in March 1940. She and her mother bought a home at 1455 Stone Canyon Drive in the new subdivision Bel Air, filling up with stars and moguls. Gibbons was devastated and confused by his loss of Dolores, but he conceded the divorce at the beginning of 1941. There was no rancor and each kept the property and possessions they had gathered before and during the marriage.

Hoping to avoid any public scandal, difficult with such an outgoing, flamboyant young man who was full of debts and doubts, Dolores tried to keep their relationship secret. Orson would buy her lavish jewels which she would then have to pay for or return to the jewelers. They went out in public but only if mutual friend Marlene Dietrich or Charlie Chaplin was along. Orson painted, wrote, did radio shows, and planned his debut movie. To get himself ready for his acting role in CITIZEN KANE, he went on complicated diets and took amphetamines. He wavered between needing Dolores near him or far away while filming. It is fascinating to imagine Dolores del Río sitting quietly on the set of the explosive movie, unlike anything she had ever acted in. On the weekends before and after making love they discussed the film. Who knows what contributions she made through these discussions? Welles promised to write a script for del Río and would direct the subsequent film. Sadly, that dream was never completed. 

In August 1940 Dolores’s father died, giving her another terrible blow. She traveled to Mexico with her mother. While there she was contacted by Chano Urueta, who wanted to make a new version of the famous Mexican film SANTA, this time with Dolores del Río in the title role. Gabriel Figueroa, already famous for his cinematography on ALLA EN EL RANCHO GRANDE and (guess what?) LA NOCHE DE LOS MAYAS, would serve as cinematographer on this new version of SANTA. Del Río said she would think it over. Back in Los Angeles, she showed Orson the script for SANTA and he almost immediately wrote a brand new version with “47 extraordinary scenes.” Chano Urueta came to Los Angeles, met with Welles and Dolores again, and with cinematographer Gregg Toland. But the deal fell through once again because of the proposed salary.

The press screening of CITIZEN KANE was tumultuous, particularly because Hearst had threatened to reveal all the peccadillos of major studio bosses if the film was released. Undeterred, Welles accepted an offer from New York to stage Native Son, Richard A. Wright’s explosive novel about a young Black man who accidentally killed a White woman. The theatrical press loved Welles’ new play, but bulldog Hearst wouldn’t stop attacking. Now he branded Welles a Communist. Del Rio stayed by his side in New York but then returned to Hollywood to show RKO the proposed script of SANTA. She hoped to play Elena Medina, the most beautiful woman in the world, but this new version by Welles had become complicated by the appearance of Nazis who wanted to overthrow the government of Mexico (not terribly far-fetched at the time). RKO put off the production by saying they would have to get script approval from the government of Mexico since Welles intended to film there.

Meanwhile, CITIZEN KANE had its world premiere on 1 May 1941 at the Palace Theater in New York City. Dolores had returned to the East Coast in order to enter the theater on the arm of Orson Welles. The film, eventually considered among the finest ever made, was a box office disaster, thanks to Hearst papers’ negative reviews. The newspaper magnate even offered to buy the negative (some said for $1,000,000) just so he could have the pleasure of destroying it. Fortunately RKO declined the offer. But the amazing film was virtually shelved for nearly two decades – a legendary film seen by few until its resurrection in the late 50s.

In July 1941 Orson began work on THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, while also returning to radio production. Dolores starred in one of those radio shows in a play about Don Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, the priest who rallied the Mexican people to the cause of independence from Spain in 1810. Dolores, amazingly, also appeared as assistant for some of Orson’s live magic shows. In one he “cut” the most beautiful woman in the world in two. By now her life was verging on the ludicrous.  Still, Welles proposed another movie, JOURNEY INTO FEAR, in which Dolores had a major role. It would be her last American film for nearly two decades (except for John Ford’s THE FUGITIVE, actually shot in Mexico).

As America was on the verge of entering the already raging World War II, the federal government was worried about Argentina and other places where Nazis could make in-roads into the Western Hemisphere. Nelson Rockefeller, in charge of the Good Neighbor Policy (and also associated with RKO through his family investments), asked Orson Welles to travel to South America as an ambassador of good will to counter fascist propaganda about Americans. Welles and del Rio celebrated Christmas 1941 together and discussed the possibility of marriage.

At the beginning of 1942 del Río began work on JOURNEY INTO FEAR with Norman Foster as director. Meanwhile, Welles left for New York City to edit THE MAGNIFICENT ANDERSONS. But his agreement with Rockefeller required him to leave four days later for Rio de Janeiro on his goodwill tour. He thereby forfeited control over the editing of his new film. After the studio cut 45 minutes and added new scenes directed by someone else, the film was a mess. Dolores anguished over the failure of her lover’s film, but he was off having a wonderful time in Brazil, where he threw himself into the carnival spirit, filmed a bit of this and a bit of that, and satisfied all his erotic hungers. He didn’t even answer Dolores’s increasingly distraught telegrams. Her final telegram announcing the end of their romance remained unanswered. Realizing that virtually everything in America was over for her, Dolores del Río made the important, wise, and fortunate decision to return to Mexico. Almost immediately she found work as an actress and made some of her most important films.  

Sources
•    David Ramón, Dolores del Río, V. 1, Un cuento de hadas. Mexico: Editorial Clío, 1997
•    Paco Ignacio Taibo I, Dolores del Río, mujér en el volcán. Mexico: Editorial Planeta Mexicana, 1999

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Evangeline the Film

Silent film director Edwin Carewe discovered Dolores Del Rio on a visit to Mexico City and persuaded her to come to Hollywood in 1925.  After giving her small roles in several films, Carewe directed Del Rio in RAMONA, her first starring role.  Del Rio’s great beauty was instantly acclaimed, and combined with her earlier successes in WHAT PRICE GLORY and RESURRECTION, she quickly became a star.  Her tremendous looks coupled with her aristocratic Mexican background, which fascinated the Hollywood community, trumped her lack of formal actor training (and she was a quick study).
Del Rio had a translator on the set of her first films, and, like many in the film community, was naturally concerned about the introduction of sound into film.   EVANGELINE was originally filmed as a silent picture, but just before distribution United Artists decided to accommodate the new technology by adding French songs and several lines of spoken dialogue.   The title song is sung by Del Rio at the end of the film, and she prepared by studying English with a coach.   Carewe had hired Al Jolson to write the song for her.   Earlier the public had greatly enjoyed Del Rio’s rendition of the title song of RAMONA, which was also released as a recording.

Carewe’s brother, Finis Fox, was a well-known scenarist of the time, and he wrote a lengthy novelized version (185 pages) of Longfellow’s original poem that was published in 1929 as a “photo-play” of the film.  A copy of this fascinating treatment, entitled The Romance of Evangeline, is located in the Humanities Research Center at UT-Austin.  The narrative that Fox and Crewe created for the film follows generally the events as described by Longfellow in the poem.

It appears that at least part of EVANGELINE was shot on location in Louisiana.  The lower Mississippi River delta, and the large cypress trees in the Louisiana bayou scenes, are distinctive geographical characteristics of the area.  Along the bayous of southern Louisiana it would be possible for two boats to pass each other unknowingly, as happens in the film (in Longfellow’s poem, Evangeline’s boat is near the bank under a palmetto and Gabriel passes by without seeing it).  It may be surmised that the Canadian scenes were filmed along the California coast; Carewe may have also used sets constructed to represent the Acadian village of Grand Pré.

In some scenes Del Rio’s gestures and facial expressions are melodramatic, as may be expected for a film of the time.  The most expressive moments for her are the quiet ones.   The emotions she registers in her face, and through her hands, are especially eloquent in her scene with Gabriel, in which they vow eternal love to one another; when she learns of the death of her father as the Acadians are exiled from Grand Pré; and when Baptiste asks for her love a second time, after she arrives in Louisiana.   The beauty of her face, and the delicacy of her hands, are almost transcendent in these scenes.

Two scenes which must have been thrilling to audiences of the time are the Acadians departing their beloved Grand Pré for exile, in which Carewe skillfully contrasts the ships waiting in the background with the mass of humanity in chaos on the shore, and the scene in which Evangeline and Basil’s boat is overturned in the rapids of a rushing river.

A statue of Evangeline, seated, is next to St. Martin de Tours Church in St. Martinville, Louisiana.  Supposedly the cast and crew of the film donated the statue to the city, and Del Rio herself posed for it.  Another statue of Evangeline, this one standing, is near the reconstructed church at Grand Pré where the English commander read the royal orders to the men of the Acadian village.

Longfellow and the Acadians
   
“Evangeline” is one of the most widely read American poems.  The story of the peaceful Acadian people forcibly exiled from their home in what is now Nova Scotia, Canada; the brutal separation of French families by English soldiers; the dispersal of the Acadians and their long travels to Louisiana; the undying love of Evangeline and Gabriel for each other; and their final reunion in a Philadelphia hospital is a story of faith and devotion that may resonate with readers even today.
   
The actual expulsion of the Acadians by the English took place in 1755, and Longfellow used two primary sources for his research, Abbé Raynal (1790) and Haliburton’s History of Nova Scotia (1829).   He heard the original story of the two lovers from Nathaniel Hawthorne, who thought he might use it for a story or novel.   When he said he would not after all, Longfellow asked him if he might use the idea and Hawthorne agreed.  Longfellow began work on the poem in November 1845, at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and finished it as he approached his 40th birthday in February 1847.  In the original story he heard from Hawthorne, the woman who became his Evangeline had wandered through New England for the rest of her life searching for her betrothed.  Once Longfellow decided to expand the geographic scope of the poem to places like the West, Louisiana, and Philadelphia, he researched extensively in the Harvard library.  He had not traveled himself to the places he wrote about, nor had he been to Nova Scotia; he was born and brought up in Portland, Maine.  A detailed account of Longfellow’s research and writing of the poem is provided in The Origin and Development of Longfellow’s Evangeline.

Many Louisiana Acadians believe that the real Evangeline was a woman named Emmeline Labiche, who finally arrived in Louisiana from Maryland in 1758.  In Nova Scotia she had been engaged to Louis Arceneaux, and she witnessed the English soldiers taking him away at the deportation in 1755.  Although she did not find him in Louisiana immediately, she continued her search for him, thinking that she would find him somewhere in Louisiana since so many Acadians had already settled there. 

Eventually Emmeline made her way to a small community on the Bayou Teche, in what is now St. Martinville, near Lafayette in southwestern Louisiana.  The first person she saw there was Louis.  He was standing under a large oak tree, which has since been immortalized by the people of Louisiana as the Evangeline Oak.  When she ran to embrace him, he told her sorrowfully that he had married another, believing her, Emmeline, to be lost.  She died soon afterward, and local tradition persists that she is buried somewhere in the area.  This account is given by a Louisiana Acadian in his book The True Story of the Acadians, and by locals of the area.  Visitors today may visit the massive Evangeline Oak in Longfellow-Evangeline State Park, and see exhibits that interpret the life of the early French people in Louisiana.

A similar account of Evangeline and Gabriel is described in The History of Grand Pré, whose writer calls himself “the only descendant of the exiled people now living in the Grand Pré of the Acadians.”  In his chapter on the writing of “Evangeline,” he carefully notes “a few” topographical and historical inaccuracies he finds in the poem.   Probably the most famous of these is the opening line of the poem, “This is the forest primeval.”  Apparently historians now agree that a great forest fire had consumed much of the old growth of the area in the early 1700s, and that by 1755 the trees were ones such as spruce, fir, and birch, rather than the pines and hemlocks Longfellow describes.

Longfellow took a one-paragraph story told to Hawthorne by a priest and fashioned one of the great American poems from it.  He elevated Evangeline and her dear Gabriel to the status of literary icons in his sweeping narrative.  When Edwin Carewe cast Dolores Del Rio as Evangeline, he rightly saw that her beauty and elegance would translate Longfellow’s literary creation into a living embodiment of feminine devotion.

Sources:
•    Bennet, C. L., intro.  Evangeline and Other Poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. New York:  Airmont Pub. Co.,1965.
•    Fox, Finis.  The Romance of Evangeline. New York:   A. L. Burt Co., 1929.
•    Gomez-Sicre, Jose.  Dolores Del Rio.  Washington, D.C.:  Department of Cultural Affairs, 1970.
•    Hadley-Garcia, George.  Hispanic Hollywood:  The Latins in Motion Pictures. New York:  Citadel Press, 1990.
•    Hawthorne, Manning and Dana, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  The Origin and Development of Longfellow’s “Evangeline.”  Portland, Me.:  The Anthoensen Press, 1947.
•    Heimlich, Evan.  “Acadians.”  in Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America, Vol. 1. Rudolph J. Vecoli, con. ed.  New York:  Thomson Pub. Co., 1995.
•    Herbin, John Frederic.  The History of Grand-Pré, The Home of Longfellow’s “Evangeline.”   4th ed.  St. John, N.B.:  Barnes & Co., Ltd., 1911 (?).
•    Jones, Charles R., intro.  Breaking into the Movies.  New York:  The Unicorn Press, 1927.
•    LeBlanc, Dudley J.  The True Story of the Acadians.  Lafayette, La., 1932.
•    Lopez, Ana M.   “From Hollywood and Back: Dolores Del Rio, a Trans (national) Star.”  Studies in Latin American Popular Culture.  1998, 17.
•    Parish,  James R.   The Hollywood Beauties.  New Rochelle, N.Y.:  Arlington House Pubs., 1978.
•    Ramon, David.  Dolores Del Rio.  2 vols.  Mexico, 1997.
•    River Trails, Bayous and Backroads.  Baton Rouge:  Louisiana Office of Tourism, 1984.
•    Shipman, David.  The Great Movie Stars:  The Golden Years.  New York:  Bonanza Books, 1970.
•    Tapert, Annette.  The Power of Glamour:  The Women Who Defined the Magic of
•    Stardom.New York:  Crown Publishers, Inc., 1998.
•    Woll, Allen L.  The Latin Image in American Film.  rev. ed.  Los Angeles:  U. of California, 1980.