Dolores del Río

All you want to know about Dolores del Río

Dolores del Río

Dolores del Rio
Born Maria de los Dolores Asúnsolo y López Negrete
August 3, 1905(1905-08-03)
Durango, Mexico
Died April 11, 1983 (aged 77)
Newport Beach,California,
United States

Dolores del Río (August 3, 1905 – April 11, 1983) was a Mexican film actress. She was a star of Hollywood films during the silent era and in the Golden Age of Hollywood. She became an important actress in Mexican films later in her life.

Contents

Early life

Born María de los Dolores Asúnsolo y López Negrete in Durango, Mexico, del Río was the second cousin of actor Ramón Novarro. Born into an aristocratic Mexican family of Spanish-Basque descent who lost all its assets during the Mexican Revolution, and a desire to restore her comfortable lifestyle inspired her to follow a career as an actress.

In 1921, at the age of 16, she married Jaim Martinez del Rio, and through a Hollywood friend, the couple emigrated to the U.S., hoping to establish careers in show business, as screenwriter and actress, respectively. She was discovered by movie producer Edwin Carewe at a soireè organized by Adolfo Best Maugard in Salvador Novo's house. The del Rios divorced, but Dolores retained her married name. She made her first film appearance in Joanna (1925), in which Hollywood first noticed her appeal as a sex siren, but she struggled against the "Mexicali Rose" image initially pitched to her by Hollywood executives.

Acting career

In 1935, wearing an Orry-Kelly gown

She was selected as one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars in 1926 (along with fellow newcomers Joan Crawford, Fay Wray, Janet Gaynor, and Mary Astor). She starred in one of that year's biggest screen successes, What Price Glory, opposite Edmund Lowe and Victor McLaglen. She came to be admired as one of the most beautiful women on screen, and her career flourished until the end of the silent era, with successful films such as Resurrection (1927), Ramona (1928), and Evangeline (1929).

In 1930, she married Cedric Gibbons, one of MGM's leading art directors and production designers. With the advent of talkies, she was usually relegated to exotic and unimportant roles, but scored successes with Bird of Paradise (1932 Film) (1932, directed by King Vidor (the film scandalized audiences when she turned out swimming stark naked with Joel McCrea), Flying Down to Rio (the film that launched the careers of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers) (1933) and Madame DuBarry (1934), Wonder Bar (1934) and the Busby Berkeley comedies In Caliente (1935) and I live for love (1935).

Orson Welles fell madly in love with her, although he was 10 years younger. The affair was reported to have been the cause of her divorce from Gibbons in 1941. She collaborated with Welles in the film Journey into Fear (1943).

She was friends with noted Mexican artists, such as Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, and maintained ties with Mexican society and cinema. She returned to Mexico in 1942. She was soon approached by director Emilio Fernández, and she began making Spanish-language films that brought her great success in Mexico and Hispanic America over the next twenty years. The group Del Rio-Fernandez, together with the cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa and the actor Pedro Armendariz having a international fame. Among her most successful films were Flor Silvestre (1942 Film) (1942), Maria Candelaria (1943, winner at the Cannes Film Festival), Las Abandonadas (1944), Bugambilia (1945 Film) (1945), The Fugitive (1947, directed by John Ford), and La Malquerida (1949). Other important Mexican movies include Doña Perfecta (1951 Film) (1951), El Niño y la Niebla (1953), and La Cucaracha (1959), with Maria Félix. She was nominated for Mexico's Silver Ariel Award many times, winning four. In 1959, she married theatrical American businessman Lewis "Lou" Riley.

In 1960, she starred with Elvis Presley in Flaming Star directed by Don Siegel. In 1964, she appeared in Cheyenne Autumn directed by John Ford. During the 1950s and 1960s, she starred in theater classics like Anastacia (1956), Lady Windermere's Fan (1958) and Lady of the Camilles (1968), with great success in Mexico, Latin America and Europe. Del Rio's last movie was The Children of Sanchez, alongside Anthony Quinn.

She founded the group Rosa Mexicano. In 1974, she was the founder of the Estancia Infantil of the Asociacion Nacional de Actores in Mexico.

Death and memorials

On April 11, 1983, Dolores Del Rio died from liver disease at the age of 77, in Newport Beach, California.

She was cremated and her ashes were interred in the Panteón de Dolores cemetery in Mexico City, Mexico. In 2005, on the centenary of her birth, her remains were moved to the Rotonda de las Personas Ilustres of Mexico City.

Dolores del Río has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 1620 Vine Street, in recognition of her contributions to the motion picture industry.

Trivia

When she first achieved stardom, the press dubbed Del Rio the female counterpart of Rudolph Valentino.

Was considered by Marlene Dietrich "The most beautiful woman in Hollywood".

Filmography

Features

Short Subjects

  • WAMPAS Baby Stars of 1926 (1926)
  • Screen Snapshots Series 9, No. 14 (1930)
  • Screen Snapshots Series 9, No. 24 (1930)
  • Screen Snapshots Series 9, No. 23 (1930)
  • A Dream Comes True (1935)
  • A Trip Thru a Hollywood Studio (1935)
  • Screen Snapshots Series 16, No. 7 (1937)
  • Screen Snapshots Series 16, No. 8 (1937)
  • Screen Snapshots Series 18, No. 10 (1939)
  • Meet the Stars #1: Chinese Garden Festival (1940)
  • Meet the Stars #2: Baby Stars (1941)
  • Screen Snapshots: Hollywood Goes to Mexico (1954)
  • Mexico '68: Instantaneous (1968)

External links

Persondata
NAME Río, Dolores del
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Negrete, Dolores Martínez Asúnsolo y López
SHORT DESCRIPTION
DATE OF BIRTH 1904-8-3
PLACE OF BIRTH Durango, Mexico
DATE OF DEATH 1983-4-11
PLACE OF DEATH Laguna Beach, California, U.S.
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Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolores_del_R%C3%ADo"

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