Dolores Del Rio

Vanity Fair, April 1934

Lolita Dolores Martinez Asunsolo Lopez Negrette, the Mexican screen diva, was born eighty-five years ago this month. A cousin of Ramon (Ben Hur) Novarro, the aristocratic Del Rio (1904-83) narrowly escaped Pancho Villa's rebels in Durango in 1909, was presented at the Spanish court at fourteen, and married at fifteen. Six years later she was discovered by director Edwin Carewe, who was looking for "a female Valentino." By 1934 she had introduced the two-piece swimsuit in Flying Down to Rio, sizzled in Busby Berkeley's Wonder Bar, and ruled in Madame Du Barry. She married Cedric Gibbons, designer of the Oscar, then producer Lewis Riley. Orson Welles courted her while making Citizen Kane—Dietrich played chaperon. But, tired of being typecast as the spitfire temptress, she returned to Mexico, where Rivera painted her, Zuniga sculpted her, and she reigned over the new Mexican cinema, starring in Emilio Fernandez's Maria Candelaria, winner of the 1946 Cannes grand prize. She was later barred from the U.S. for having aided Spanish Civil War refugees, but returned in 1960 as the King's mother in Elvis Presley's Flaming Star.