Katy Jurado

When writing about a Mexican actress in the 1950's, one has to think first of Katy Jurado.  She reigned as the top Latina of the decade.  Linda Cristal, who came along in the mid-50's, while more beautiful than Jurado, never achieved her fame.  Equally beautiful Dolores Del Rio was from an earlier era.  Jurado ruled Hollywood during her time.

Her look was unmistakable with those dark, hooded, very sad eyes that often yielded a contemptuous look, the pillow lips and hairstyle usually pulled tightly away from her face.  Most of her characters in American films were strong, savvy and supportive.  In her Mexican films (none of which have I seen), she was very strong and savvy and not so supportive.  She played wicked, seductive women and often villains.

She was not only from one of Mexico's wealthiest families but for years they owned most of Texas.  She was born in 1924 in Mexico City as Maria Cristina Estela Marcela Jurado de Garcia.  Her father was an attorney and her mother a singer.  Katy had a cousin who had been president of Mexico.

Perhaps her time in a strict Catholic school made her want to bust out, to fly, to experiment and in short time she desperately wanted to become an actress.  Her parents were dead-set against it-- and their consent was needed-- despite the fact that her godfather was actor Pedro Armendariz. 

She wanted to be an actress more than anything she had ever wanted in her life so she defied her parents' dictums.  She lied about her age and signed a contract with a producer-director who gave her a starring role in her first film.  When the parents discovered her deceit they threatened to send her to some far-off boarding school.   She retaliated by marrying an actor also starting out, Victor Valazquez.  Their three-year union would produce two children. 

Over the next seven years, a period that included Mexico's Golden Age of films, Jurado would appear in some 16 movies and become quite famous in her native country.  In addition to acting, she worked on radio, was a movie columnist and a bullfight critic and aficionado.  It was this latter talent that brought the lady to American films.

In 1950 while filming she ran into John Wayne and director Budd Boetticher, a professional bullfighter himself, who were scouting locations for a film Wayne would produce, The Bullfighter and the Lady (1951).  They had no idea that Jurado was an actress but knew they wanted her to play Gilbert Roland's wife.  She and the film were well-received and it ignited her American career and she would shortly achieve international fame.

She spoke almost no English and learned her lines phonetically.  While Jurado was good in the film, it's more likely that Wayne, with whom she would have the occasional affair over a 20-year span (he loved Latinas), had something to do with getting her noticed.  An affair with Boetticher didn't hurt.

In the buckboard with Grace Kelly in High Noon

How ironic that her next film, clearly her most famous, was one that Wayne not only turned down but publicly despised... High Noon (1952).  She played the saloon-owner, ex-girlfriend of sheriff Gary Cooper who is about to marry another woman and face a gang out to kill him.  Jurado became the stoic western woman, a role she would play to perfection in other westerns as well.  By the time she filmed High Noon, she had learned English well.  She claimed it was a good experience, except for all the closeups Grace Kelly got.

Jurado was a natural for American westerns.  Perhaps history has determined whether that was a plus or a minus for her career but damn if she didn't inhabit them with a realism that I loved... and I saw every American movie she made in the 50's.  Arrowhead (1953) was just an entertainment piece that the 50's did so well.  She plays an evil Apache woman and the love interest of Charlton Heston.  She played very few villains in her American films but this was surely one of them.

I feel much affection for her role as Spencer Tracy's wife in director Edward Dmytryk's Broken Lance (1954).  A western rendition of 1949's House of Strangers, it concerns a tyrannical cattle baron who is at odds with the encroaching oil business and three rebellious sons (Richard Widmark, Earl Holliman, Hugh O'Brian).
The fourth and youngest son (Robert Wagner), the only one the old man likes, is by a Comanche wife (Jurado).  I have always considered it an A western.  Tracy, atop a beautiful horse, cracking a whip, is irresistible.

I loved how she called him my hossband

Jurado was always a passionate actress, her characters often so caring, which I found to be the core of her appeal.  Unlike a lot of her Mexican films, her passion in her American work was usually understated... but it was always there.  How to be formidable and quiet takes a special talent and the lady had just that.  Apparently Oscar voters also saw something special in this performance because they bestowed a supporting actress nomination on her.

Her American popularity now assured, Jurado moved gracefully between Mexican and American films, although when the final tally was counted, there were far more of the former.

In 1954 she was in Mexico and happened upon the set of the Gary Cooper-Burt Lancaster-starrer, Vera Cruz.  She met but didn't take  great notice of one of the supporting players, a good buddy of Lancaster's, Ernest Borgnine.  About four years later she would pay more attention to him.

Jurado was reunited with Roland for The Racers (1955) along with Kirk Douglas, Lee J. Cobb and Cesar Romero.  She loved the European location work but the race car drama was mediocre fare and was probably excluded from most of their résumés.

Trial (1955), on the other hand, would have been in bold typeface on Jurado's résumé.  Her turn as the formidable mother of a Mexican boy accused of raping a white girl was simply a delicious piece of acting... so soulful.  She broke my heart.  With Dorothy McGuire, Arthur Kennedy and Glenn Ford in other roles, it was one of those talked-about films of the year.  Frankly, she should have gotten an Oscar nod for this film rather than Broken Lance.

She had a small role as an equestrian rider in the compelling circus film, Trapeze (1956).  The action focused on a jealousy-ridden love triangle involving Lancaster, Gina Lollobrigida and Tony Curtis.  With the acclaimed Carol Reed directing, I thought they all really sold it.

The Badlanders (1958) is a colorful, routine Alan Ladd western that was memorable for Jurado and Borgnine who were now costars and lovers onscreen and off.  Many years later she was still being quoted as saying their two-year courtship was one of the happiest times of her life. 

Happy times with Ernest Borgnine

Their 1959 marriage, however, was another matter.  She maintained his jealousy was more than she could stand.  They got into a huge fight on their first anniversary.  She claimed he hit her all the time but she loved him... putting most of it on their Latin temperaments.  Nonetheless, the divorce five years later hit her hard and she attempted suicide.  

Perhaps one of the problems was her working with Marlon Brando, who had specifically requested her for a movie he was directing and starring in, One-Eyed Jacks (1961).  You see, they had been on-again, off-again lovers for years and would continue to be so after the Borgnine divorce.  (Jurado would never marry again.)  Geez, calm down, Ernie, she said.  Get some religion.

And you know, they both did just that.  The Borgnines signed on to costar in Barabbas (1961), the story of the criminal whose actions guaranteed that Christ would be crucified.  The Borgnines were still goo-goo-eyed (in their fashion) and somewhat oblivious to such temperamental costars as Anthony Quinn, Jack Palance and Vittorio Gassman.

While she still returned to Mexico to make movies, she also began appearing in episodic American television.  It wasn't until 1966 that she made another American film and that was in a small role as a housekeeper in the horse opera Smoky.  Her impressive American films were now behind her.

A Covenant with Death (1967) is an underrated murder story that featured George Maharis as a young judge.  Jurado's role as his mother had nothing to do with the main action of the film.  When one was assigned an Elvis Presley film, you knew your career was in trouble.  Stay Away, Joe (1968) was another mother role for her.
She had another small role as Slim Pickens' wife in a rousing western yarn, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) but she spent most of the 70's doing American television and Mexican films.

In 1981 her son Victor was killed in a car accident and those who knew her said she was never the same again.  She completely lost interest in acting and holed up in her home in Mexico.  Director John Huston, who had long admired and struck up a friendship with her during his many visits to Mexico, insisted she return to work.  He hired her for a small role opposite Albert Finney, Jacqueline Bisset and Anthony Andrews in Under the Volcano (1984).  I loved the cast but it's an odd movie without a doubt and received blistering reviews.

Another odd movie is the western The Hi-Lo Country (1998) about two cowpokes in love with the same woman.  It may be appropriate that Jurado's last American film was a western but her time on screen may have been as little as one scene.

Jurado had suffered from heart and lung ailments for a while and died from kidney disease and pulmonary failure in Mexico in 2002 at age 78.

She was revered as a star in her native country and America was lucky to have her for the time it did.  She certainly shone brightly in the U.S. in the 1950's and is regarded as a trailblazer for Latinas in American films.


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Hollywood Blondes