Maria Montez

She couldn't act, she couldn't sing, she couldn't dance but she was determined and desperate for stardom.  According to the flamboyant Emory in The Boys in the Band, Maria Montez was a good woman.  And apparently she was, too, and an utterly likable one.  Had she learned her craft better, been at a major studio and lived longer, who's to say what might have been in the cards for the Latin American beauty?

A champion of self-promotion with immense charisma and a zest for life, she came into prominence at just the right time... the early 40s.  With the world weary from the Great Depression and then WWII, there was a great clamor for movies known as escapist fare.  They were cheaply-made but colorful sword and sandal extravaganzas set in the Arabian desert, South Sea islands, jungles and other exotic locales.  They were mindless and required nothing of audiences except to sit back and tap their feet to the beat of those drums.

Universal (of course) led the way although those deserts, islands and jungles were all on the studio's backlot.  Within no time at all, Montez was known as the Queen of Technicolor (an appellation other actresses-- usually redheads-- would share over the years).  Her characters, no matter the movie, were fiery, seductive enchantresses draped in sexy costumes and smothered in jewels.

She was born in 1912 in the Dominican Republic, one of 10 children of a Spanish consul and a mother who was a political refugee.  She grew up on the island of Tenerife and attended a convent school in Santa Cruz.  Arguably the prettiest girl in the family, she was aware of the charms she possessed that drove the boys wild.  She determined that her beauty would be her ticket to the big time although she had no clear cut idea what that meant.

In the early 30s her father was appointed to a consulship in Belfast and the family joined him.  She found Ireland dreary and boring but things perked up a bit when she joined an amateur theater group.  She didn't take so much to acting as she did to the attention that she attracted.  

She was just 17 when she married a wealthy Irishman, an officer in the British army.  (She had a yen for men in uniform.  Oh who doesn't?)  While they made their home with his parents on a large estate, he left shortly after the marriage for military duty in some far off lands.  Montez, partly due to age and partly due to genes, was not one to loll about with the in-laws playing auction bridge or riding to the hounds.  Despite the tussle it caused, she would flee to Paris or London looking for excitement, usually acting more like a single girl than a married woman.

Circa 1938 she impulsively dashed off to New York where she moved in with some friends, a Bavarian duke and duchess, who happily introduced her to New York society and set her up with numerous dates.  She knew she would never return to her marriage and never responded to his letters or cables.  So he boarded a ship and when it arrived in New York, she met him at the dock and said goodbye.

Her madcap adventures around the Big Apple resulted in much newspaper coverage which resulted in an artist's oil painting of her and then into modeling jobs.  She didn't particularly take to modeling anymore than she would acting but there were all the clothes to wear and sometimes keep and she loved professionals fussing over her looks.  She was Cinderella at the ball.

George Schaefer, the head of RKO, saw her picture, met with her and offered a job at his studio.  She took a test and after viewing it, it was decided that she would have to first learn to speak English without such a heavy accent.  She didn't mind but when Universal saw her test and wasn't insisting on learning English better, she accepted the offer they made to her.  She was on her way.  Uh-huh.

She caused tongues to wag and libidos to stir when she showed up day after day in the studio commissary looking like a million bucks.  After old codgers took their ties out of their soups and approached her, she dazzled them with her coquettishness.  What a flirt.

With Jon Hall and Sabu in who-knows-what

The studio must have guessed right away that she was never destined to rival Davis or Stanwyck and at the same time knew what to do with her.  Universal loved pretty and handsome in their players and they would assign them to any schlock pictures to come along.  It would have seemed natural to find her in Abbott and Costello flicks (Universal's little moneymakers at the time) but she probably didn't care to be costarring as their stooge.  She would be the starring stooge or not at all.

Montez didn't accidentally end up in her sand and sandal pics.  It was decided she and that genre were made for each other.  It probably came about when she informed them she just wanted to look beautiful.  Universal did not have a glamour girl like many of the other studios did and now they felt they did.  Many photos were taken of her and after making just a few movies, she (and the studio) ran into trouble with the Breen Office, the great arbiter of Hollywood morals, because it was obvious she didn't wear a bra.

She had small roles in several movies in 1941 perhaps for training purposes and there were those at the studio who certainly thought she needed training.  In the same year she was loaned to 20th Century Fox to appear with Alice Faye, Don Ameche and Carmen Miranda in the musical That Night in Rio.  It is the only one of her films I have ever seen.

 

Within three years, 1942-45, Montez was teamed with strapping Jon Hall in six films... Arabian Nights, White Savage, Cobra Woman, Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves, Gypsy Wildcat and Sudan.  After seeing rushes from the first one, she said when I look at myself, I am so beautiful I scream with joy.  She was crazy about all the silks she was given to wear and the baubles, bangles and beads.

Probably considered her best movie

Indian actor Sabu, no stranger to jungle flicks, joined Montez and Hall in three of the above movies and also worked with Montez in Tangier (1945).  She also made eight films with Austrian Turhan Bey whose exotic goods looks complemented her own.  

Despite her one-dimensional characterizations, she informed gossip columnists that she would win an Oscar within five years.  She courted publicity with the fervor of a lioness on a fresh kill.  It was usually concerning her looks, certainly about whatever her current film was and always about who she was dating.  She knew what she was doing.  People found her outrageous but with a certain charm.

In 1942 while on a personal appearance tour in Chicago, she met French actor Jean-Pierre Aumont and claims it was love at first sight for both of them.  They were married the following year.  He had not made American movies at the time and she must have been concerned how marriage to a Frenchman would alter her life.

With Jean-Pierre Aumont

In 1945, life as an American film actress drastically changed for Montez.  She declined to make Frontier Gal, a B western, and was suspended.  She didn't particularly mind because she was pregnant and could rest at home with a husband she dearly loved.  She was, however, replaced with a new girl the studio was grooming to take her place, Yvonne De Carlo.  The new lady could act and sing and dance... and would replace Montez as Universal's go-to enchantress.  Universal began losing interest in its Caribbean Cyclone.

In 1946 she gave birth to her only child, a daughter Christina.  She would grow up as Tina Aumont and then Tina Marquand after she married French actor Christian Marquand.  She, too, was an actress.

Aumont found Montez a little peculiar and there was gossip about the dew coming off the rose.  He said she was something else as a homemaker, having few skills at much of anything except turning their home into one of her exotic film sets.  She didn't answer the phone or read the mail and the doors were always wide open with diamonds spilling out of ashtrays.  

She was saturated with astrology (was she ever warned about Yvonne De Carlo?) and there was one regularly at her mansion along with a physical culture expert, a priest, a Chinese cook and two Hungarian masseurs.  It was a wild ride and Aumont thought he lived at the funny farm.

She must have been a little put out when in 1947 Aumont costarred with De Carlo in Song of Scheherazade.

After the suspension was lifted, Montez was given the lead opposite C-actor Rod Cameron in some western silliness called Pirates of Monterey.  It was not a success.  She always claimed she was very easy to get along with but Universal thought otherwise when she sued the studio for not giving her top billing in 1948's The Exile.  They were already annoyed with her public outbursts about how much she hated leading man Douglas Fairbanks Jr. but suing over billing caused a big scandal.  The studio settled out of court and gave her top billing.

Both actress and studio agreed to end her contract.  The studio's top moneymaker for most of the 40s was no more.  Aumont told Montez that he wanted a divorce but after much pleading they ended up packing up the house, sending the hangers-on on their merry ways and moving to a farmhouse outside Paris.  Shortly thereafter the couple announced they were forming their own production company and would make movies together.

Three of the seven European films she made costarred Aumont but all of them were less than stellar and made little money.  The same could be said about the plays the couple appeared in.  There were too many empty seats.

In 1951 after returning from making their last film in Italy, Montez returned home and complained about mysterious pains in her chest.  A prediction from her former astrologist who said Montez would live a short life was about to come true.  While soaking in a hot tub, she apparently had a heart attack and slipped under the water and died.  She was 39 years old.

Montez's Hollywood story has always fascinated me... her climb, her stay, her departure.  It's so unusual.  I think of the countless times I have written of a Hollywood agent who discovered someone, generally on Broadway.  How about the many who dreamt of being an actor since childhood?  How about those who were terribly shy but made it in the public arena quite well?  And those who won Oscars and shouldn't have and those who didn't win and should have?  How about those who stayed at the top?  The legends.  And those smothered in talent but little success?  So many familiar stories and Maria Montez doesn't belong in any of them.  

Indeed, she has a place in Hollywood history.  She certainly does. Her escapist movies made a lot of folks forget their woes, their terrible worries.  I think that's an accomplishment, something to be proud of.  She was a big star at a little studio.  She never thought of herself as being a good actress but would have been the first to admit that she just wanted to have fun.  Like more than a few male actors, she wanted to dress up and accessorize, have her hair done in some spectacular fashion, have her face rouged and camera-ready and to  be famous and adored by many. 

Is that asking too much?

Next posting:

A British crime caper