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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 became an important actress in Mexican films later in her life.
Born Dolores Martínez Asúnsolo y López Negrete in Durango, Durango, Mexico, del Río was the cousin of actor Ramón Novarro. Her wealthy family lost all their assets during the Mexican Revolution, and a desire to restore her comfortable lifestyle inspired her to follow a career as an actress. In 1921 she married Jaime del Río, and through a Hollywood friend the couple emigrated to the USA with the plan of establishing showbusiness careers for themselves: screenwriter and actress, respectively. The marriage ended in divorce but del Río retained her married name, continued to pursue a career as an actress, and made her first film appearance in Joanna (1925) in which Hollywood first noticed her appeal as a sex siren, but struggled against the "Mexicali Rose" image initally pitched to her Hollywood execs.. 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), but initially overcame prejudice that same year in one of that year's biggest screen successes, What Price Glory. 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.
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 Flying Down to Rio (the film that launched the careers of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers) (1933) and Madame DuBarry (1934). An affair with Orson Welles was reported to have been the cause of her divorce from Gibbons in 1941. Her collaboration with Welles, Journey Into Fear (1942), was her last major Hollywood film.
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 over the next twenty years. She was nominated for Mexico's Silver Ariel Award five times, winning two awards for her performances. In 1960 she starred with Elvis Presley in the Western Flaming Star directed by Don Siegel.
She died from liver disease at Laguna Beach, California and was buried at in the Panteón de Dolores cemetery (no relation) in 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.
External links
- Portrait of Dolores del Río (http://www.hollywoodcelebrityphotographs.com/slideshow/bw/1158B-ss.html)
- The Dolores del Río Mural, at Hudson Avenue, Hollywood, California. (http://www.seeing-stars.com/ImagePages/DoloresDelRioMural.shtml)