Agradecemos a Erika Comellas el envío de la revista y el recorte de esta entrada para disfrute de todos. Con ello vemos la repercusión internacional que nuestra estrella ha tenido siempre.
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Take the good look at the sultry beauty looking out at you from the cover of this magazine –and at the other provocative likenesses of her arranged artistically on these pages. Would it come as any great surprise to learn that, at an age when most film beauties tire of their losing battle with the years, throw out their creams, lubricants and mudpacks and seek out character roles, 35-years-old Sarita Montiel has zoomed past Brigitte Bardot as the number one box office attraction on the continent?
And that she did it without benefit of towels, pouts, naughty grins and bikinis?
You’d be in good company. Nobody was more surprised than the beautiful Spanish actress herself when she heard the good news.
“I feel most ashamed,” she said after she’d recovered from her astonishment. “I did it whit my clothes on.”
Unusual? Many things are unusual about this Spanish-born Mexican star aside from the fact that although she’s got plenty to show, she doesn’t show it on the screen.
Give a listen to list statement she made back in 1948 at the tender age of 22 when most girls still dream of handsome, curly-haired baby-doll boys whose voices have barely changed. Said Sarita: “I like men who are over 40 and ugly”. Sarita explained wisely that when she dated a man she wanted him to admire her, not himself.
This pronouncement got more mileage than the Tiros satellite. Rarely had such wisdom dropped from such dewy lips. It was a better tonic for America’s senior citizens than a shot of Rybutol on the rocks. And more than one rocking chair jockey was heard to cackle, “By cracky, there’s hope for the old boy yet”.
Sarita wasn’t just running off publicity copy, either. A few years later she put her philosophy into action by marrying film director Anthony Mann who looks over 40 and who doesn’t look quite like the leading man a director would ordinarily select to play opposite Sarita.
Mann, who directed the controversial film, “God’s Little Acre,” overnight became one of the wordl’s most envied men. The tanned, muscular, cute young men of Hollywood gnashed their capped teeth in frustration and immediately set out to grow mustaches. Most of them would fail there, too.
Look again, and Sarita’s face is that of sexy, modern miss. Audiences flock to theaters to watch her face alone.
Sarita is not a production of the movie-star manufacturing machine. Her professional experience is as long as her square name –Maria Antonia Vicenta Alejandre Ysidora Abad. A talen scout spotted her on the streets of Seville, Spain, when she was only 12- a very mature 12- and set a wordl’s record for getting her monicker on a contract. The green-eyed beauty starred in 19 films before moving to Mexico with her mother.
There she was hailed as the “Marilyn Monroe of Mexico”. Her sultry good looks and lush figure made her a favorite with the hot bloods south of the border. She made movies in the U.S. and on the continent with the same results. Sarita Montiel was a sensation, a box office bonanza, and she had done it without walking with a wiggle, without swimming nude, without plunging necklines, and without taking off her stockings while sitting on a bed.
“I am so proud of myself”, she said with good reason back in 1958. “In my last picture, the audience sees only my face and hears my voice”.
“The picture is so honest and simple that even little children can see it. And it is making millions of dollars all over the world”.
Sarita and husband, Anthony Mann, attend Venice Film Festival in 1958. “I feel most ashamed,” she said of her box office victory. “I did it with my clothes on.”
The picture she referred to was “The last song”, and Sarita was so sold on the idea of the film she plunked down half of the money to do it, $75,000. Now in Hollywood $150,000 wouldn’t even pay for the star’s wardrobe, let alone finance a full-length motion picture. But the Spaniards have a way of getting the most return on a limited investment. They proved that by investing in three ships and having their flag planted on a valuable piece of real estate back in 1492. That’s investment.
They haven’t lost their touch. “The Last Song” played for an incredible 47 weeks in Spain. It was a smash hit in Germany, Italy, France, Mexico, Argentina, and throughout Latin America. The lines queued up in front of theathers were reminiscent of the eager, lick-lipping flesh fanciers who flocked to theathers all over the world to feast their eyes on the screen image of Brigitte Bardot as she capered happily and almost nakedly through bedrooms and across sandy beaches, trailed closely by a panting camera that kept discovering angles the ordinary male never dreamed of.
That kind of film success is understandable. It makes sense. Sex has always been box office, from “Gone With the Wind” to “And God Created Woman”.
But how do you figure people plunking down pesos, lire, marks and francs just to look at a girl’s face and hear her voice?
The answer is that Sarita’s face is no ordinary face. It is a classic Spanish face of almost unbelievable beauty.
By: Sidney Haught
EL RECORTE XIV
Hoja extraída de una revista brasileña del año 1964. Sara acababa de llegar al país del Carnaval para rodar Samba. La repercusión de su llegada movilizó masas, quizá, no conocidas hasta entonces. Bellísima en esta foto.
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LA FOTO XIV
Aquí una Sarita bellísima en una estampa típica de su época hollywodiense.
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