I think this is the strongest medium ever created in the history of the human species. Bar none. I think it attacks the subconscious mind in a way that we have no idea of what the impact is. Movies change you, you know, when you're watching them. It's like you go into a dreamlike state.
You suspend your disbelief and you enter this magical world. Hollywood is very influential in placing in the minds of people images of what we, Latinos, are. Smoke on your pipe and we're glad...
So movies all of a sudden become... what you're represented as they become the subconscious images that the rest of the world will have in order to understand hollywood's portrayal of latinos you have to understand the evolution of the industry itself movie making was a wondrous new medium born with the new century its inventors were east coast immigrants who came to los angeles for the good locations and the year-round sun they came to a city that not only had a spanish name but had been part of mexico police 60 years earlier. I think over the long throw of the hundred years of Hollywood cinema, you've seen the Latino come and go. Mexicans showed up in movies from the very beginning.
They were playing Indians and they were playing pirates perhaps, and in many instances, playing Mexicans. They were always around. In the early 1900s, motion pictures told simple stories of good guys and bad guys.
Some of the movie's first bad guys were called Greasers, a dangerous people prone to violence and mayhem. The term initially comes from the fact that Mexicans by and large worked on the shipyards in California loading hides onto boats to get the tallow all over themselves and become greasy. The figure of the greaser, the amoral lowlife, kidnapped white women and killed the bandolero, the bandit, the greaser.
It was such a... a horrible depiction of Mexican nationals, but by depicting the Mexican national like that, they were really depicting every Latino. Hollywood discovered a moneymaker.
What more do you need? You've got a bad guy, he's dark, he's dumb. For the most part, he's violent, a rapist, you know, can't speak the language. All of that really works well with the needs of a compact screenplay. And the bad girls in these early films were oftentimes Mexican women, portrayed with a violent nature and loose morals.
And there was terrible propaganda. And anything associated with Mexico was viewed to be as treacherous, evil, bloodthirsty. We get a sense that obviously these were popular films.
We also see that in the Spanish language newspapers in the Mexican-American community, that these films upset people and there's a number of instances of people walking out of the theaters, editorialists getting boycotts started, of theater owners deciding not to show the films. There was such a terrible stereotype that Latin American countries got together and said we're going to boycott every single U.S. film that comes to our countries if you don't change this. And in fact, they did.
In 1922, the Mexican government announced a ban of any movie by any company who made an offending film. President Wilson himself felt it necessary to intervene by asking the Hollywood movie people to, quote, please be a little kinder to the Mexicans. The other thing that happened at the beginning of the 20s was the rise of the Latin lover because of Rudolph Valentino.
The first Latin lover was not Valentino, who was Italian. It was Antonio Moreno, who was from Spain. Antonio Moreno once told an interviewer, quote, I was promoted as to what you now call a sex symbol, though I did nothing to encourage this perception. But Americans wanted to believe that the people of Latin origins are more naturally spicy. This craze was so popular and so powerful that in the wake of Valentino, you have Gilbert Roland, you have Ramon Navarro, you have Lupe Velez, you have Dolores Del Rio.
And all these are stars that are taking advantage of the world. of this kind of trend in Hollywood, let's find the Latin type. Latinos were an image of romanticism, the Latin lover, the beautiful women like Lupe Velez.
She begins in the 20s in silent films, and she does a film called The Gaucho with Douglas Fairbanks Sr. in 1928. She pretty much holds her own with this hero of Hollywood. If you were Ramon Navarro or Dolores del Rio, you were not playing the greaser or the dim-witted senorita. You were the star of the show.
You were playing somebody who was noble, usually aristocratic. And you might be playing anything from French to Polynesian, American. Eskimo British because of course in silent movies there were no accents. Dolores del Rio was from Mexico and proud of it. She came from a semi-aristocratic family but what Hollywood did was Europeanize her.
She resented this but the only background that was esteemed in Hollywood at that time, and for a long time after, was the European background. The Latin lover was a very profitable figure to the extent that you had somebody like Jacob Kranz, who was of Austrian-Jewish background. His name was changed to Ricardo Cortez so that he would make more money for his studio. Now, somebody non-Latin taking on a Spanish name is unthinkable today, but in the silent era, it made total sense. Ramon Navarro was the first Latin American star he was from Mexico.
He was a cousin to Dolores del Rio. He had the great good fortune to be cast in Ben-Hur, the most expensive silent movie ever made and a huge success. I saw Ben-Hur in Mexico. That chariot race was very, very exciting. This was long before I ever dreamed that I would come to Hollywood.
But that was terrific. So you can imagine when I came here and was meeting Ramón Navarro. He was so handsome.
Oh, fantastic. You know, it was our idol. The introduction of sound to films presented problems for many actors. Well, when talkies came in it was a disaster for anyone who had a foreign accent, unless perhaps you were British. There were many people whose careers were ruined, Hungarians as well as Mexicans.
What's the idea of giving a party and not inviting me, huh? Interestingly, there was a double standard that benefited women. What are you waiting for? That's it! Don't speak.
Men with accents like Gilbert Roland and Antonio Moreno became supporting actors almost overnight. Come up again. Anytime. I shall.
Then I hope you will be alone. So do I. Because the American male establishment was threatened by the foreign men.
Warm, dark, and handsome. Lupe Bellis, Dolores Del Rio, continued right on with their careers as though nothing had happened. Well, do you know what I think of you? Cara de perra animal, eh? Andy Chocante, vieja.
El padre en las narices de palo que tiene. Answer me! Answer me!
Hello! She hung me up. Lupe Velez was best remembered as the Mexican Spitfire and therefore a comedian. Lupe Velez has been a very underrated actress, but she was a remarkable comedian. I mean, she was basically a predecessor to Lucille Ball.
She was extremely popular with Latina. She was extremely popular in Latin America. No, I fix, I fix!
Tell the old sourpuss not to come up. She was called a hot-blooded Mexican, a hot tamale. But there was a lot of...
We have a lot of indication that Lupe Velez herself was very much in charge of manufacturing that image as well, because she, in a lot of ways, knew that that was the only way that she could get a job in Hollywood. Silent films were easily exported, but talkies changed all that. To keep the highly profitable international film market, Hollywood shot films in English during the daytime hours and Spanish-language versions during the graveyard shift.
Lupita Tobar starred in the Spanish language Dracula. It was very difficult. We reported to make-up at 6 o'clock, and we started shooting at 8. So the English cast had gone out, and then we go in. In the meanwhile, they changed the lighting, they changed the nose, some things. Then we work all night.
Dracula was finished before the English version. We were one take, one take, you know, we were very, very good. We were then competing with the English because we wanted to prove that we were better, if not the same better, than the American actors. We knew that we were paid less.
I didn't care because it was enough for me and happy to have a job. I must be. So when our picture was finished, there was a lot of talk around the studio that the Dracula in Spanish was better then. So we were very proud. During the Great Depression, there was an incredible concern about Mexicans taking U.S. jobs.
So after the stock market crash, you had this massive deportation of Mexicans, many of them U.S. citizens. So here you have their presence in politics, their presence in newspapers, and their absolute absence on the silver screen. When Latins were portrayed during the Great Depression, they were usually aristocratic South Americans, in escapist fantasies.
Whenever a Brazilian girl starts something, she must finish it. None of these South Americans got below the equator that we have. Dolores del Rio, who played a Brazilian, not a Mexican, wore a two-piece swimsuit, which was revolutionary at the time. This was one of the things that helped lead towards the very right-wing censorship code that came in in July of 1934, the Hays Code.
Línea, your robe. So Dolores del Rio had her share in bringing on censorship. The flipside of the Latin image as an aristocrat was the dim-witted clown. Some talented actors made the best of this caricature. Crispin Martin provided comic relief in a number of Hollywood productions, often playing the cowpoke without a clue.
You come along or else. Or else what? Just or else. Say Manuel, what does mean this or else anyhow? Huh?
Oh, we make no difference what I mean. You come with us or we put the spots on you. Leo Carrillo, who was Mexican-American, was a very successful, very prolific character actor. Who was this telling me to shut up?
He didn't say it, senor. Well, somebody say it. I say it and I say it again, pelado. So what? So what?
Hey, Pancho, if we're going to kill those fellows in Tolica, we better go pretty quick. He... Played in dozens and dozens of movies. It came from a very aristocratic Spanish-Mexican family that had owned a big chunk of Los Angeles. Hollywood's attraction to the Mexican bandido began during the Mexican Revolution of 1910. The Mutual Film Corporation approached Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa with an offer of $25,000 to film his exploits.
In need of money for his troops, Villa agreed to fight during the daylight hours and delay his attacks until the cameras were ready to roll. The film was called Barbarous Mexico and portrayed Villa's popular revolt against the tyrannical government as violent and uncivilized. A quarter of a century later, Pancho Villa made his return to Hollywood, this time in a fictionalized version starring Wallace Beery, portrayed not only as a killer, but also as a clown. Viva Villa has a character in Pancho Villa who is very childlike, who cannot think for himself. Don't understand what's wrong with you.
Pigeons? Pigeons? Well you're crazy that's all. Didn't I tell you not to draw pigeons on the money? Why didn't you draw bulls?
He's very childish and animalistic and savage. You. Oh now listen, I only know how to make love one way.
If I see an angel, I've got to make love. That way I've got the crabs. If you know anything about Mexican history, you realize that the soldiers, the rebels that were fighting with Zapata and Villa, were actually heroic. I mean, what they were up to was defeating tyranny. During this time, Latinos began to break into the filmmaking industry behind the camera.
Mexican-born brothers Marcel and Victor Delgado were the men behind the ape in King Kong, constructing the giant's piercing eyes, its roaring mouth, and the huge hand that held the beautiful Fay Wray. Chico Day broke through as a first assistant director working on Cecil B. DeMille's epic films, The Ten Commandments, and Samson and Delilah. For the next five decades, Chico Day would work on some of the biggest films in Hollywood history.
I was the first Latin to open the gate for the Latins in our business at Paramount. So that naturally gives me a great feeling of pride in having been instrumental in opening this horrible barrier that they had at that time for Latins. The great lover, huh? Si, senorita. I was named for him.
The Cisco Kid was a good guy, and just the fact that you had a Latino good guy was rather revolutionary. Zorro, the fictional hero of old Spanish California, began his career in the silent days. The Cisco Kid became a major popular icon in over 20 films, a Robin Hood-like hero who rode the West writing injustices.
The role was played by many, including Warner Baxter, Gilbert Roland, Duncan Renaldo, and Cesar Romero, who added his own debonair style. Señorita, es enana. The Cisco Kid has proven timeless. The latest incarnation of this fictional Latin hero was Jimmy Smits.
Let's ride! Hollywood's first film about a contemporary fictional Mexican-American hero was Bordertown. The lead role was played by Paul Muni, a versatile non-Latino actor.
That young man, ladies and gentlemen, sits there. Johnny Ramirez. You've got this character who goes to a law school, not a very good law school in East L.A., and in his very first trial, loses the case, gets into a fight with the opposing attorney.
It's because you don't want a guy like me, who comes from where I do, to get a break. It isn't a question of nationality or creed. It's you.
You're a ruffian at heart. Brutal, cheap, bad tempered. He is disbarred, so he retreats to a border town in Mexico and runs a casino.
I'm asking you to marry me. Oh, but that's out of the question. You must understand that, Johnny.
No, I don't understand. Why? Because you belong to a different tribe, Savage. He fails at everything he tries to do, so he retreats back to the barrio, back to East L.A. Well, Juanito, where to now?
Back where I belong, Padre, with my own people. So it ends up being a cautionary tale to Mexican-Americans. Don't try to go outside the barrio.
Don't try for mainstream success. Stay where you are. That's where you belong. Hollywood's first portrayal of a real-life Latin American hero was Mexico's beloved president, Benito Juarez, again played by Paul Muni.
Only a word, democracy, may stand between Maximiliano von Habsburg and myself. It is a non-bridgeable gulf. And if you take yourself back to 1939, you realize there just weren't very many positive portrayals, and there weren't many pictures that the whole picture was set in Mexico or Latin America. that it was trying to be a positive portrayal, that it was trying to do justice to Mexican history.
Camilo, the picture. The gringo? Yes, Camilo. The gringo. Paradoxically, the biggest boost to the Latin image in Hollywood films resulted from world events an ocean away.
Between 1935, the ascension of Hitler, and all of these events taking place, setting up the scenario for the Second World War, the U.S. then all of a sudden felt that it had to do something to... secure its shores. And one way to secure the shores was to create a better relationship with countries south of the border so that they would not become the basis for German submarines or Japanese submarines or whatever.
So the whole policy, good neighbor policy began. The European movie market was closed because it was at war with itself and so Hollywood had to then skew all of its product toward new markets so they skewed it to South America, Central America and Mexico and they made a lot more films that were attractive to that market. We're three happy chappies with snappy serappies. You'll find us beneath our sombreros.
We're brave and we'll stay so. We're bright as a peso. We're snapper. We say so.
The three... It was a need to create a paradise, a distraction. So Latin America became this fabulous playground with music and ruffles and exotic ladies that danced with a rose in their teeth and men who walked around with long sideburns and tall boots and drinking mate and dancing tango and whatever. Hollywood courted Latin America with romantic musical comedies and new actors were literally brought in off the boat. I was a child when I saw Carmen Miranda in those first.
color movies musicals and she was always what attracted me was she how could she hold so many bananas on her head she was criticized in Brazil because they thought that she was so making a caricature of Brazil, but that's not the point. The point is, I mean, we can't lose totally our sense of humor. We've got to evaluate things for what they are.
A musical comedy is far from being an interpretation of the Declaration of Independence. I mean, a musical comedy was... to entertain.
I will do my best to make Senorita Spencer ecstatic. That ought to be good enough. You Cubans are supposed to be experts at romance.
Oh, I am not a Cuban, Senor. I was born in Brooklyn as a child. By the early 40s, many Latino actors were enjoying both the work and the play as members of Hollywood's social elite. At the Beverly Hills tropics, patrons who've always longed to get away from it all on some South Sea island can capture the illusion and still be just around the corner from home.
Then in strolled Cesar Romero, enjoying a day of leisure between pictures. Gee, maybe this is one of those wild Hollywood parties they talk about. Aha, new recruit, Rita Hayworth.
And nice, too. Apparently, Caesar agrees with us. He almost breaks away getting over to sit next to Rita. You're going to hear a lot more about this Hayworth gal.
There was great activity in this town all the time, and socially it was wonderful. The swanky Westside Tennis Club, where tournaments bring out a gallery that looks like an all-star cast. All your friends were members there.
We'd go there, we'd play tennis, we'd play backgammon, we'd play gin. That's Gilbert Roland, who swings a mean racket. He sees a fast one coming. He dashes to the net. He jumps over.
Oh, wrong again. He was just going up for a high one. It was a great social place.
If horse racing is your weakness, you'll want to see Santa Anita, Hollywood's pet playground. That's Lupe Velez taking her glasses off. And that's Antonio Marino keeping his arm.
Then the war came along, of course, and that changed everything. By the time we're into World War II, which is early 40s, you need to show the country united against the common foe. So what you do is, you know, in the foxhole, you put everybody. It's a cross-section of America.
Cuban newcomer Desi Arnaz was featured as a heroic soldier fighting in the Philippines. Hey, what's the matter with you? Just tired. Long night we put in.
No, sir. I'm no doctor, but I worked in a drugstore once. You're sick.
Don't you go saying that. Don't you say that to anybody. I'm in it. Arnaz, the pronunciation he preferred, created I Love Lucy, one of the most successful television series ever, which established him as a leading Hollywood TV producer.
And in the popular World War II epic Guadalcanal Diaries... Anthony Quinn played a key role as a Mexican-American Marine private. If I was back in Laredo, I'd go and see my Conchita.
Maybe Lolita. Well, make up your mind. All right, Conchita. And Lolita.
Latinos were among the most highly decorated servicemen in World War II, with many awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Hollywood paid homage to the Latino servicemen in a modest film called A Medal for Benny. Mr. Martin, your son's a hero.
I'll say he is. Killed more than a hundred Japs all by himself. Benny?
A soldier? He sure wasn't picking spinach. For soldiers fighting overseas, Rita Hayworth was a favorite pinup.
What they didn't know was that this Hollywood beauty queen began her career as Margarita Cancino, performing with her family, the Dancing Cancinos, in U.S. and Mexican nightclubs. Arriving in Hollywood, this young actress of Spanish descent portrayed dark-eyed, dark-haired, exotic beauties that ranged from Egyptian to Mexican. Ten films later, Hollywood set out to de-Latinize Margarita Cancino. Her dark hair was...
was dyed blonde and then tinged red. People used to say, oh, you know, Rita wasn't that good looking until they changed her hair. And then I went into the books, and I would look and see Rita when she was really super young, just a teenager with a dark, dark hair. And she was gorgeous.
Hilda, are you decent? Me? Finally, her name was changed and Margarita Cancino emerged as Rita Hayworth, the all-American dream girl. Sure, I'm decent.
Hayworth epitomized classic 1940s glamour with intelligence and humor. His name is Johnny, Jill. Oh, I'm sorry. Johnny is such a hard name to remember.
It's so easy to forget. You know, with a change in the tint of the hair, they may have blue eyes, they may have green eyes, they're very light skinned, and so the world looks at them, they don't, the world doesn't realize that these people are Latinos. That's the story that went wrong. He's the real. The blame on, the blame on me.
Rita Cancino. I don't know, Rita Cancino would have gone as far as Rita Hayworth did. When I was first starting the business, they always told me to change my name because leg was out and nobody could pronounce it and it was too Latin.
They wanted to misspell my first name, C-A-E-S-A-R, instead of Cesar, to make it the English Caesar. But I said no, I said my name is Cesar Romero and that's the way it's going to stay. She really, very, very seriously told me that I should really, if I wanted to work, change my name to Elizabeth Sterling.
And I said, I should talk like... this for the rest of my life. I don't know if I could pull that off.
I have a banana stain all over my body. They were going to call me Ricky Martin. And I said, Ricky Martin.
Well, I said, no, my name is Montalban. Maybe we could get you more work if you changed your name because your name is too ethnic. And I said, excuse me, have you looked at me? I am ethnic.
People could never pronounce my name. Legs in ammo, legs in gumbo, whatever it was, nobody could ever say it. So I was like so used to my name being a pain that I said, I'm sticking with it.
It's made me who I am. In the classic Western era, complex Latino characters emerged along with the timeless bandido. I Don't Have to Show You No Stinking Badges is the name of a play that I wrote a few years ago about Hollywood and Latino Hollywood. And really what it refers back to is the treasurer of Sierra Madre and Alfonso Bedoya, who was an outstanding image. Negative, unfortunately, but an outstanding image of the Mexican.
Alfonso Bedoya comes on as the outlaw Mexican, and he's sweaty and he's dirty, and he says, I ain't badges. We don't need to show you no stinking badges. Don't have to show you no stinking badges, you know, Bedoya.
A friend of mine, very funny, very good. Alfonso Bedoya continued to play comical, but menacing Mexicans in the movies. Makes his own fire. In the Oxbow incident, a Mexican vaquero is wrongfully accused of murder. About to be lynched by a posse, he faces death with dignity and honor.
Now put up your hands. It's all right, brother, you will. The Anthony Quinn character looks like just another mexicano, another bandido in a western, but he's hiding behind the stereotype to try and figure out what's going on here. Where do you get this? Somebody will take this bullet out of my leg, I'll tell you.
Ha! So he speaks American. And ten other languages, my dear. But I don't tell anything I don't want to in any of them.
Anthony Quinn became a star in my eyes in that movie. The character that he was playing there was absolutely hypnotic, I'm telling you. He looked...
Like something that I needed to identify with and I did. It was very fine shooting my friend. You should try again with that one. Nearly ten years later, Anthony Quinn delivered an Oscar winning performance as the brother of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata. I'm a general.
Look, look, here's my pay, a little dust. I can't even buy a bottle of tequila. We beat Diaz. He's living in a palace in Paris. We beat White.
He's a rich man in the United States. I have to beg pennies in my own village when people never fired a gun. To this day, I think Marlon Brando did a... It's a brilliant job of portraying a character that's hard to get a hold of because he was a myth. Still is.
Emiliano Zapata. Your relatives with victory in their mouths. We'll never chew it. Now do you see why we have hard discipline? You told your wife where we would be and what?
Shoot him. It was a distortion that Zapata could not read, or that Pancho Villa could not read, or that Pancho Villa was a total illiterate. Mariano. Yes, you remember I once read to you about him in the newspaper?
You promised to teach me to read. I will, I will. Actually, these revolutionaries set up schools wherever they liberated areas.
That's the first thing they did. They plowed the land and they've got it half-sowed. And they haven't got time. Ilya Kazan put me in Viva Zapata with two of my idols.
I mean, Marlon Brando and Anthony Quinn. You ought to know the land can't wait. The furrows are open, the seed's not planted, and stomachs can't wait either.
High Noon introduced movie audiences to one of Mexico's top actresses. Katy Jurado I'm leaving town. I want to sell the store. You want to buy me out?
She had enormous dignity, great authority, and was a wonderful, is still a wonderful actress. To be a Mexican woman in a town like this... I hate this town.
I always hated to be a Mexican woman in a town like this. I think what caught my attention, which had not happened here in the United States, was that she was Mexican, but well dressed and with a lot of dignity. What Helen is, is a very independent, an autonomous woman she owns a saloon and she owns a store and most significantly she really is in control of her own sexuality yes but then again she's a prostitute fiery latin prostitute and this was This is the only way that you saw Latin women in movies.
It's very obvious that she's the madam, that she's an ex-lover of Gary Cooper, the sheriff. Yet she felt to me like the core, the moral core of the movie. I don't like anybody to put his hands on me unless I want him to.
And I don't like you two anymore. I remember being very proud to see her in that film and holding herself so regally and playing such a central role in the movie. You know you hold on to these things and you're always looking for those people you can identify with. get out hobby you don't mean that try me and as i understand it she left hollywood because they had nothing for her here and she wasn't about to do some of those conchita lolita roles that were usually in the offing for hispanic women Hollywood resurrected the Latin lover image from its silent past in the romantic musicals of the era.
Many featured Mexican born leading man Ricardo Montalban. Well fancy meeting you here. Well hey!
Where did you come from? South America. In Nettie's Daughter we introduce...
a song called Baby It's Cold Outside, which became a big hit in the country. And it won the Academy Awards as the best song of the year. Think of my lifelong sorrow At least there will be plenty implied If you caught pneumonia and died I really can't stay In over that old doubt Ah, but it's cold outside I was always complaining about always being the Latin lover, and I wanted to do films that had a little more content. And along comes border incident.
I played an agent from Mexico. And George Murphy played the counterpart, an American agent from the United States. Pablo here, sure, we're old friends.
We worked on a case together in Brownsville, Texas, years ago. In the 40s, the United States initially... the Bracero Program, which brought thousands of Mexican farm workers across the border to free U.S. field workers for military duty. The border incident is a really interesting film because these are current events at the time and it has to do with the Bracero Program and it has to do with the with abuses of the bracero program and the way you know some of these mexican laborers were just being exploited and abused that's where i'm going where they pay what is right you can't come back you can't none of us can we're here against the law so they all can't help us get up stay there what's going on in here Get to bed, you monkeys.
You got work to do in the morning? It showed the American public an aspect of the honorable working man, who is not somebody you sneeze at because he's a peon, you know, because he comes to work in the lettuce fields. Who's going to work in the lettuce fields?
Soon after Border Incident, Montalban went back to the roles audiences and the studios preferred. See? Loose. They were so politically correct, that at times they would become a bore, really a bore. We lost a little bit of the enchantment and the magic, make-believe, and to have people, you know, smile.
and have a good time. You fill this heart of mine with tropic heat. It has that chica-boom-boom, chica-boom-boom beat.
There was nothing detrimental about the Latin lover, you know, fortunately. Nothing that was hurtful or that the image suffered, no. It had elegance and it was beautifully photographed and very pretty and the story was nonsensical but fun.
And that's how, that's how basically we were presented. With exceptions, every so often maybe somebody will go see through the line and say, oh my God, José Ferrer did a wonderful job in Cyrano de Bergerac. In 1951, Puerto Rican actor José Ferrer became the first Latino ever to win the Academy Award.
I clap my hands three times thus. At the third you will eclipse yourself. Ready? I don't think José Ferrer was ever like, uh... Thought of as being, he was just a wonderful actor, you know, who happened to be from the island of Puerto Rico.
One. How dare you. I demand, I insist, I call upon all the nobles. Two. He is such a powerful presence and such a good actor that you better be acting or else he's going to blow you off the screen.
Three. During the early 1950s, the anti-communist blacklist claimed the careers of many in the movie industry. Are you a member of the Communist Party? Or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?
It's unfortunate and tragic that I have to teach this committee the basic principles of Americanism. That's not the question. The blacklist forced some filmmakers to work outside the mainstream, but gave them the opportunity to make films that Hollywood would never make. There was a picture that was produced called The Ring, an outstanding picture with respect to the reality that he captured, the East L.A. ambience.
The actor, who was, I believe, cast right off the street, he looked real to me, he looked Chicano. Lalo Rios played a young Chicano in Los Angeles with hopes that a boxing career would better his life. His girlfriend is played by then-newcomer, Puerto Rican actress, Rita Moreno. Fighter?
That's right, I had my first part tonight. This is nothing because I won, Lucy. I got... I paid $35 for just 15 minutes. Fighting's dangerous.
You can get hurt. Sometimes fighters should kill you. They're two good people. Everyone, all the family in it are good people. He's not a gangster.
He's not a bad boy. She's anything but a bad girl. She's a good girl.
girl she has very traditional mexican values she doesn't want him to box where it absolutely failed is that the character failed he didn't make it he was a failure and he had to learn to go back and live with his own people at his own level that was the point of the movie and even though it was put together i think by very liberal filmmakers who were weeded out you know with the communist witch hunts salt of the earth was made independently by blacklisted movie makers they based their film on an actual minor strike No good dirty... It critiques it also dealing with issues of race and class. Now that's really revolutionary.
Most importantly, the subjective voiceover of the film is the voice of a woman, the voice of a Chicano. Now that is incredible. The meeting was nearly over when we came in. Charlie Vidal was making a speech. He said there was only one issue in this strike.
Equality. I count it as the beginning of Chicano. because the actual workers, Mexican-American workers, played themselves, many of them.
They collaborated on the screenplay, and they forced the screenwriter to make some changes because they were not happy with it. We women are not striking miners. We will take over your picket line. Because of her work in this film, Mexican actress Rosara Revueltas was deported and her visa permanently revoked. I have to work it out with you myself.
Long place amigo. Come on, let's get out of here. Vamos, andale. Your money's no good here.
Come on, let's go. I'll never forget going to see Giant back in the 1950s. It's significant now, I think, because it really dealt with some of the social issues that relate to Latinos, Mexican-Americans in particular, in Texas in this case.
In a very dramatic, and I thought... ultimately enlightening way. The white male protagonist is not a perfect hero.
We really stole Texas, didn't we, Mr. Benedict? I mean, away from Mexico. You're catching me a bit early to start joking, Miss Leslie. It becomes a movie about racism, and for those of us who saw it back in those days, it was just, you know, you didn't see movies explicitly addressing racism, specifically racism that I...
living in Texas. But I'm not joking, Jordan. It's all right there in the history books, isn't it? This mad Mr. Austin came down with about 300 families, it says, and the next thing you know they're up and claiming it from Mexico.
It's 50 years ahead of its time. No movie recently has done that with as much sensitivity as that film did back then. Cultures clash at the US-Mexican border resulting in a rarely seen dark view of Anglo justice.
The setting is a border town. There are all these kind of Mexican and Mexican-American hoodlums threatening Janet Leigh. On the other hand, you know, it's a critique of Anglo police force, Anglo justice.
You have no right to read my letters. You are a Mexican policeman and you must protect... I don't speak Mexican. What are you doing here?
You're a coward. And you're afraid of the gringos. That's much cheaper than English, Vargas. And if you look at what's really going on, I mean, the Hank Quinlan character, Orson Wells, is corrupt, corrupt to the core.
But there was a lot of telephone. Being English, I don't like to repeat myself. I merely asked him if I could... It's a film that's really exposing what justice is like when you are at the margins.
The 60s gave rise to the new Western with more bloodshed and often an antihero replacing the traditional hero cowboy. But some things didn't change. This is a time when Mexico as a market is not as important to Hollywood. And so then... The final thing, you're coming out of the 50s, out of the tail end of the beginning of the civil rights movement, where it's a little more complicated to show disparaging images of blacks.
So in a sense, Mexicans become kind of the easy stand-in for all of these things. No! The days of good hunting are over.
Now I must hunt with the price on my head. I'll be back. Why do they go to Mexico? They go to Mexico or they go to Latin America either because they're on the run and they're criminals on the run and they're trying to escape the law or they're looking for something that's against the law.
They're looking for sex, they're looking for liquor, they're looking for gambling, they're looking for money, you know, they're looking for something illicit. Señor, if you come with me, I'd show you where the gold is. But first, I sing for you.
Or, do you think you can fool Lolita? It shows how little we've moved and more important how little understanding there is of the Latino population and sensibility in this country. They really don't know us. The Wild Bunch is, you know, a pretty, on the one hand, a pretty distressing look at Mexico. And, you know, it is vile and dark and disgusting.
But that has to do partially with Sam Peckinpah's vision of the world, in which, you know, the world was a pretty vile place, and there weren't very many heroes in the world that he creates. I am to escort you to the general. Any trouble?
No guns for the general. Where's Mark? That's very smart for you damn gringos!
My work as an actor in The Wild Bunch ended the first four weeks. But he kept me there for 14 weeks. Sam knew that I was a young director, on top of being an actor. And so he adopted me, because he was teaching me. And he was one of my mentors, one of my tutors, and I owe him a lot in terms of what I know about filmmaking.
Some 20 years later, Alfonso Arau would direct the Academy Award-winning best foreign film, Like Water for Chocolate. A rare sympathetic view of Mexican women in westerns of this era was presented by Marlon Brando in the only film he ever directed. You're the most decent woman I've ever met. I'm sure you have met many nice women in your life before.
A few, like you. You also have a very wonderful bond between a mother and a daughter that is rarely seen for any race in Hollywood films. Because I thought he loved me. You didn't have to hear the words to understand what was going on. Marlon Brando was smart enough to let it play.
Just, you know, we could watch their faces and understand everything. Not until all the social change of the 60s occurred did ethnicity come in again, and it usually did not include Mexican-Americans. What happened was Puerto Ricans were finally recognized in films like West Side Story. West Side Story has my blood and guts in it.
I really wanted to get that part very badly. I had to test a lot for it. They tested everybody with brown eyes and brown hair in the world for Anita.
And, um... There's so much of me in Anita. You go, querida.
I will lock up. But for the lead role, a major star was needed. And in 1961, there were no Latinas with that kind of star power.
You better be home in 15 minutes. I kept one. wanting to understand why Natalie Wood was Maria. Not to say that she didn't do a nice job of it, but, you know, it just came clear to me that if you were the star, if you wanted to have the star roles, you were not going to be Latin.
Cos Rita Moreno and... West Side Story was such a vibrant, powerful, kick-ass performance that you've got to remember, you've got to be proud. You go, wow, that's our people. We can be funny, we can sing, we can dance, we have a lot of talent. I know you don't smoke on your pipe.
I Like to be in America, okay by me in America everything free in America for a small fee in America I really had no clue that she had won an Emmy, Grammy, or Tony, and an Oscar. That's like, yes! Magnificent. She's Puerto Rican. God bless her.
For her supporting role as Anita in West Side Story, Rita Moreno became the first Latin American actress to be nominated for the Oscar. Latina ever to receive an Academy Award. I didn't do a film again after I won the Academy Award for seven years. I was offered a few things, but they were more of the same gang movies on a lesser scale, on a lower level. And having won the Oscar, I said, that's it, I'm not going to do that anymore.
And ha ha, I showed them I didn't do a film for seven years. For most Latino actors, starring roles were hard to come by in Hollywood. Henry Silva, who had supporting roles in the Manchuset, Manchurian candidate and Ocean's Eleven got a boost in his career by working in Europe.
I made 29 films in Europe where I played all different kinds of people. I didn't play anything that was offered to me. There was one, I had choices. Anthony Quinn, Tony had to do the same thing.
He became a major star in Europe by going over there. Over here, he was held back. And then by becoming important in Europe, he became important in having lots of Arabia and La Strada really made him. After starring in La Strada, Mexican-born Anthony Quinn returned to Hollywood, won a second Academy Award, and was cast in major studio films. The Arabs, the Hawitat, Ajili, Rala, Bani Saha, these I know.
I have even heard of the Harith. Mount Rivera was no punk. Mount Rivera was almost the heavyweight champion of the world. I never loved a man more than you.
A young Latina actress of Bolivian descent also gained international stardom in a popular British production. Woman in Years B.C. was the breakthrough film for me.
And that was the first time that somebody said to me, you have to dye your hair blonde. And I was like, shock. I was like, what?
What is this? I said, why do I have to be blonde? They said, because you're queen of the show, people. You are the good girl, you know. Only the bad girl has dark hair.
So I went, ooh, that's not nice. But I did it. The work of a filmmaker is very similar to the work of a magician, because really nothing is truth.
Everything is make-believe. By the late 60s, the unique talents of a number of Latino artists were sought after for some of the world's most cutting-edge, groundbreaking films. Argentinian-born composer Lalo Schifrin.
The music helps to hypnotize the audience. The music helps to create the mood, to make an ambiance for that make-believe. Nobody can eat 50 eggs. One of Lalo Schifrin's most well-known compositions is the Mission Impossible theme. The music of Mission Impossible has a kind of strange Latin rhythm in 5-4, which I...
5-4 is an odd meter, but the rhythm is very, very Latin. Even in Bullet, one of my early movies, I come with a rhythm that I mix with the blues. The whole orchestra is doing a kind of guajira. I don't know. I don't know.
Also working behind the scenes on Bullet was Cuban-American Pablo Ferro, graphic designer on numerous Academy Award-winning films. I cut out a black-and-white photograph and I cut out the word bullet in it. And I took the photo and I took...
Steve outside and I said the background is in color and I brought the card all over to his eyes And as soon as he has his eyes, he says I love it. Let's do it. And that's what you saw in the movie which Black background in front and then the bledding goes through and inside is color and it keeps moving The opening is very important to many films.
Sometimes a film doesn't need it, sometimes a film needs it. Ferro also designed the opening title sequence for another film classic. Like Doctor Strangelove, let's say, after the film was finished, setting up the movie.
You see a satire, whether you're going to see comedy, a drama, whatever. The B-52 refueling helped the movie. In the field of cinematography, Latinos introduce new styles and a fresh look. Recently, Mexican-born Emmanuel Lubezki received an Academy Award nomination for Best Cinematography on the visually complex film Sleepy Hollow.
And a generation of cinematographers were inspired by the artistry of the great master Gabriel Figueroa, whose work was celebrated in both Mexico and the U.S. Figueroa advanced the art of cinematography through the use of filters that made clouds stand out in the frame. This popular look became known as Figueroa Skies.
Gabriel Figueroa to me is a master. You go to pictures that he has done, that he has photographed, they're just extraordinary. One of the first great cinematographers universally known as a great artist. In John Ford's The Fugitive, Gabriel Figueroa gave the film a distinctly Mexican look and feel through the bold use of light, shadows, and flickering candles.
This major Hollywood production featured Mexican movie stars Pedro Armendariz and Dolores del Rio. What are you doing here? Why did you leave your village? My father made me leave after you left.
Cuban born Néstor Almendros was the first Latino to receive the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for his remarkable work in Days of Heaven. This work again has a different touch to it, it's a different feel to it. And I don't know if it's because he was from Cuba as opposed to Figueroa from Mexico because I think that we have, we're influenced by that. You know, Figueroa is, you know, Orozco and Tamayo and that influence and Nesta, I think more of the European artists that influence him, you know, they're both great men.
Okay pal, let's have us a big smile. I had shot a few pictures of Paramount and Bob Evans felt that it, it sounds convoluted, but he called me and he said, I want you to meet Roman Polanski, I want you to shoot this movie because it's kind of about the Latin thing, you know. And I didn't really see that, but that's beside the point.
I'm glad I got the job. John Alonso received an Academy Award nomination for Best Cinematography on Chinatown. His distinctive talents have enhanced many major films, including Scarface. Who put this thing together? Me!
That's who! Who do I trust? Me!
It was sort of negative, but it was cool too at the same time. It was played by Al Pacino, he was a great actor. And, I don't know, we've been shortchanged for the most part.
You know, obviously, everybody knows that. We've always had to play, you know, always at the bottom. Either drug dealers, killers, murderers, or we're maids and illegal aliens.
And always at the bottom of the food chain. Hollywood deals in stereotypes in every movie that it makes. It is not reality, folks.
Okay, it is a concoction that's dramatized and fictionalized and has to take place within the space of a two-hour time frame. A lot of stereotypes come about out of guilt. You know, in order to justify something that people down deep unconsciously know is unfair and not right, but they want to somehow compensate for it.
I remember when the talking pictures came, but they had them all as a lazy Mexican with a hat over sitting there, you know, or a bandidos. It didn't affect me. I didn't think.
I thought it was funny. Now looking back, wasn't that funny? If you play, as an actor, you play a bandido, people think you are a bandido in real life. On the other hand, you will never be a star if you play villains. So it's very, very complicated.
I'd rather have all the negative stereotypes in movies than not be present at all. Because at least you're represented somehow. Lady, he says you don't understand what he wants.
I understand very well what he wants. Images that I saw on television, if you talk like this, you were a moron. You know?
It really was. Your accent... But if I spoke with a French accent...
I wasn't, I was sexy. You know. Well, how do I get there? Well, you go down this road until you come to a...
No, no. You go down this road until you come to a tree, and then you turn to the... No, no. You go down this road... until you come.
Gee, I don't think you can get there from here. There are good stereotypes and there are bad stereotypes. And they divide for the most part according to color and size.
Tall people are basically in. short people are out. Light people are basically in, dark people are out. I don't think anybody goes out to make a totally insulting movie.
They kind of think that what they're doing is pretty good. It's just based upon their intelligence and where their intelligence meets their artistry. That's how they pull it off. Some do, some don't. Hollywood is very influential in placing in the minds of people images of what we Latinos are and unhappily many of those images deal with gangs.
It's in my home boys bathroom. See our home in here is what we have man. I love them. They love me back, man.
The urban gang film provided a training ground for a new generation of Latino actors, but many would consider it a mixed blessing. I think of a self-perpetuating image, and Hollywood has had its hand on it from the... very beginning I'm thinking of Blackboard Jungle and had Rafael Campos as a Puerto Rican punk.
I go down the stinky street with my stinking books and then I meet the stink face who lives near me. And he says, you go to school, bitch. You didn't see a lot of Chicano gangs.
in those days and by the time we got the 60s the 70s the 80s the 90s forget it it's hardcore gangster films are a staple of Hollywood whether they're Chicano or black or James Cagney being public enemy or Godfather you know some of the greatest films ever to exist or about the about the gangs or gangster mentality that's just It's part of who we are as Americans. We're a very violent society, and so we have this kind of attraction, repulsion with violence. Many people regard gang films the way they regard gang members. They judge them, and they don't give them a chance. They don't look at the film as a film.
I wanted to be at your wedding and everything, man. I wanted to be there, but I just get real mad sometimes. And I don't know what to do. The image of the gang, I think, has doubled back on itself and has created more gangs. You want me to walk away from this, man?
What they're projecting is an idea. No way. A lot of the kids that are in California prisons got their first instruction off the big screen watching gangs. Joining the Echo Park gang was all my idea. Our homegirls jumped us both in together, they kicked our asses for a whole minute and we fought back to prove we were down.
A lot of the fault for that is directly attributable to this negative stereotype that continues to be perpetrated for the purpose of making money in the movies. If you can go into the community and understand something about what's going on in the dynamics of the community, you have a much broader spectrum of characters and activities. Edward James Olmos was the first Latino to direct a Hollywood feature film about gangs from the Latino perspective. I remember when I was a little chavalito.
I used to sit by the window, waiting for you to come home. I would get so anxious, I'd pinch myself in the hand until it would bleed. I loved Eddie Olmos'American Me.
I thought that was a beautiful, powerful attempt to capture that part of... Latin life, you know, that exists. It has helped multitudes of kids, black, white, brown, yellow, red, to have a chance to make an educated choice on the situations that they're dealing with.
dealing with. Suddenly in the 1970s you saw an explosion. I think that it was due to some extent to the result of the Civil Rights Movement finally coming to fruition.
So you saw then people making a little more room. Not that Hollywood ever accommodates any minority group. They don't.
If you're a minority group you have to push, you have to fight to climb the mountain. You can't feel sorry for yourself in this business. You have to be aggressive, you have to be positive, and you have to compete. The first and probably major achievement of Latino filmmakers making feature films is that without almost any support from the industry, they have managed to make as many feature films about Latinos as the industry made in the previous 70 years.
It wasn't until the late 70s that Latino filmmakers began to make their own movies. telling stories in a voice that hadn't been heard before, and presenting new images for the cinema. The telling of our stories through our own eyes created the bronze screen.
Director Luis Valdez's first film was based on the true story of the Los Angeles Zoot Suit riots. The Zoot Suit Riots were a series of riots in the early 40s. What was going on is servicemen attacking Latinos, Mexican-Americans, and beating them up and stripping them of the Zoot Suit. Don't give me that bullshit, I got this filet from you. Did I tell you to kill the vato?
Control yourself, Hank. Don't hate your Raza more than you love the gringo. I played El Pachuco, which embodied classic example of a subculture within the Mexican-American culture, Chicano culture.
It take more than the US Navy to wipe me out. But Zoot Suit was not box office. It was a critical success, but not a box office success.
What did become a box office success was a comedic caricature of the Latino lowrider and drug culture of the time. El Paso Smoke, I think, was the number six or five grossing movie of the year, and a big movie year. It was, eventually, I think it did like about $125 million worldwide back in 78, which there was no $100 million movies back then. Hijo de la chinga! Is that a joint, man?
Chichichan was this huge money-making machine that was very much a part of the of the hit making process of the industry. We made all studio films and they grossed a lot of money and but we were never considered part of the industry at the same time. It's amazing that I was very comfortable with that.
Keep on knocking but you can't come in. Every time you see this you multiply. Cuban-American Ramon Menendez. wrote and directed the true story of East Los Angeles high schoolers, falsely accused of cheating. The film presented the image of Latino youth in a rare positive light.
Olmos was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of Bolivian math instructor Jaime Escalante. Why? The Academy Award nomination, which was a shock to us, because of the fact that it was such a modest, humble film. Latino filmmakers shared with movie audiences an entirely new view of the immigrant experience. What you have there in those films is, it's countering kind of the popular news coverage of immigration.
Our borders are being invaded and it's almost like a horror film. You know, the monsters from outer space, you know, we're being invaded by aliens. I set out to make El Norte in order to give, you know, a face and a heart to the shadows.
that pervaded Los Angeles. Brother and sister, son de Guatemala. Guatemala? Big deal!
I get it from Guatemala, Salvador, Nicaragua. They're coming in from all South America, huh? Us Mexicans are beginning to be a regular. minority around him.
I knew that there was a huge mixture of people and at that time a lot of them were refugees from wars in Central America. This tremendous drama happening but to my friends who were not Latino they saw none of it at all. In El Norte, two Guatemalan immigrants endure hardships and heartache throughout their journey to their new lives in the U.S. There is only one favorite film role that I have, and that is La Nacha, El Norte.
Ah, you want that I should show to her? Ah, okay, si. Sam, how do you?
Si, don't worry about nothing. Si, si, si. Okay, okay.
It was a composite that I created of all of those people that were a part of my life in my early... years in El Paso and all those women that came together in that one heart and soul and of that woman that was so dignified. Written by Gregory Nava and Anna Thomas, El Norte received an Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay. Nobody had any, you know, thought that that it was an Oscar contender, you know, you didn't think about it.
about an independent film in that way and certainly not a film like El Norte. Ay, mija. Si tú tratas de comprender a los gringos, te va a dar un dolorzazo de cabeza. Alambrista, directed by Robert Young, brought to life the difficulties, frustrations, and overwhelming emotions experienced by many Mexican farm workers in the U.S. I don't want to go.
Right now, I don't want to go. Tomorrow, tomorrow, I'll go. I don't want to go right now.
Chicano comedian Chich Marín gave the immigrant experience a comedic spin. I was sitting in my kitchen one day and I was reading the newspaper. There was a story about a kid that this happened to.
He was 12 or 13. And he was deported, but he was a United States citizen. Born in the USA, was playing on the radio at the same time. And I started singing, born in East LA. And it just cracked me up.
It was a funny little title. And then I go, I started writing this song. Mostly as a parody at first, but then this other... Idea kept intruding itself, man, how to make kind of a social statement in a pop comic. A envelope and the more I did it, like, this is gonna be pretty cool.
And I won't lie to you, he's probably an illegal anyways. And so anyways, I went out of the factory to look for him and he's not even there. And so I'm walking around the middle of the factory and all of a sudden there's a goddamn immigration raid. And the doors fly open and all these guys come busting in. And then they think that I'm an illegal and they grab me and throw me in the bus.
The message was, it was a lot of things, you know. It was, here's the state of the art as far as the immigration. The question is concerned in a funny way, but serious at the same time.
There's the first customer of the day. Smile pretty old buddy. You don't can't hit the camera.
It was the biggest film in New Zealand. It was the biggest film in the western part of the United States when it was released for four straight weeks, beating Lethal Weapon, all those kind of big studio action films. Latino filmmakers told stories that focused on their own communities.
I wanted to tell a movie that was a very intimate story of family life. And I wanted to take the audience into a Chicano household in East L.A. So I wanted actors that knew what that was like. Listen, hermana, these are Jimmy's pants, see?
Now I wanna... Make sure that they're properly ironed. And there's only one person in this whole goddamn world capable of doing it.
Who is that? That's me. Gracias. So, abórrate. Abórrate.
It was a script that was very positive in terms of its approach. and theme with regards to the Latino family in the United States and the multi-generational aspect of that. And Jimmy here has a chance to play a stereotypical Latino, but with heart.
You know, yes, we're playing bad guys. But we're playing good bad guys. You have no right to hurt people this way.
I got the right. I don't want to see nobody. I don't want to hear from nobody.
You know what this is going to do to our jefita and our jefito? No estás pensando, tú. Look it, you got a son. I got nothing, carnal. I remember looking around me at the audience to see how they were reacting and they laughed a lot.
These were non-Hispanic people. Ah, they cried. They were brushing away the tears at the end of the movie. And I thought... If we only had more of a chance to show you more of ourselves, you would come to love us.
You would come to ask for more of us. The human experience is the human experience, no matter what color, race, religion, whatever you are, it's the same damn thing with a different packaging. Producer Moctezuma Esparza told the magical story of one man's battle to save his bean field. I have so many people that tell me that Milagro is one of their favorite movies.
What's the matter, Bernie? You afraid this thing will keep you from getting re-elected? Nah, nah. We've got a heavy majority in this town.
Come on, you beat Luis Armijo by two votes. That's because Domingo and Gusto were out of town. Hell no, man.
Those guys vote six, seven times apiece. And I love Bernaya Montoya, because Bernaya Montoya is the character who's in the middle. So they're trying to make both sides understand each other, which is pretty much the way I felt many times in my life. Listen, around here, you and me, we got to stick together, man.
Yep. What are you talking about? I'm talking about not letting these niggers and spics take over this realm, man.
My last name is Garcia, boss. Joel Garcia. Writer-director Neil Jimenez told a dramatic yet humorous story based on his own experience in a West Coast rehabilitation center. Woo!
Garcia! Garcia! Oh boy, that's deep. That is deep. The talents of real-life Latino musicians were moved into the cinematic spotlight by Latino writers and directors.
I like stories of people that are never heard. I did Crossover Dreams, which was a composite of the Nuyorican musicians. And they play in what they call this Cuchifrito circuit around New York City.
It was financed by friends, by us, by money, from whatever it came from. We never asked questions. La flor del pasado, su aroma de ayer. Nos dice muy quedo al oído, su canto aprendido del atardecer.
I think that in the late 80s and 87, when La Bamba came out, a lot of people found out that there's a great Latino audience willing to go to the movies and have a good time and see films. La Bamba was a box office success because that was my intention. I set out to prove that yes, you can make a commercially successful Latino-themed film. When I read that story, I knew that this was going to be a great film, and I knew that I had to play the brother Bob.
And then we did La Bamba with a complete cast of unknowns. Rosie, this is my brother Bob. I'm very proud of that movie. I'm very proud that it showed the fact that people want to see...
They want to see the legit thing. The life of the late Tejano singing sensation Selena Quintanilla was celebrated by writer-director Gregory Nava and producer Moctezuma Esparza. Born and raised in the Bronx, Jennifer Lopez starred in Selena, which became her breakthrough role catapulting Lopez into international stardom. All the roles are opening up, lead roles.
You don't have to be a drug dealer all the time now and a gang member or the villain of a movie or die in the first 30 seconds. You can last through the whole picture. The first film I ever did was called So Young, So Bad.
My first job... was as an extra and I was playing an Indian with no dialogue. I screen tested and got the part of the little Spanish girl who runs away from home, was very neurotic and ends up hanging herself because they cut her hair. My first job, um... Well, funny to say it was a prostitute.
It was first grade. I played a Mexican jumping bean. Little did I know I would be playing Mexicans for the rest of my life, ironically enough.
My first job in film was doing cigarette commercials in Puerto Rico, and my job was to light the cigarettes. My very first speaking role was opening the door in the film called Lifeguard. And I was the housekeeper and I said, go me.
My first job in show business was sweeping floors at WFATV in Dallas. That's show business. This decade promises to have a breakthrough in stars.
We've got Jennifer Lopez, we have Selma Hayek, and Jimmy Smits and John Seda, Edward James Olmos, and there's a whole new group of young stars that are just waiting to break through. What's that you said? I said that you're a lying member of a no-good race. It's much better than you, you stinking Irish pig.
Oh, I like him. Cuban-born actor Andy Garcia's work in over 20 films established him as an international star. He was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Godfather Part III. Don Vincenzo Corleone. Who is Peter the Great?
Who is the Emperor Constantine? Who is King John? He's in his own band.
Who is Victoriano Huerta? You are right. Puerto Rican actress Rosie Perez has proven her talent in both dramatic and comedic roles. You know what time it is?
Miss Perez was nominated for an Academy Award for her remarkable performance as a grieving mother in Fearless, which also featured then-newcomer Benicio del Toro. Get up. Get up, come. Come.
Get up. The abductors brought someone. It's a good Samaritan. Come on, you read about him in the paper. I'm Annie.
Please just let me die. Please. Eight years later, Del Toro's work in the film Traffic would garner him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Good morning, senor.
Good morning, senorita. Spanish leading man, Antonio Banderas, became the Latin lover of the 90s in a series of big-budget productions. And Raul Julia brought a certain magic to the art of acting.
Some called him inhumanly evil. No! Only our parents. I called him brother.
For me, the mark of a real artist is to be able to, in your lifetime, show a type of versatility with regards to the work that you do. Even when he played stereotypes, he gave it a flavor. indeed for Festa for Festa our brother my brother the doctors all said kind to animals so good with children they never proved anything one million dollars is the perfect amount it's brilliant somebody who really kind of immerses into a role and becomes somebody else those are the actors that I really kind of like and certainly Raul was like that tell me what a song looks like Colombian born John Legu Greg Guisamo continues in the tradition of Raul Julia, exhibiting the exceptional talent to interpret a wide range of roles on the bronze screen.
I think God's telling me that I'm going to burn a health if I don't stop cheating. I am a Latin actor and... And that will always influence me, and I don't see why I have to not be that. I mean, that's part of me, and because I write and I like to write Latin stories, yeah, I'm a damn Latin actor.
By the 90s, a number of Latin directors had made their mark in mainstream Hollywood cinema in a range of styles, themes, and genres. Director Robert Rodriguez brought a daring twist to the action-adventure genre with his directorial debut. El Mariachi.
His unique talent was recognized by a major studio which remade this super low-budget film as Desperado. It featured Antonio Banderas and Mexican-born Salma Hayek, who also starred in his popular cult feature From Dust Till Dawn. Robert Rodriguez grew up with a little video camera in his hand watching TV and watching movies and learning how to make movies as a kid, just like Spielberg did.
People ask me whether I see future for Latin actors and actresses in the United States. That will depend on the support our community provides to the idea that we are tired of being portrayed as losers, as hoodlums, as people who are not contributing positively to this country. We have the talent, we have the beauty, but those of us that have pioneered the way, you might say, have had to struggle a great deal, and we continue to struggle.
It's never our time unless we set the watch and say, now. That's our time, and that's it. It will change because the people from our community will take it upon themselves.
To write the films and direct the films and produce the films and tell their own truth instead of watching somebody else do it for them. It'll change in the way that Hollywood has always changed. Through competition, through achievement, through artistry, through doggedness, through an unwillingness to give up. Hey, we're gonna throw tax in your road and we're gonna throw, every once in a while we're gonna throw like, like, you know, bears and boulders and you, because you are Speedy Gonzalez, you're gonna get around him.
Or die. Okay. Okay. So that's my contribution to 100 years of filmmaking.
I want to make another movie. Hollywood is a communicator of the American dream to the world. And the world is all hungry for this American dream. And as Hollywood communicates that that dream belongs to all of us, that we all participate equally in it.
The world is going to be impacted by that as well, and we're all going to benefit from it. Latinos have been making movie history since the first camera rolled. By sheer force of their talent, persistence, and artistry, they helped shape the 20th century's greatest art form. This legacy now continues into a new century, lighting up the silver screen in shades of glorious bronze. In the golden age of cinema, Rita Hayworth epitomized Hollywood glamour like no other.
She was the legend known as the love goddess, but her rise to stardom was a long journey. She began her Hollywood career as Margarita Consino, her real name. Appearing in 10 small films before changing her name to Rita Hayworth. People used to say, oh, you know, Rita wasn't that good looking until they changed her hair. And then I went into the books and I would look and see Rita when she was really super young, just a teenager with a dark, dark hair.
And she was gorgeous. I mean, she was every bit as gorgeous. She was just different.
She looked more ethnic. After appearing in some 31 feature films... Rita Hayworth finally got her break into international stardom with a standout performance in the star-studded film Blood and Sand.
Rita Hayworth as Donya Sol, alluring, adventurous, woman of the world with an irresistible fascination. If this is death in the afternoon, she is death in the evening. But Rita's most memorable role by far is that of screen siren Gilda.
What did you say to him? I just told him if a man answers, hang up. Didn't hear about me, Gabe.
If I'd been a ranch, they would have named me the Bar Nothing. There never was a woman like Gilda. Or a picture like Gilda.
Columbia's Outstanding Screen Triumph, starring Rita Hayworth, with Glenn Ford. That's what I told Bella, and that's what you're gonna tell her. Making me deceive my husband. I got some news for you, Gilda. He didn't just...
buy something he's in love with you one man bought gilda another hated her and hungered for her i hate you too johnny i hate you so much that i think i'm going to die from it Gilda, inflaming men's hearts with a kiss or a song. A model meal, love me forever, and let forever be you tonight. Put the blame on Maine, boy, put the blame on Maine. One night she started to shim and shake, that brought on a frisco quake. Wait.
Make her stop. What do you mean by it? Now they all know what I am.
And that should make you happy, Johnny. It's no use just you knowing it, Johnny. Now they all know that the mighty Johnny Barrow got taken and that he married a man!
Offscreen, Ms. Hayworth's personal life often made headline news. Her courtship and marriage to Prince Ali Khan made her the most publicized woman in America. In 1949, the world watched newsreels of the royal wedding, her third marriage, and her daughter Yasmin was born soon thereafter.
Sadly, the marriage ended after a bitter court battle, after only two years. But by 1953, Rita returned to the screen to deliver what many critics said was her best singing, dancing, and acting performance to date, as the provocative and sultry Miss Sadie Thompson. They might start a chain reaction And I might explode The heat is on The heat is on You're gonna hear the sirens howl tonight You're gonna see the building bounce Because the lady's on the prowl tonight And it behooves me to announce The heat is on Miss Thompson, may I ask where you're going? Oh, the boys are throwing a brawl at the Chinaman. You'll be the only white woman there.
You're going to New Caledonia to carry on your trade. What? How could I marry you? When I think of all the guys who had their hands on it. Get out of here!
Out of here! Get out! Regardless of all the rain and mud, the feel of the place gets in your blood. But deep in the night there comes unawares the terrible thought that nobody cares you're back with the booze again. To be even more specific, you've got what they call the blue, Pacific blue.
Don't come near me! No! No! No!
Don't do! Don't do! Co-star and Academy Award winner Jose Ferrer said, When Rita is called before the camera, she illuminates the whole scene. She carries the picture.
picture though critically acclaimed and a source of professional pride from his Hayworth miss Sadie Thompson was not a huge box office success I did the picture with her but I didn't do it yeah I didn't they have a scene with her you know it's called a money trap with Glenn Ford but I got to know it on the set and she made a beeline for me and she got my hand and she almost made my hand bleed she was a scared what do I do what do I I said, you don't have to do anything, just look pretty there, Rita, just relax. She was shaking. People thought that she was drunk when she was suffering from Alzheimer's. She was a very, very sweet person.
I felt very sorry for her. Rita, yes, she was a tragic, tragic girl and so attractive. I had such a wonderful career, you know, she was a big, big star. Rita Hayworth became the object of unkind gossip and bad press when her behavior became somewhat erratic and her memory began to falter. After five marriages, a movie career spanning some 37 years, and a long battle with what we now know as Alzheimer's disease, Rita Hayworth died in her daughter Yasmin's New York apartment in 1987 at the age of 68. The New York Times obituary aptly read, She was the epitome of Hollywood glamour.
and allure, a stunningly beautiful actress and dancer. To every character he has ever played, Anthony Quinn brought an intensity and magic that was larger than life. Throughout his movie career, Quinn convincingly portrayed a wide range of nationalities. Resisting categorization, he once told an interviewer, Acting is my nationality. The Mexican-Irish actor was born Anthony Rudolph Oaxaca Quinn in Chihuahua, Mexico in 1915. Multi-talented from the start, Quinn dabbled in music as a young man living in Los Angeles.
Later in life, he became an accomplished visual artist. Well known for his colorful and eclectic personality, few know that the actor was at one time a professional boxer with 16 consecutive victories under his belt. Quinn's movie career began in 1936, but it wasn't until the early 50s that he got his breakthrough role to stardom in Viva Zapata and an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.
Did you take the land away from these people? I took what I wanted. I need to... I took their wives too. What kind of an animal are you?
Huerta's forces are coming through the face, Emiliano! Emiliano, I give you my word, I will stop the troops. I hope so, but if you can't, I will.
And just four years later, Quinn would take home a second Oscar as Best Supporting Actor for his role as the painter Gauguin in Lust for Life. Why don't you shut up? You got to slobber, don't do it over me. What have you done, a stroke of manual labor in your life?
Well, I have. I've dug ditches in the stinking heat of the tropics. I worked in the docks in the weather so cold my hands froze to the ropes. And I can tell you there's nothing noble or beautiful about it. I did it so I could go on painting.
I didn't have a brother to support me. By the early 60s, he had achieved international stardom. Anthony Quinn as Alda Abu Tayy. I carry 23 great wounds, all got in battle.
75 men have I killed with my own hands in... battle. I scatter, I burn my enemies'tents.
I take away their flocks and herds. The Turks pay me a golden treasure, yet I am poor, because I am a river to my people. But Quinn's immortal character portrayal was that of the exuberant and lusty Greek peasant Zorba. Zorba, you are in paradise. Yet there is no better word for it.
Anthony Quinn voted best actor of the year by the National Board of Review for the role he was born to play. Zorba the Greek. Remember this.
If a woman sleeps a long time, she's a good woman. it puts a shame on all men. God has a very big heart, but there is one sin he will not forgive. If a woman calls a man to her bed and he will not go. Everything about the film and the man is different.
When Zorba talks, you listen. I have done things for my country that would make me a good head. I have killed, burned villages, raped women. When Zorba drinks, you taste it.
When Zorba loves, you feel it. Because this is a man who devours life as if it were a feast. A man who never puts off till tomorrow what he can enjoy today. Here is his world. Sea bathed, sun washed Greece.
It's sights, it's sounds, it's music, it's dance. Above all, here are its people, as proud as the silent village beauty whose desires only Zorba understood. And they hate it because they cannot have them.
Only one man here can. You. The vulnerable English youth whom Zorba sent stumbling into love.
The Rabelaisian French madame who was loved by no less than four admirals. People as proud, as cruel, as revengeful, as murderous. There's their barren mountainous homeland. You bastard mountain! I'll eat your guts!
And overshadowing them all, Zorba fighting for life, laughing at death, attaining his place among the immortal characters of our time. This time, his unforgettable role as Zorba won him an Academy Award nomination as Best Actor. Anthony Quinn's impressive career spanned over 60 years, garnered him two Academy Awards, and created a screen legacy that lives on in the hearts and minds of millions of movie fans throughout the world.
The fabulous Rita Moreno has won the most prestigious awards an actress, dancer, singer, and comedian can receive. And with a movie career spanning over 50 years, she continues to delight stage and screen audiences to the present day. Rita Moreno was born Rosa Dolores Alverio in Humacao, Puerto Rico.
With an actual talent apparent even as a young child, she began performing professionally at the age of seven in local New York clubs. My first job in show business was dancing with my dance teacher, Paco Cancino, who had great fame then for being Rita Hayworth's uncle, because she was Margarita Cancino. Ms. Moreno's screen debut began in the early 50s, appearing in a handful of smaller films such as The Ring. I wanted more than anything else in the world to be a singer and dancer for MGM Studios. That was the studio of any young person's dreams who was a musical person.
Rita's first big break came in 1956, when she was cast in the widescreen spectacular, The King and I. The King and I, I was under contract to Fox at the time, 20th Century Fox, and I was obviously the most likely. intended to play the role of Tufton because there was nobody else around they felt who could play that they might have tried finding a uh an Asian girl but I don't think it occurred to them I'm sure there are plenty of Asian girls nowadays who look at that film and say Puerto Rican's playing a tie it's a great experience and it is where I met Jerome Robbins for which I shall never be grateful Just four years after The King and I, Jerome Robbins cast Rita in her most unforgettable role in the all-time classic movie, West Side Story. Not ever going to be another film like that. It gave me a world fame I would not have had otherwise.
It gained me an Academy Award, which is pretty spectacular. Not too many people can say that. It afforded me the opportunity to work with a genius, Jerome Robbins, and of course my wonderful Robert Wise, the director. and I got to dance. I like to be in America.
Okay by me in America. Everything free in America. For a small fee in America.
Well I thought Rita was fantastic. I thought she was just brilliant and you know she just lighted up, lit up the screen and obviously she was nominated for an an Academy Award. West Side Story has my blood and guts in it.
There's so much of me in Anita. Not because I went with a gang guy, I never did, I wasn't that kind of person, but that same vivacity, that same aliveness, that same spirit to prevail no matter what happened. Walk on your pipe and put Latin in it. Latin! We are a very juicy people.
in emotional terms, which is terrific. I notice that Anglo people are always kind of titillated by our energy. It's a wonderful plus that we have. It scares them, too.
But that's only because they don't know us. I heard on the grapevine there's going to be a big producer out in the front watching your show tonight. Unquote. Someday. You're going to see the name of Googie Gomez in lights.
And you're going to say to yourself, was that her? And then you're going to answer to yourself, that was her. But you know something, mister? I was always her. Yes, nobody knows it.
Who the hell was that? Crazy Rita. Did he really say that?
i'm facious i want to play this all american girls from the movies you know i could be another lana turner or i could be about a sky song betty middleland fabulous actress she's such a good performer rita moreno is a goddess who should be framed i want her forever rita is is an amazing actress a very versatile act i mean she can act she can sing she can dance she always took pride and embraced all that she was, you know, and because of her a lot of us are working. I mean it's like such, you know, I didn't realize it until we went to that tribute for her. I really had no clue that she had won an Emmy, a Graviatorian, an Oscar. In long overdue recognition for her remarkable stage, screen, and musical career, Rita Moreno was recently honored with an Everlasting Star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame.