University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Shake your assets: dance and the performance of Latina sexuality in Hollywood film

(USC Thesis Other)

Shake your assets: dance and the performance of Latina sexuality in Hollywood film

PDF

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content SHAKE YOUR ASSETS: DANCE AND THE PERFORMANCE OF LATINA SEXUALITY IN HOLLYWOOD FILM by Priscilla Peña Ovalle A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (CINEMA) December 2006 Copyright 2006 Priscilla Peña Ovalle ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The completion of this dissertation was only possible through community support; I could not have accomplished this goal without each ally. I would like to thank: My committee and mentors – Marsha Kinder, Tara McPherson and David Roman – for their generous guidance and encouragement. My mentors Jane Shattuc and George Sanchez for inspiring me to go to graduate school and enabling me to finish what I started. My dissertation writing group – William “Memo” Arce, Karen Bowdre, Marci McMahon and Joshua Smith – and writing partners Jennifer Stoever and Belinda Lum for their endless feedback and momentum. The amazing USC administrative assistants – Linda Overholt, Sherall Preyer and the American Studies staff – for so many, many things. My family for their love and understanding. My husband Omar Naïm for making each day better than the day before. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ii List of Figures iv Abstract v Introduction 1 Chapter One The Border Baile of Dolores Del Rio 32 Chapter Two Carmen Miranda Shakes It For the Nation 66 Chapter Three Rita Hayworth and the Cosmetic Borders of Race 110 Chapter Four Framing Jennifer Lopez 169 Bibliography 207 Archival Sources by Chapter 214 iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: “Monotonous drums beat for the Polynesian war dance.” 54 Figure 2: “The Snowshoe Dance by the North American Indian.” 54 Figure 3: “South Sea Islanders dance to the light of torches.” 54 Figure 4: Carmen Miranda 81 Figure 5: Carmen Miranda 81 Figure 6: Dolores Del Rio 120 Figure 7: Rita Cansino 120 Figure 8: Still from You’ll Never Get Rich (1941). 132 Figures 9: Hayworth and Astaire in You’ll Never Get Rich (1941). 135 Figure 10: Hayworth and Astaire in You’ll Never Get Rich (1941). 135 Figure 11: Helen Hunt cuts Hayworth’s hair. 151 Figure 12: Orson Welles inspects Hayworth’s new style. 151 Figure 13: Lopez in Vanity Fair, July 1998. 190 Figures 14-23: The many faces and poses of Lopez in “Get Right.” 197 v ABSTRACT “Shake Your Assets” argues that dance is crucial to Latina fame in Hollywood film. Through dance, Hollywood has racialized and sexualized the Latina performer’s body and persona. The dancing Latina – where one Latina symbolizes all Latinas, regardless of her national origin – becomes a fluid embodiment of race, gender and sexuality against which an ever-shifting ideal of the US citizen is visualized. Yet, the Latina celebrity has capitalized on these roles for stardom and career. To identify how Latina representation fluxes with the shifting racial formations of the United States, I chronicle the careers of Lupe Velez in the 1920s, Dolores Del Rio in the 1930s, Carmen Miranda and Rita Hayworth (Rita Cansino) in the 1940s and Jennifer Lopez in the present. My dissertation combines the theories of Media Studies, Performance Studies and American Studies with primary sources, archival work and textual analyses (film, print publicity, choreography) to show how Hollywood has historically naturalized dance on the Latina body, constructing this performance as an inherently and purportedly cultural ability. 1 INTRODUCTION In 2000, PepsiCo, Inc. unveiled a commercial campaign for its new carbonated beverage Sierra Mist. One commercial from the campaign features a young man in a packed nightclub and cuts from a shot of him to one of a large bucket of ice. A curvaceous young woman with dark hair emerges from the bucket and the image of her soaking wet body is held in a freeze frame as the commercial’s voiceover – “Yeah, It’s Kinda Like That” – compares Sierra Mist to the thrill and chill of the woman’s emergence from the iced water. After the product’s close-up, the commercial cuts back to the young woman in the club. Her long, brown hair and short skirt – miraculously dry – flow beautifully while her feet and hips perform a quick dance step. While use of the female body to sell products in or by the West is nothing new, the young woman featured in this particular commercial is uniquely and easily identified as Latina. 1 Two visual codes in particular identify the woman’s ethnicity as Latina: her hair and dance performance. While it is significant that this woman has dark, long and loose locks of hair, such details can be easily excused as coincidental or solely cosmetic. However, when coupled with the commercial’s dance finale – a momentary series of salsa- styled steps – the overall representation casts the woman as Latina. Because the commercial sets up the concept of cold refreshment with a bucket of ice 2 and bottle of Sierra Mist, its foil relies on the purported and metaphoric hotness represented by the generic image of a sensuous (and suddenly dry) Latina. 2 While the equation of Latina to hotness is significant, the more compelling question asks how two relatively small signifiers – hairstyle/color and dance performance – have become the popular connotations of “Latina-ness” in mainstream media, so much so that they are now usable for commercial imagery in mainstream television advertising. In answer, I look to Latina celebrity within the United States. As a Hollywood character, the Latina is predominantly cast for her perceived sexual allure – an attraction that often indicates her “inherent nymphomania.” 3 Dance permeates both the best and less known Latinas in U.S. cinema history and has become a purported mark of her racial difference in visual culture. In “Shake Your Assets,” I argue that dance has effectively regulated the allure of Latina performers that move beyond typical, supporting and exotic roles into star-positions. This project interrogates the relationship between dance performance, racial and sexual representation in Hollywood film to identify the ways that dance has been naturalized on the Latina body. I assert that in the past century of filmmaking, dance has reinstated the Latina body as a Hollywood commodity and limited her screen potential. Such limitations position the Latina as a fluid representation of racialized, gendered and 3 sexualized difference against which an ever-shifting ideal of the U.S. citizen is visualized and mediated. To show how the dancing Latina has been reified in Hollywood film and has come to symbolize all Latinas, regardless of national origin, “Shake Your Assets” chronicles the celebrity of Dolores Del Rio, Carmen Miranda, Rita Hayworth (Rita Cansino) and Jennifer Lopez. While dance has its own unique history in cinema, I utilize dance in this project because it unifies – and often defines – the best-known Latina performers in Hollywood. 4 My dissertation focuses on these women and uses Hollywood film and the popular culture supporting it to decode the seemingly paradoxical layers of meaning affixed to the filmic Latina body through dance. The historical breadth of this project by no means produces an exhaustive exploration of this phenomenon. Instead, “Shake Your Assets” teases out the history of Latina celebrity in U.S. film to better understand why the action of dance remains crucial for Latina fame from decade to decade. Colonial or official histories have traditionally linked racialized difference with the performance and/or representation of an overt sexuality, as illustrated by the pseudo-scientific discourses around Saartje/Sarah Baartman. Most commonly known as “The Hottentot Venus,” Saartje was commissioned to perform by posing as herself because she was believed to represent excessive sexuality by way of her large (according to Western standards) derriere. By simply being, Saartje’s display exemplified her difference within a supposed 4 civilized Europe. 5 Over time, different media have capitalized on and perpetuated the myth of nonwhite hyper-sexuality, a mythology exacerbated by film’s oversimplification of sexualized, nonwhite representations. In the case of Hollywood Latinas, the performance of dance has regularly been used to position the Latina as a commonplace symbol of racialized sexuality. Yet, as a dancer, the Latina performer achieves an agency that should not be dismissed. The power of dancing positions the Latina as an active, nonwhite female body in full motion; her roles may be racially sexualized or equated with and seemingly reduced to an innately aggressive sexual prowess, but the dance sequences generate actions that simultaneously require great energy, emotion and skill. Del Rio, Miranda, Hayworth and Lopez were each typecast in roles largely defined by dance, but they exceeded the casting limitations by maximizing their screen time and cultivating professional access to celebrity. Thus, the act of dancing presents a paradox for the Latina celebrity. On the one hand, it grants her a narrative subjectivity that challenges the traditional passivity of female representation. Yet it restricts her to roles that are stereotypical, even though they may appeal to a wider audience and thereby provide greater career advancement. The Latina performers in this project are both agents and pawns in the cultivation of American popular culture through Hollywood – albeit in different ways and at different historical moments. What unifies the women in this 5 project – beyond their racialized ethnicity and history as dancers – is that the temporality of dance contains her within a specific act on screen and thereby diffuses the threat she might pose to purportedly true whiteness. Regardless of how integrated the Latina may become in U.S. media – such as a Latina performer utilizing the codes of whiteness – dance always bounds/binds her body as an object of temporary desire. In cinematic terms, you might dance with a Latina, but you don’t marry her – a temporality that mirrors the borders of whiteness in the United States. The filmic figure of the dancing Latina presents a complex intersection of visual media, performance and racial representation. Therefore, I engage multiple disciplines to better illuminate how the performers behind this figure have seized their narrow invitations to the media floor. While this project utilizes Cinema Studies, Performance Studies (especially Dance) and Latino/a Studies, it primarily resides within the moments of disciplinary overlap. The intersection of these disciplines produces a synthesized conceptual thread that aids my analysis of marginalized identities in mainstream media. My education in Cinema Studies includes both theory and production; this duality has directed my attention both to textual analyses and the commonly overlooked practicalities of filmmaking. Dance Studies identifies the moments of performance utilized and naturalized by cinema – including movement, rhythm, pause, reflection, gesture, inflection, tempo, etc. In doing so, Dance and Performance Studies have explored larger issues such as gender, sexuality 6 and racial representation and reclaimed moments of female or sexual agency through movement or performance. 6 Finally, Latino/a Studies and its relationship to U.S. history offer a strong socio-political base for each of these disciplinary arguments. Without an interdisciplinary foundation, this project could not identify the lacks or address the margins that presently hide or reside in each discipline. Beyond analyses of the musical genre, it is striking that Cinema Studies has largely ignored dance even though it has been present at key historical moments in film experimentation – from early kinetoscope subjects to cinematic studies in parallel editing or synchronized dialogue. 7 In spite of a long and involved history of bodily movement and cinema, Cinema Studies remains ironically distanced from Dance and Performance Studies. The relationship between visual representation, movement, race and gender is even less present. The visual representation of dance is intricately tied to long-held beliefs about difference – specifically the perceived difference of nonwhite and/or female bodily movement. While dance was particularly well suited for the spectacle of cinema, it also served to reify certain bodies as visually exotic through the power of the film lens. Since its inception, the cinematic medium positioned the male and female body as a binary, recording the male body as though naturally and perpetually in action while the female body was posed as a static object: the male body became a study of movement while the female body was merely a biological specimen. 8 When women were in motion, 7 fetish objects – often sheer or revealing props like veils or fans – were sometimes incorporated to highlight or imply their sexual difference. While men could act sans accoutrement, decorative objects seemingly enhanced the difference and spectacle of women in motion. Two film pioneers capitalized on the spectacle of gender difference and movement in their early film experiments. In the late 1800s, Eadward Muybridge – famous for his early motion recordings of horses – filmed nude women in motion, often with fans or veils that accented their nakedness. 9 Thomas Edison also featured a dancer in his early work – one of the first films to capture a woman dancing. 10 The film, Serpentine Dance (1894), featured Annabelle Moore imitating a popular burlesque and vaudeville dancer named Loie Fuller. 11 Unlike Fuller, Moore’s performance was maximized for cinematic titillation; the recording shows Moore – with short skirt and scarf – dancing in a manner that served to “primarily reveal her legs and arms.” 12 At a high price of forty dollars a reel, this film was one of the first blockbusters popular with the public. 13 Racialized bodies – much like female bodies – became objects of spectacle according to long-held and mainstreamed beliefs about sameness and difference. For example, Alice Maurice’s work on race and sound in early Hollywood finds that film technology relied on black bodies to legitimize synchronized sound technology. As early as the silent era, Black performers were featured on film because they could purportedly “provide 8 strange and interesting movement” by “express[ing] motion as their very essence.” 14 Cinema’s claim to capture reality and its desire to produce visual spectacle sought the supposed difference of racialized, gendered and classed bodies; over time, motion epitomized the representation of difference for “Black, ‘lower-class,’ and ethnic subjects.” 15 The interconnection between movement, race and the spectacle of difference is evident in the few citations of dance in early film history. As nonwhite bodies were being coded as exotic through movement, the act of dance itself was effectively and literally colorized. Edison utilized a hand- tinting process to transform each black and white frame of Serpentine Dance into a different hue. 16 Nearly twenty years later, another significant dance sequence was painstakingly colorized by hand in The Great Train Robbery (1903) – one of the best-known examples of parallel narrative editing in U.S. cinema history. In some prints of the film, the dance hall scene contains colorized women’s dresses and smoke as one man dances while others shoot at his feet. 17 Yet, race did not play an explicit role in Serpentine Dance or The Great Train Robbery. Instead, both films reified whiteness through a lack of nonwhite bodies. Another technological breakthrough film, The Jazz Singer (1927), placed both dance and race center stage. As the first notable talkie, The Jazz Singer capitalized on the spectacle of blackness and minstrelsy. Once again, nonwhite (or “nonwhite,” in the case of minstrel) bodies in motion were 9 simultaneously positioned as entertaining affirmations of difference. As Eric Lott notes, these bodies helped produce “screens on which audiences’ fantasy could rest, securing white spectators’ position as superior, controlling, not to say owning, figures.” 18 The process of positioning different bodies on the cinema screen gained momentum as cinema moved towards Technicolor and yet another technological advancement sought ‘vivid’ personalities – one of many codes for ethnic – to pose as the ‘natural’ subjects of color film. 19 I believe that the construction of representational difference has conflated sexualized dance movement and race in mainstream media. The Hollywood Latina provides a unique site for this exploration, because her character and celebrity type are identified by a series of limitations in terms of race/ethnicity and gender, then activated through dance. To get to the core of these limitations, I tailor the union of Cinema and Dance Studies with Latino/a Studies. This approach is guided by and builds upon scholarship that has already begun to intersect Latino/a Studies with either Cinema or Dance Studies. For example, Marta Savigliano’s groundbreaking work Tango and the Political Economy of Passion fused Latino/a Studies with Dance Studies. As a result, she unraveled how two bodies in tango carried with them the complex colonial negotiations of race and gender – from Argentina to France and back again. 20 Similarly, the works of Charles Ramirez-Berg, Ana Lopez and Chon Noriega have enhanced Cinema Studies by utilizing Latino/a Studies’ emphasis on issues of citizenship, nationality and race to 10 demythologize stereotypes and mainstream media myths about Latinos/as within the United States. Both examples of interdisciplinary illustrate how popular culture (dance and media) impact and reify national identities while remaining a potential site for cultural resistance. “Shake Your Assets” builds upon these works by intersecting them to explore how a specific concept of Latina-ness has been constructed and perpetuated through dance performance on film – an as yet unexplored terrain. To determine how the Latina dancer has been constructed as a racialized and gendered body type through mass media in the past century, the first three chapters of “Shake Your Assets” focus on a thirty-year period of Hollywood production – from the 1920s to the 1950s. These chapters offer a historical foundation for the phenomenon of the Latina dancer by concentrating on the less contemporary performers of this project: Dolores Del Rio, Rita Hayworth and Carmen Miranda. These women were the first Latinas to utilize dance for Hollywood celebrity; conversely, their iconic success reified a limited character type for future generations. Therefore, chapters one, two and three identify the construction and mainstream representation of each woman’s persona. With Del Rio, Miranda and Hayworth as historical anchors, I turn to Jennifer Lopez in chapter four. Because Lopez’s career emerged nearly forty years after Hayworth’s celebrity peaked, this chapter provides a present-day case study of 11 the Latina performer’s evolution through a modern incarnation of the iconic Latina. Lopez’s career helps determine if anything has changed in mainstream media’s representation of the Latina body. Each woman in this project built a public persona that was reinforced by film roles, studio publicity, biographical materials and independent choice. This persona – the visible personality that supersedes the human performing on screen – often utilized sexuality or sex appeal and effectively blurred the line between the performer’s fiction and reality. Thus, a codified narrative of Latina sexuality was naturalized and woven into everyday discourse and public spaces like theater screens, shop windows and newsstands. These images affirmed cultural and sexual stereotypes about Latina bodies and transformed the Latina performer into a symbol of racialized sexuality. To unravel the knots and tangles of the ostensibly public knowledge that shaped the concept of a U.S. citizen against the Latina body requires a multifaceted methodology. Methodology The cultural and formal layers of knowledge that have cultivated the Latina persona require that this project produce an equally layered methodology. First, I define Hollywood film as a primary source because it catalogues the representation of Latina bodies in the context of an imagined American sphere. As such, I contextualize each film and its performances 12 as artifacts of that historical moment or period in the United States – for example, Miranda’s emergence during the Good Neighbor policy or Del Rio’s presence in California amidst the United States’ recent colonial history with Mexico. With this base, I then interrogate each performer’s films – questioning their narrative, setting, choreography or genre, for example – to identify how public and cultural discourses as well as the film’s contemporary history were reciprocated by the production. In this way, “Shake Your Assets” historicizes the movement of the Latina star's body and film career against U.S. history and Hollywood practices. Beyond using the film as text, my archive is organized around publicity materials. I pay particular attention to studio press books, which functioned as the voice of Hollywood studios. By packaging publicity materials for film distributors to disperse locally – including faux newspaper articles, radio broadcasts and product tie-ins – studios like Warner Bros. and Fox effectively pre-contextualized their stars for public consumption. For this reason, I close-read press books and supplemental archival materials like publicity photos, film reviews, talent contracts, fashion and make-up tie-ins as well as print, radio, television and multi-media advertisements. These historical documents help me navigate the Latina’s path to fame in Hollywood – as a female, as a Latina and as a performer. I focus on how such press materials advertised each film and how the Latina performer was positioned in relation to other stars in the film. By analyzing these texts in terms of 13 movement, racialization and sexualization, I can produce a more nuanced explanation of the relationship between dance and the Latina body. Implicit in these publicity materials is an assumed and idealized Hollywood film public – an imagined audience and market for whom the film and publicity have been historically constructed. 21 This viewer is the problematic and idealized concept of the American citizen. Therefore, this study occasionally uses the term “American” to identify such an imagined viewer. Though a misuse of the term – the term American in fact encompasses Latin Americans – my use correlates with common U.S. vernacular regarding cultural citizenship in the United States. Similarly, I use the terms “race,” “non-white” and “racialized sexuality” when discussing Latinos, most often considered to be an ethnic identity. I do so in order to create a dialogue with similarly impacted representational bodies, such as black or other nonwhite bodies. 22 The terms “American” and “American-ness” enable me to economize the notion of a white, middle-class and male status quo that is upheld as the ideal citizen and spectator of Hollywood film in the past century. The following chapters contend that U.S. audiences have been conditioned to read Hollywood cinema from the perspective of this idealized citizen. That is, in visual representation, whiteness, male-ness and American-ness are parallel and default because representations of race and gender have been constructed according to such hegemonic conventions of power. Therefore, 14 my analyses focus on both the cultural and formal signs present within a film. This assertion is greatly indebted to the works of Judith Butler, Richard Dyer, Laura Mulvey and Ella Shohat. 23 I combine Butler’s attention to the discursive construction of gender with Dyer’s demythologization of the default representation of whiteness in visual culture. In addition, I value Mulvey’s theorization of the gaze and Shohat’s assertion that cinema functions as a space within which “competing ethnic and racial discourses” are played out. 24 These perspectives identify the ways that white racial representation has been normalized and insidiously empowered: it is constructed as a non-raced neutral – a human identity in the face of all Others. 25 Likewise, men have retained similar narrative and representational privilege in terms of gender. To identify the myriad ways that film and television have standardized the privilege of whiteness according to a false hierarchy of race, Butler, Dyer, Mulvey and Shohat insightfully point to the ways that film form reinforces such cultural overtones. Formal filmmaking practices like narrative construction, lighting, composition, sound and choreography continually underscore and reinforce racial hierarchies. In turn, audiences are conditioned to access stories through the lens of a white, male protagonist. This standard has been so entrenched that limited opportunities presently exist for female and/or nonwhite performers and filmmakers due to industry fears about alienating the purported general audience. 15 In turn, these concepts and terms allow me to better position the Latina as an in-between Other against which the tenuous borders of whiteness are reified, according to national or colonial needs. 26 My own subject position – as a U.S.-born Latina from Texas influenced by the theories of Cinema, Dance and Latino/a Studies – does not fit the profile of the traditional or idealized viewer outlined above. Therefore, my readings tend to be more critical and tend to go against the grain. However, I have been equally conditioned as an audience member, and must actively read a film against larger hegemonic conventions and I continue to take pleasure in a great deal of the films viewed in this project. My methodology is therefore one of an insider/outsider – one which allows me to engage the complexities of the Latina stars themselves. Such complexities might include auto-exoticizing your differences for greater business and film opportunities (as in the case of Carmen Miranda) or modifying your physical attributes to access larger film roles (as in the case of Rita Hayworth and Jennifer Lopez). Because “Shake Your Assets” reads the Latina body through the cultural frame of Hollywood, the cultivation of cultural myths about non- white female bodies is contextualized by the history of California and U.S.- Latin American relations. This stage and setting identifies the idealized image of national identity in the United States, an image reproduced by films and their publicity. As Ella Shohat has noted, the “study of American cinema is necessarily as well the study of the ‘American Dream’” – a Dream by 16 which immigrants and other marginalized persons “perceiv[e] the image that hegemonic America would desire for itself.” 27 In other words, the contents of this cultural frame are categorized according to the dominant institution. 28 Because the Latina performer’s gender and race are in opposition to the idealized spectator, her body is the display against which that audience defines itself. As Marta Savigliano’s work on the tango in Paris has shown, colonizers have often established their supposed superiority through the exhibition of Other bodies. She states: “Western imperial stages and screens are set up to pass judgment, to frame, and to present the exotic as such.” 29 This supposed superiority is intimately tied to a perceived lack of passion on the part of the dominant culture; it is precisely passion that the exotic is purported to hold in spades. Thus, the colonizer commodifies and consumes the excesses of the exotic bodies for its own pleasure. 30 As a nonwhite female or female exotic, the Latina dancer is doubly marginalized by the gaze that sets her within the colonizing frame. The tendency to pit the concept of American against an Other is evident in Hollywood production and marketing practices and has allowed the U.S. film industry to cultivate and distribute a seamlessly Othered representation of the non-white female body. Yet, within this cadre of stock exotic Others defined by Hollywood, I contend that Latina performers serve paradoxically ambiguous roles. To determine how and why dance has been naturalized on the Latina body and served to connote a sense of racial ambiguity, I have 17 chosen to focus only on Latina performers that starred in Hollywood productions. This perimeter enables me to identify Hollywood as a cultural frame for the United States and explore how layers of subtle yet sexualized and racialized representation have systematically reinforced notions of race, gender and sexuality within the nation. Though I consciously limit my textual analysis to mainstream Hollywood films featuring Del Rio, Miranda, Hayworth and Lopez and produced within the United States, “Shake Your Assets” still spans both decades and nationalities: the four women of this study hail from or are descendents of Mexico, Brazil, Spain and Puerto Rico, but only two were born in the United States. While this study is informed by the nationality or lineage of each performer, the tensions between America and its most present Other – Mexico, its neighbor to the south – also plays a crucial role. The physical location of Hollywood in Los Angeles, California and the historical background of the Southern California region are instrumental when considering the brokered image of the dancing Latina as national entertainment. While early films were often based on plays and other original material crafted on the eastern coast of the United States, film production was increasingly and predominantly produced on the western coast. As a site of production, Los Angeles rests at a critical geographical point in the urban Southwest. This region has historically felt and embodied some of the socio-political tensions between the United States and Mexico. 18 It is impossible to unravel the underlying ideology of the Latina image without considering how the settlement of the southwest United States was facilitated through the brown female body. In the absence of colonial women, brown female bodies – predominantly, Mexican or Native American women – served as surrogate mates. Gradually, these women became the conduits of colonization. Racialized women represented all that could be claimed or conquered by the colonizer – not solely in terms of land and resources, but the very population itself. The sublimation of racialized women helped to perpetuate colonial myths and produced “a transmission of white, male power through control of colonized women.” 31 During the Spanish Conquest, for example, the purported Spanish bloodline was believed to prosper in the colonized Indian female body – but not the black female body. 32 This absurd rationalization excluded black bodies but utilized brown bodies to produce and cultivate a hybrid – yet, somehow Spanish – population. These unions have proven to be a complex embrace – simultaneously political, economic and even romantic – between the colonizer and colonized, in the service of colonial power. Yet, the tensions and ambiguities reside specifically at the intersection of femaleness and non-whiteness and illuminate many of the underlying suppositions about racial formation and hierarchies in the New World. Many of these hierarchical beliefs most visibly linger in twentieth century images of the sexualized Spanish señorita or Native women in films about the early Western or California frontiers. 19 One example that pre-dates this study but visually chronicles the colonization process through the brown female bodies is the Casta painting series popularized by Spaniards in Mexico during the 1700s. These paintings constructed and reflected the hierarchical organization of race known as the Castas in the New World and depicted the importance of colonized Indian women in the regeneration of a Spanish population, post-Conquest. The paintings visually chronicled bloodlines and the structure of racial hierarchy of the time; the images depict the Spanish-Indian offspring as categorically new species akin to produce or other exotic goods. 33 Each painting presents a row of several heterosexual couples, beginning with a Spanish-Indian union and usually ending with a variation of an Indian-Black union; the order shows the social rank of each interracial pair and the breed of their respective mixed- race offspring. Because the ultimate goal of this hierarchy was to outline social power through whiteness (in this case, Spanish-ness), only unions between Spanish men and native Indian women would eventually produce Spaniards. Subsequent unions would eventually repopulate Spanish colonies with reinvented Spanish blood: the first Spanish-Indian union would produce a Mestiza; a Mestiza and Spaniard would produce a Castiza; and finally a Castiza and Spaniard would distill any Indian blood and supposedly return back to Spanish. Though the women in this project represent different film periods and had different relationships with the Hollywood studios, they were all 20 cast within a myth of discovery that linked them to the colonizing mythology of Spaniards discovering the New World. Most of the star narratives featured in this project began with the female performer’s discovery by a male Hollywood producer – a point that often played a significant role in their biographies. I suggest that the racial and gender hierarchies established by the colonization of Indian and Mexican women in Latin America and the Southwest United States made the concept of discovery both palatable and natural. This, in turn, contributed to the larger shape of racial and gender marginalization across contemporary American history. If, as Anne McClintock determines, “women served as mediating and threshold figures by means of which men oriented themselves around space, as agents of power and agents of knowledge,” 34 then how does the colonial narrative work its way into Hollywood stardom through the Latina performer and how does dance aid and subvert this Othering? Terms and Their Use What counts as white in the United States has continually shifted according to national or colonial needs; similar to the Spaniards, this process is often mediated by the Latina body. 35 To address the ambiguity that Latina bodies have been presented with in Hollywood, the following chapters are organized around two concepts: “in-between-ness” and “racial mobility.” I have coined these terms to identify how the Latina body oscillates between 21 the normalcy of whiteness and the exoticism of blackness in visual culture. In-between-ness demarcates the ambiguously racialized space that Latinas have been assigned in the hierarchy of visual representation while racial mobility identifies the ways in which Latinas have maneuvered this in- between-ness to maximize their career in Hollywood. Since the 1920s, Hollywood gradually naturalized dance on the Latina body by excusing this performance as an inherently cultural or racial ability. Within the past century, dance has efficiently denoted both the race (difference) and gender (female) of a Latina performer. The costuming and locations that often accompany dance characterizations – revealing dress and nightclubs in exotic locales – paint a suggestive scenario. Over time, such codes have been collapsed through repetition and familiarity to connote a racialized sexuality within mainstream media that supports larger mythologies about women of Latin American descent. 36 In this project, the term “racialized sexuality” defines the fusion of racial representation – explicitly nonwhite racial representation – with an excessive, free, and/or active sexual and sensual characterization. 37 The dancing Latina body has thus been assigned a specifically racialized sexuality. Latina performers utilizing this character type have thus had to navigate the traditional binaries perpetuated by visual representation: blackness and whiteness. By continuing to pose white bodies as the central screen identities, Hollywood has effectively reified whiteness. By 22 continually positioning white bodies as the default film-protagonist identities, Hollywood has perpetuated the illusion that white bodies lack race. As Richard Dyer has illustrated, white bodies have instead come to represent “the human race” while black and other nonwhite bodies epitomize the raced Other. 38 This hierarchy of racial representation arbitrarily positions whiteness (One) and blackness (the Other) as the poles of representation. Representations of gender (and heterosexuality) likewise work according to this dominant power structure. Through reiterated performances of tradition, the hierarchical systems of race and gender work to support and reify each other. 39 I argue that Latina representation in Hollywood film is identified as a racialized identity that is in-between the poles of whiteness and blackness. Similar to black representation, Latinas are exoticized; in this case, their racialized sexuality is largely indicated by dance performances. Yet, Latina performers seeking mainstream access – more prominent roles, greater careers, etc. – have managed to combine these racialized gestures (dance) with white bodily codes (such as lightened hair) to cultivate a slippage/space where narrative agency is possible beyond those available to black performers. The term in-between-ness – what some might term “between and betwixt” 40 – identifies a Latina performer’s representational oscillation between blackness and representational whiteness. While the performer invariably accesses both the privileges and limitations of this binary, it is 23 her country of origin and the U.S. cultural climate that ultimately determine how her image is gauged within Hollywood. In-between-ness is inevitably oriented around a racialized sexuality connoted through the movement of a Latina’s body, though whether she is dominantly associated with blackness or whiteness varies with each woman in this project. While each Latina in this study can be identified as in-between, each woman’s in-between-ness is facilitated differently. To better unravel the Latina’s rather fluid oscillation between the racialized poles of representation, I call the navigation of this in-between-ness a process of racial mobility. While racial ambiguity has historically been a source of hysteria in the United States, the Latina’s mobility between racialized poles – and the desire her nonwhite body incites – is contained and regulated through the temporality of dance. Each movement or gesture is determined by the tempo of a song, the space of a soundstage or the length of a choreographed sequence. The dance performance provides a temporary space and time within which the non-white body can be objectified and desired by the spectator – as a witness to an act seemingly contained by choreography and music. The temporality of this performance in mainstream Hollywood film is crucial, as it presupposes that non-white bodies are not deemed suitable for procreation; yet, it also provide a necessary space for racial maneuverability and manipulation. 24 Latina stardom is limited by the ever-fluxing alignment of Latin American countries with U.S. national projects. Dolores Del Rio, though Mexican, was often identified as Spanish in film press books; this process speaks to the importance of Spanish descent in the 1920s and 1930s. Further, Rita Hayworth and Jennifer Lopez were both born on the U.S. mainland and arguably utilized the codes of whiteness with the greatest success. Significantly, both women were able to branch into white or white ethnic roles, while Del Rio was only able to do so during the silent era. Of the women studied here, only Carmen Miranda utilized and was associated with blackness during her Hollywood career. Yet, Miranda’s career was primarily outside the lead female role and rarely, if ever, played a significant love interest in a film. Such limitations illustrate the complications of a career that primarily leans towards the pole of representational blackness. Latinas are simultaneously exotic and white – sexual yet safe – contained and regulated through the temporality of dance. The borders of this in-between identity are culturally demarcated through gestures and symbols of body and narrative. Bodily codes such as hair color, hairstyle and fashion grant Latinas narrative access through illusory markers of whiteness on the body. Yet, the modified Latina body retains a rudimentary sexuality through the racialized performance of dance. Whether her visual representation moves towards whiteness or blackness is granted or denied based upon the historical moment and nationality of each Latina performer. Most of the 25 Latina performers studied here manipulated the codes of whiteness to access their careers, but their ability to achieve celebrity status in Hollywood has ebbed and flowed according to a historical and socio-political rhythm. This mobility is largely due to the specific intersection of non- whiteness and female-ness. Unlike Latinas, for example, Latino males do not have the same racial mobility. They do not have the same access to white – even white ethnic – roles that Latinas might. While Latinas are often, though not always, paired with white male leads, Latinos are rarely paired with white female actresses. Therefore, Latinos do not possess the same opportunities for vertical racial mobility on the arbitrarily hierarchical racial scale. In contrast, many white actors have been able to play nonwhite characters and then return to white roles without destabilizing their careers. When male Latinos do mobilize race, it is more of a lateral move. Anthony Quinn, for example, was able to play other brown men such as Arabs, Greeks and Italians, but was often restricted from playing a non-raced or non-ethnic white role. In this way, nonwhite male sexuality is contained; this regulation has perpetuated the demonization of nonwhite men in the name of protecting the virtue of white women or rescuing and rehabilitating nonwhite women from their own men. In this sense, I agree with Judith Butler’s assertion: bodies that matter are discursively constructed and reified by hierarchies of race and gender. 41 Fortunately, this construction is a ritual practice that simultaneously produces instabilities and excesses. 26 “Shake Your Assets” emerges from my love of cinema, dance and Latina performers – and the thrill of watching all three combined. Long before the Sierra Mist commercial, the common sexualization of Latinas in film and visual media captured my interest. I focused my initial research on the intersection of race and sexuality, but quickly realized that the performances I loved best – and the best-known Latina performers – were uncannily linked through movement. The overwhelming regularity of these boogying Latinas in film history surprised me, but my love for performance and dance in film made the triumvirate of dance, race and sexuality a project that compelled and inspired me. This project does not suggest that a Latina is inherently sexualized or racialized when she dances. On the contrary, dance is many things; to affix one meaning to any body’s steps discredits the complexity of human movement and posits a static argument on a mobile form. However, the hegemonic film frame trades in types and stock characterizations. This is why we expect recognizable performers to play with or against type and how star personae develop in the first place. In itself, a dancing Latina is both true and real; many Latinas do dance. But, in Hollywood dance stands in for and identifies the Latina as a composite of race, sex and sexuality – factors that seemingly mark her as different in the face of Hollywood’s preferred illusion 27 of white humanism. 42 In Hollywood, a Latina’s characterization is dependent upon her body’s movement. “Shake Your Assets” spotlights this movement throughout film history. 28 Introduction Endnotes 1 Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York: Routledge, 1995) and Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). McClintock provides an excellent discussion of the female body and advertising in the colonial period while Susan Bordo produces an equally compelling discussion of women and advertising in the 1980s. 2 By comparison, the first commercial in this campaign featured the popular and blonde fashion model Esther Cañadas sensuously rubbing ice and lime on her lips before kissing the commercial’s everyman. While Cañadas is originally from Spain, her blonde hair and blue eyes iconically position her as different than the women in this project. 3 Charles Ramirez Berg, Latino Images in Film: Stereotypes, Subversion, & Resistance (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002), 71. 4 There are seven women that immediately fall into this category – Dolores Del Rio, Lupe Velez, Carmen Miranda, Rita Moreno, Rita Hayworth, Rosie Perez and Jennifer Lopez. This project only explores four of the seven because of the caliber of their mainstream success. 5 Coco Fusco, English Is Broken Here: Notes On Cultural Fusion In The Americas (New York: New Press, 1995), 47. 6 Consider Alicia Arrizon, Traversing the Stage: Latina Performance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999); Jane C. Desmond, Staging Tourism: Bodies On Display From Waikiki To Sea World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); David Román, Performance in America; Alberto Sandoval-Sanchez, José, Can You See?: Latinos On and Off Broadway (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999); and Marta Savigliano, Tango and the Political Economy of Passion (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995). 7 Dance was an early kinetoscope favorite and became a commonly filmed subject. See chapter one in Jerome Delamater’s Dance in the Hollywood Musical (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, c1981). 8 Linda Williams, Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the Frenzy of the Visible (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 43. 29 9 Elizabeth Coffman, “Women in Motion: Loie Fuller and the ‘Interpenetration’ of Art and Science,” Camera Obscura 49 (17:1, 2002): 82. 10 Coffman, 86. 11 Loie may have later been recorded by Edison in the film Crissie Sheridan (1897). See footnote 37 in Coffman, 102. 12 Coffman, 86. 13 Delameter, Chapter One. 14 Alice Maurice. “‘Cinema at Its Source’: Synchronizing Race and Sound in the Early Talkies,” Camera Obscura 49 (17:1, 2002): 35. 15 Ibid. 16 This colorization mimicked the popular and powerful multi-colored lights that shone upon Loie’s body in the original stage production. 17 In this interior dance hall scene, tough-looking men and women are dancing when an outsider arrives; the newcomer is forced to dance a jig while others shoot at his feet until he escapes. Soon, the robbery victim alerts the dancing group about the bandits; the dancers give chase after the robbers. 18 Eric Lott, “Love and Theft: The Racial Unconscious of Blackface Minstrelsy,” Representations 39 (1992): 28. 19 Sarah Berry, Screen Style: Fashion and Femininity in 1930s Hollywood (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000): 119. 20 In addition to Savigliano, see Chon Noriega, Shot in America: Television, the State and the Rise of Chicano Cinema (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000). 21 While current trends may show an increase in films marketed to nonwhite and/or female audiences, this project is organized around the traditions that have built the image of the iconic Latina, beginning in the 1920s and present today. 30 22 Though Latinos are technically considered an ethnicity and claim a complex history of colonization in the United States… For example, the racialized sexuality of dance is consistent for most black and brown women on screen. Such associations are possible and variable, whether the dancer is Latina, Black, or Asian. 23 See Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York: Routledge, 1993); Richard Dyer, White. (London: Routledge, 1997); Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16.3 (Autumn 1975): 6-18; and Ella Shohat “Ethnicities in Relation: Toward a Multicultural Reading of American Cinema,” Unspeakable Images: Ethnicity and the American Cinema, edited by Lester D. Friedman (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991): 215-250. 24 Shohat 218. 25 Dyer 3. 26 Dyer 57. 27 Shohat 218. 28 See Coco Fusco, “Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit…,” English Is Broken Here: Notes On Cultural Fusion In The Americas (New York: New Press, 1995). 29 Savigliano 81. 30 Savigliano 83-98. 31 McClintock 3. 32 In the New World, Spanish lineage was perceived as only possible through Spanish/Indian unions; Spanish/Black or Black/Indian couplings were supposedly incapable of producing a Spanish child and thus appeared at the very bottom of the race hierarchy. Such complex categorizations maintained the status quo – an otherwise free and diverse interracial colony population from hindering – the social status of “white” (full) Spaniards. These hierarchies also deeply tied racialization with religion (Christian vs. Muslim). 33 Indeed, many Casta paintings depicted exotic plants, vegetables or fruits native to a specific Latin American region. 31 34 McClintock 24. 35 Dyer, 57. 36 Roland Barthes, Mythologies. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972). 37 McClintock, 9. While notions of race have often been organized around “common knowledge” attributes like the supposed “sensual” or “unintellectual” behavior of blacks, I agree with Anne McClintock’s assertion that “no social category exists in privileged isolation.” Thus, this project represents only one thread of the larger tapestry that has collapsed both nonwhite racial representation with the perceptual abundance of sexuality/sensuality. 38 Dyer, 3. 39 For the reiterative nature of performance, see Butler. 40 James Mandrell in “Carmen Miranda Betwixt and Between, or, Neither Here nor There.” Latin American Literary Review (29: 57, 2001): 26-39. 41 Butler 10. She states, “Construction not only takes place in time, but is itself a temporal process which operates through the reiteration of norms; sex is both produced and destabilized in the course of this reiteration.” 42 See Dyer. 32 CHAPTER ONE: THE BORDER BAILE OF DOLORES DEL RIO ‘[D]ark eyes sparkle and droop and flash again into flame….all is flutter and glitter, grace and animation…quivering, sonorous, passionate, seductive[.]’ Such is the Tango Del Rio[.] Wonder Bar (1934) Promotional Materials 1 Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them. Gloria Anzaldúa 2 Borders – like stages and dance floors – are crossed. Dolores Del Rio crossed the Mexico-U.S. border and transitioned from silent to synchronized- sound cinema, yet her onscreen persona was continually defined by the bodily performance of dance while she performed in Hollywood. This characterization lingered through studio distribution of Del Rio’s manufactured image and embodied the tensions between the United States and Mexico in the 1930s. Since Del Rio’s Hollywood film debut, a racialized sexuality was fused to her representation – a character type would be reiterated and built up for years thereafter. 3 The image of Del Rio was racially sexualized through dance, but this racialized sexuality was reified 33 by the regular circulation of such images in public spaces like cinema screens, shop windows, newspapers and radio programs. 4 This imagery permeated the American imagination and supported U.S. public reactions to the Great Depression and policies like the Volstead Act and Good Neighbor Policy. I believe that Del Rio’s racialized sexuality was predominantly signified through dance performances – particularly after her transition from silent to sound film. To argue this concept, I first define how Del Rio’s image functioned in-between the poles of whiteness and blackness through Hollywood’s attention to her Spanish heritage. To do this, I use biographical publicity to juxtapose Del Rio’s racialized sexuality with the transformation of Olvera Street, a public plaza in Los Angeles. Finally, I use a large-format publicity article entitled “On with the Dance” to show how Del Rio was literally framed in-between the poles of representational blackness and whiteness in print publicity. To support these points, I focus on four films released between 1932 and 1935, a period that immediately followed Del Rio’s transition to sound cinema. These musicals – Bird of Paradise (1932, RKO), Flying Down to Rio (1933, RKO) Wonder Bar (1934, WB) and In Caliente (1935, WB) – each utilized dance and three of them were choreographed by Busby Berkeley. This chapter is organized around analysis of the films, Del Rio’s dance performances and the publicity campaigns that supported each film. I conclude the chapter with a brief overview of Del Rio’s roles after she established herself as the official fallen woman of 34 Mexico’s Golden Period to show how dance lingered in this persona and her later reincarnation. While Dolores Del Rio’s career traversed literal borders, this chapter discusses how she crossed the figurative borders of racial representations by navigating between the poles of blackness and whiteness. Literal Borders: From Mexico to the United States, From Silent to Sound Dolores Del Rio’s Hollywood persona emerged against the bordered backdrop of the United States and Mexico during Prohibition and the Depression, a time when the image of Mexico as a social threat was being secured in the imaginary of the United States, particularly in California. 5 Del Rio was born in Durango, Mexico in 1905 to a reportedly wealthy family of Spanish descent. Her migration to the United States in 1925 coincided with the post-Revolutionary chaos that caused many Mexicans to seek employment opportunities in the United States. 6 The decade to follow would be filled with national turmoil that often focused U.S. attention on the Mexican border. In the mid-1920s, the Volstead Act set Prohibition into motion and denied U.S. citizens access to alcoholic beverages; consequently, many Americans sought libations and other entertainment south of the border. 7 A tourist industry soon expanded around the fulfillment of taboo desires and many Mexican cities gained reputations as “centers of vice and moral abandon.” 8 Meanwhile, the Depression began to impact the economy and migration was slowed by the early 1930s; with 35 little work available in the nation, many Mexican-Americans were erroneously identified as the source of the problem and were deported regardless of their citizenship status. Such sentiments reflect the long- standing sense of white superiority and entitlement in the United States. For example, the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) was similarly rooted in the deeply racialist, nationalized sentiments of Manifest Destiny. 9 The artificial division or border between the United States and Mexico has exacerbated the perceptual division between Americans and Mexican/Americans in the United States. By the time cinema transitioned from silent to sound format, Del Rio’s image was firmly established as different. The period of her career between 1932 and 1935 has seemingly impacted her popular and academic legacy, despite the fact that she had appeared in over sixteen films since her debut in 1925. Much of this legacy is due to her association with dance through a string of Hollywood musicals largely set in Latin America. 10 There is some contention as to whether or not Del Rio’s career was at an apex or in decline by this point. Joanne Hershfield, Del Rio’s more prominent English-language biographer, suggests that these musicals signaled the apex of Del Rio’s career while Mary Beltran asserts that Del Rio’s career suffered from the transition to synchronized sound films. 11 In either case, this period of musicals was formative in Del Rio’s legacy and in the shape of Latina performers to follow in Hollywood. 36 Throughout her silent film career, Dolores Del Rio was routinely cast as a dancer, prostitute or loose woman. She premiered in Hollywood as a vamp-ish “woman of the world” in Joanna (1925). 12 The producer and director of Joanna, an American named Edward Carewe was credited with discovering Del Rio in Mexico and immediately cast the twenty-year old Del Rio as the character charged with leading the white female protagonist (Joanna) towards a bad reputation. 13 Though Del Rio’s silent film roles that followed were varied in terms of quantity and types of characters, they regularly indicated a sexual licentiousness, either explicitly or implicitly through dance. 14 For example, Del Rio became a prostitute in Resurrection (1927), was won in a gamble between two soldiers in What Price Glory? (1927), and appeared as a fiery gypsy in both Loves of Carmen (1927, a role reprised by Rita Hayworth in 1953) and Revenge (1928), her final silent film. While Del Rio’s transition to sound cinema exposed her Mexican accent and superficially marked her as a foreigner, her voice only reinforced the difference of racialized sexuality that audiences had already surmised from Del Rio’s movement since 1925. As Del Rio transitioned to sound, she was more explicitly racialized and sexualized through dance. Because the 1920s produced very few brunette stars beyond the equally exoticized Theda Bara and Pola Negri, the persistence of Del Rio’s career beyond the silent period is all the more impressive. 15 As a non-blonde in the silent era, Del Rio’s racial ambiguity 37 was able to embody many types of ethnic characters and characterizations, provided that she was simultaneously sexualized through movement. 16 Examples of this can be witnessed in Del Rio’s roles as the “Red Dancer of Moscow” of The Red Dance (1928), a “fallen woman” in The Trail of ’98 (1929) and a seductive Spanish dancer in The Bad One (1930). 17 The 1932 film Bird of Paradise utilized Del Rio’s “dark beauty” and dance persona to cultivate what would result in her most prominent in- between-ness as the desirable undesirable. 18 As Luana, “the beautiful daughter of an island native chief” in Bird of Paradise, Del Rio epitomized in- between-ness as the forbidden temptation of white men. The film, set on a South Seas island, depicts the doomed relationship between a female islander, Luana (Del Rio) and a white sailor named Johnny (Joel McCrea). Luana’s sensuous charms entice Johnny; she encourages his advances and he pursues her. However, the chief has planned a marriage for Luana and forbids the union between Luana and Johnny. By the end of the film, Luana must sacrifice herself to the local volcano to save the lives of Johnny and her islanders, precluding the relationship from continuing and thereby restoring a sense of racial order. Del Rio’s in-between-ness allowed U.S. audiences to flirt with representations of forbidden sexuality, a trend that continues today. As Hershfield asserts, the forbidden attraction of Luana and Johnny’s relationship sets the contradiction of interracial romance by simultaneously 38 “acknowledg[ing] the enigmatic desires that cross racial and national boundaries [while it also] immediately sets up miscegenation as a universal problem, forbidden by even the most primitive societies.” 19 Because Bird of Paradise was released in the Pre-Code era, it was not subject to the full authority of the recently scribed Production Code. Instituted in 1930, the Production Code attempted to self-regulate film content, a sort of moral self- policing. The Code was not actively enforced until 1934, when the Production Code Administration began to institutionalize the Code by scanning content – from script to film print – for nudity, sexually suggestive dancing, sexualized language and “the depiction of romantic relations between actors of different races.” 20 Two dance sequences in the film correlate dance and race with overabundant sexuality and were both deemed unacceptable by many film review boards. Del Rio’s moments of seduction – for both Johnny and the film audience – are mediated through her dancing and exposed body. The first occurs when Luana seeks out Johnny on his ship; the scene evolves into an elaborate dance sequence, staged by Busby Berkeley, which “serves as an erotic mating ritual.” 21 A later Berkeley sequence again conveys temptation and foreplay; by this performance’s end, Luana has collapsed at Johnny’s feet while all other dancing villagers have coupled and run off to perform the finale in private. 22 The sexual potency of these dance interludes was so great that censorship boards in several states opposed some of the 39 sequences. 23 The “immoral” arousal attributed to these scenes is, by comparison, more striking considering that close-up shots of Del Rio “swimming half-naked underwater” were not censored in the United States. 24 While both nudity and dance performances were regulated by the Production Code, censorship boards in this case preferred explicit nakedness to the implied and seductive sexuality of racialized dance sequences. As a dancer, Del Rio was predominantly positioned as an object of temporary desire. In Bird of Paradise, Del Rio must sacrifice herself to the volcano, making a relationship with Johnnie rather challenging, if not impossible. Within the framework of U.S. imperialism, Latinas have traditionally been considered temporary partners, a trend that began and continued well beyond Del Rio. 25 Perhaps sensing the limitations of a role like Luana, Del Rio made an explicit move to prevent such typecasting after her RKO contract expired and she moved to Warner Bros (WB). Her WB contract, dated March 17, 1934, explicitly stated she could not be required to appear “in the part of a native girl or in a South Seas Island type of picture without [Del Rio’s] express consent.” 26 Luana’s overt racialization as a “South Seas Island type” would have prevented Del Rio from more significant roles as the primary (or, as it turned out, secondary) love interest. This protective measure may have created more range, but it is more likely that it prevented her from getting a greater number of roles. 40 Unlike Bird of Paradise (RKO), the narratives of Flying Down to Rio (RKO), Wonder Bar (WB) and In Caliente (WB) end with the implication of a romantic future between Del Rio’s character and her respective white love interest. While this might appear idyllic given the prominence of Del Rio’s Mexican background and her desire to move away from “native” roles, the potential for mainstream narratives as the love interest was facilitated through an underlying narrative of whiteness – her Spanish lineage. As Del Rio’s career transitioned from the Pre-Code (1930-1934) to the Code era (1934- 1960s), she was regularly cast in narratives that featured an interracial romance. While the Code ruled against miscegenation, Del Rio was less impacted because she was in-between and was rarely presented as a permanent mate. As Hershfield argues, “Hollywood did not necessarily refuse to portray sexual relations between men and women of different races; it was reluctant, however, to depict racial interbreeding.” 27 The Code’s stance on miscegenation was firmly and plainly directed at depictions of white and black romance or procreation, but the representation of white-brown romance only produced ambiguity. Figurative Borders: The In-Between Whiteness of Spanish Lineage Like the other Latinas in this project, a racial in-between-ness was crucial to Del Rio’s promulgation in Hollywood. For Del Rio, claiming a Spanish lineage provided the necessary mediation between blackness and 41 whiteness because it specifically eliminated the socially negative connotations of being Mexican in the 1920s and 1930s. 28 Del Rio’s ambiguity – as both a love interest and a racialized sexual object –enabled her more mobility in her range of roles. This ambiguity was often crafted through publicity materials, which regularly manipulated the truth to produce an ambiguous difference that was – in Del Rio’s case – simultaneously privileged and exotic. A critical component of Dolores Del Rio’s Spanish lineage in her biographical publicity was the stress placed on her upper class background, including a Catholic school education, studies abroad and a “Spanish-Basque” lineage. 29 Whether or not these details are true, it is important that Hollywood studios selectively chose which way it preferred to frame her difference, often mobilizing both types of difference – race and class – simultaneously. For example, one publicity stunt incorporated Del Rio’s biography into a poem- puzzle for In Caliente: “Dolores Del Rio, Dark Mexican rose, Whose exquisite loveliness everyone knows, Dolores Del Rio, the one in a million, Patrician Dolores whose blood is Castillian.” 30 Here, Del Rio is ambiguously dark and Castilian, but the combined privilege of her bloodline and class elevated her star trajectory beyond the more stereotypically dark images of Mexican types like Lupe Velez, an actress routinely aligned with her working class origins and seemingly limited by this persona during the Depression. Del Rio’s in-between-ness as a “Mexican of Spanish descent” was mobilized through a consistent, if unconscious, U.S. equation between race 42 and class in Mexico that was specifically carried through the female body. As depicted in the Casta paintings, Spanish women – or rather, their facsimiles – facilitated the settlement of the Americas. 31 Similarly, Anglo men migrating south from the Northern U.S. states married Spanish women from Mexico – effectively inheriting both wealth and land – as part of the historic settlement of California and the southwestern states. 32 Thus, the Spanish daughter was a conduit, a means through which power alliances could be fostered while Mexican men – regardless of class – seldom, if ever, married Anglo-American women. 33 This Spanish title marked and privileged such descendents as white – however negligible or imaginary this lineage proved to be. So entrenched is this equation that at one point, even Hershfield’s otherwise concise research about Del Rio overlooks the complicated relationship between Spain, Mexico and the United States. For example, Hershfield dismisses a Motion Picture Herald description of the “Spanish” dancing of In Caliente (the film is set in Mexico) by asserting that the studio was simply “confusing Mexico with Spain.” 34 The use of the term Spanish is even more marked when the Herald’s source is revealed: the article directly quotes several “catchlines” from the Warner Bros.’ press book for In Caliente. 35 The “Spanish fantasy past” of Southern California – later inculcated by Christine Sterling and Olvera Street – originated from the specific divisions between race and class in the terms Spanish and Mexican. 36 43 Del Rio’s Spanish-ness similarly enabled her to access the privilege of whiteness, particularly because it allowed her to romance white leading men. Like Bird of Paradise and Flying Down to Rio, both Wonder Bar and In Caliente present Del Rio as a dancer and object of (Anglo) male desire. In each film, she is racialized and sexualized through exotic costuming, locations and contexts. But unlike Bird of Paradise, Del Rio is ultimately paired with Anglo men at the end of Flying Down to Rio, Wonder Bar and In Caliente – couplings largely facilitated by identifying Del Rio’s characters as “Spanish”: Wonder Bar introduces Del Rio as “the Spanish dancer Ynez,” and In Caliente presents Rita (Del Rio) as the famous dancer “La Espanita.” 37 Depictions of Latinos in Wonder Bar and In Caliente alone offer insight to the narrative logic that excused the coupling of Latinas and white men. Both films were produced at Warner Bros., feature Del Rio as a nightclubs dancer and include dance sequences by Busby Berkeley. The casting in these films suggests how racialized sexuality was visualized on both male and female bodies, resulting in a light/dark dichotomy that made Latinas desirable while simultaneously denigrating Latinos. Mexican (or Latino) males were largely represented as “dark-skinned, swarthy mestizo (mixed blood) ‘greasers,’ [while] Mexican women were generally docile, sensual, and light skinned, with Spanish (European) rather than Indian or mestizo features.” 38 44 By depicting Latinos as loathsome, Hollywood effectively reinforced the notion that Latinas required salvation at the hand of white men. For example, Ynez (Del Rio) is helplessly in love with the Latin male Harry (Ricardo Cortez) in Wonder Bar; however, Harry’s infidelity is made explicit in the narrative and characters routinely refer to him as “the gigolo.” While he is guilty of little more than attempting to flee Ynez and the country with a wealthy married woman, press reviews – possibly rooted in studio press – declared Cortez “effectively sinister as the murdered villain” and praised him for “mak[ing] Harry as sleek and despicable as he should be.” 39 Similarly, In Caliente’s men are undesirable by design. One interoffice memo expressed producer Edward Chodorov’s displeasure with director Lloyd Bacon’s casting of the taxi driver in one scene. Agostino Borgato – an unknown but prolific actor that made his living as gypsies, ethnics and taxi drivers – did not fulfill the “fat smiling Mexican” described by the shooting script. 40 Hollywood depictions of white men appropriating nonwhite women reenacted the common method of colonizing and controlling non-Western men through similar means. 41 Del Rio’s Racialized Tempo(rality) The grafting of a Spanish lineage onto Del Rio’s persona not only enabled her to occupy an in-between space that allowed her to access the privilege of whiteness, but it also configured her body within a racialized 45 temporality. The Los Angeles space known as Olvera Street offers a fascinating, non-fiction parallel to the performance of Mexican-ness as temporary and in need of Spanish revision. In 1930, a society matron from San Francisco named Christine Sterling visited downtown Los Angeles. There, she hoped to find a “beautiful little Spanish Village complete with balconies and senoritas with roses in their hair,” but found only “filth and decay.” 42 This “filth and decay” was, in fact Los Angeles Plaza, a thriving site of congregation for Mexican families and merchants. Despite this liveliness, Sterling spearheaded a renovation project and effectively refurbished Olvera Street into an image of a Spanish past where a thriving Mexican present once stood. This process positioned Los Angeles as a modern city that did not welcome its Mexican/American population. The revision of Olvera Street effectively “fix[ed] a memory of the Mexican past firmly in the public mind.” 43 The result was – as Los Angeles Times announced at Olvera’s re-opening – “A Mexican Street of Yesterday in a City of Today.” 44 Olvera Street created a visual hierarchy of the past and present. The binary of “yesterday” (Mexican) and “today” (American) exemplifies the racialized and visualized hierarchy of One and the Other in both city planning and Hollywood film in the 1930s. Mexico and those affiliated with it, such as Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, were concretized as the convenient Other against which the United States, Los Angeles and Hollywood 46 projected an otherwise tenuous national identity. 45 As a framed space of difference, Olvera Steet was a place that “distinguish[ed] us from them.” 46 A people of the past have no present, no future. Olvera Street’s reformation cast Mexican-Americans that worked there as temporary relics of the past: Mexican-American vendors were required to operate their businesses from temporary and mobile carts and wear peasant costumes. By extension, these men and women performed daily as “primitive, humble craftspeople.” 47 Conversely, Anglo vendors were privileged with permanent business structures and no costumes, reiterating that Mexican-Americans were “exotic, un-American and stuck in the past.” 48 Any dissent by non-white vendors was answered with eviction. For example, David Alfaro Siqueiros’ anti- imperialist mural, “Tropical America,” was commissioned for Olvera Street in 1932 but immediately and literally whitewashed once its dissent was made visible to the public. 49 Dolores Del Rio shared this performance of racialized temporality. Like the Anglo Olvera Street vendors in their permanent structures, Hollywood’s default film subjects embodied whiteness. To accentuate the centrality of whiteness within either frame, however, an Other presence is required. 50 This Other, as Judith Butler finds, “provides the necessary ‘outside’…for the bodies which, in materializing the norm, qualify as bodies that matter.” 51 Like the nonwhite workers of Olvera Street, she was contracted for a public performance as an Other. She depicted an onscreen 47 past for Hollywood and “often complained of the peasant-style clothes she had to wear in her films.” 52 Del Rio’s roles only reiterated and reified the performance of the Mexican bodies on display in spaces like Olvera Street. Visualizing Difference: Containing the In-Between Through Dance While Del Rio’s Spanish-ness provided a realm of in-between-ness that expanded her possible cadre of roles, dance acted as a means of containing this racial ambiguity through a visualized difference. For the Latina, dance carries her racialized sexuality through one action in Hollywood film and Del Rio’s well-bred Spanish background only temporarily assuaged this fact. Her dancing body was the key to her fame because it fulfilled false expectations of Latina licentiousness in and out of Hollywood. Del Rio’s biography as a well-bred Mexican of Spanish descent was continually undermined by the seductive and fiery characters she played. If Edward Carewe discovered Del Rio dancing for friends in a private parlor party, her film characters were frequently discovered dancing in bars and nightclubs A small, choreographed moment in Wonder Bar exemplifies the contradictory nature of Del Rio’s roles. The club’s emcee, Al (Al Jolson), prefaces Ynez’s (Del Rio) debut on the dance floor by singing to the club’s audience. One line of the lyrics speaks of being “in the arms of a lovely Latin daughter.” As a lyric, this moment is benign. Yet, Jolson’s character delivers the line while suggestively spreading his legs with his hands. This 48 small gesture equates “arms” with “open legs” and immediately sexualizes the film’s only visible “Latin,” Del Rio. In similar ways, Del Rio was framed as a high-society woman through publicity as she was characterized into a stereotypical version of what “lovely Latin daughters” were assumed to be. The overwhelming desire to racialized and sexualize the Latina through dance may have required some fabrication of talent. The correlative point between Del Rio’s on-screen persona and biography was dance; however, the extent and caliber of her training is ambiguous. According to biographical and publicity accounts, Del Rio studied dance since the age of seven and she was reputedly famous among the Mexican elite for her tangos. 53 This information, however, was a significant component of the discovery narrative circulated by Edward Carewe and illustrates how thin the line between studio publicity and official biography can be. 54 Part of this lore crucially stated that such performances were not for income, but as a distraction for Del Rio’s own pleasure. An eclectic collection of moments, culled from both studio press books and biographical exposés, shows how Del Rio’s persona was developed through dance. According to these sources, Del Rio had entertained wounded soldiers in Spain, been “presented” to Spanish royalty and danced for Pancho Villa – all in her short life before Hollywood. 55 Each example underscored that Del Rio could not help but entertain. Del Rio’s history as a dancer can be challenged, however, by viewing her film appearances. The movement of 49 her body does not suggest that she was a trained dancer. Even forgiving that dancers of the 1920s and 1930s were not trained as rigorously and that Del Rio’s training may have been exclusively for the tango, she does not move fluidly nor seem to convey any particular sense of rhythm. 56 Del Rio’s lackluster skill is especially present – through its absence – in her best-known Hollywood film, Flying Down to Rio. While Del Rio offers a lovely acting performance and does a brief dialogue-laden tango with Fred Astaire, the skill (or lack thereof) of her body’s movement is completely overshadowed by two less famous performers of the time, Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Here again, Latin-ness mediates racialized performances; in this case, it is a series of dances – from “white” to “black” – that become progressively more sensual. 57 Del Rio is nowhere to be found during this dance sequence. Wonder Bar’s publicity may have inadvertently revealed the reason: Del Rio’s inept step. In “Dolores Del Rio in Dizzy Dance with Ricardo Cortez,” she complains of dizziness after a series of spins. The ability to “spot” to while turning – a method of remaining steady during a series of spins – is one of the core tenets of dance; “dizziness” is a surprising admission from a trained dancer. 58 Still, publicity supported the perception that Del Rio was a gifted dancer from whom movement naturally flowed, given from her Spanish blood. According to Wonder Bar publicity, an “Exotic New Dance” was reportedly invented for the film by none other than Del Rio and Ricardo 50 Cortez. 59 The two actors purportedly devised the “strange [and] elusive steps” while improvising a tango during a studio lunch break. The article suggests that this impromptu tango was an instinctive performance specific to these particular bodies. While it is possible that Del Rio and Cortez did inspire the choreography by dancing during their lunch break, the article uses anthropological language to suggest a different kind of scene. Here, it appears that the couple’s dancing is a wildlife moment, as the film crew catches a glimpse of Del Rio and Cortez in the act: [The director] watch[ed] from the shadow of the set, while [Del Rio and Cortez] danced on, unnoticing and unconcerned. He watched them – and so did the returning company, standing their distance, silent and intent, making no sound to break in on the dance. The language of this article paints a picture of discovery. All is quiet on the set when the director and crew happen upon the two Latinos in a strange dance ritual; the crew hides among the equipment and does not disturb the dancing creatures in their native mode. However, Cortez was not in fact Latino, but “an Austrian Jew born Jacob Krantz who changed his name to take advantage of the public’s fascination with ‘Latin Lovers.’” 60 While the actors’ Latin-ness is the core of this performance and publicity story, Ricardo Cortez’s biography disrupts this fictive narrative. What Del Rio and Cortez were reported to produce was a hybrid between the film’s original “apache” 61 dance and the tango. The resulting 51 dance was called “The Gaucho,” a nod to the “restless, gypsy race, half Indian, half Spanish descent, that roams over the pampas” for the sake of publicity. 62 The original “Apache” dance is actually a cousin of the tango in which the female – dressed and acting like an impoverished prostitute – is beaten and manhandled by her male partner, the pimp. On film, the Gaucho is more of an apache than a tango, particularly since the primary action features Harry (Cortez) whipping at Del Rio and throwing her to the floor in front of an “audience of wealthy white [club] patrons.” 63 The performance is meant to appear so violent that the clubs audience does not realize that Ynez has stabbed Harry. As he lies dying on the floor, the crowd cheers. On the Border of Race: Civilizing the Primitive Through Dance The large-format publicity article entitled “On with the Dance” exemplifies how Del Rio was literally framed in-between the poles of representational blackness and whiteness. Intended as a “Special Sunday Feature” for local newspapers, the article provides a historical look at the evolution of dance as a surreptitious promotion for Wonder Bar. 64 This history is presented as an evolution of dance – from primitive to civilized – and visually juxtaposes the images of “black” and “white” dance, respectively. The centerpiece, the largest image of the article, depicts Del Rio and Cortez mid-step. Their bodies literally border two images of racial representation: white people in tuxedos waltzing on the left and women in a 52 blackface performance on the right. The image illustrates Del Rio’s in- between-ness, contrasting her with both a “fashionable Waldorf-Astoria crowd” and the “modern dusky maidens [that] have their own particular answer to the sound of the trumpet.” 65 While white and nonwhite bodies are nearly equally represented in terms of quantity, the representation of whiteness is presented as overwhelmingly more refined than the representation of blackness. The text of the article anchors this visualization by outlining the refinement of dance from its primitive days. The credited writer – a playwright named Harry Lee – charts the evolution of dance from its “crudest form of rhythm” to its refinement in France, where “national dances [are] brought to Paris, polished and perfected.” 66 Lee writes: Dancing, which among primitive people was practiced to express joy or grief – to excite the passions of love and hate – to placate vengeful gods – or to foster homage or worship – has degenerated or improved (as you will), into a pastime. Music, though not an essential part of dancing, almost invariably accompanies it – even in the crudest form of rhythm – it’s beaten on a tom-tom [slang term for an African drum]. The “crudeness” incited by this paragraph’s description of primitive dance progresses into a section entitled, “Savage Dance Survivals.” This section luxuriates in the “rude, imitative dances of early civilization” and details how every “savage tribe” from “Australian Bushmen” to “tribes of Northern Asia” have a form they practice. Though these dances are – if lucky – eventually refined in France, Lee claims that Spain is the “true home” of dance 53 because “Spanish dances are an expression of the gay, irresponsible nature of the people.” The progression of this article finally comes to the pinnacle of dance, ending with an advertisement for Wonder Bar and a description of the “Tango Del Rio” (described in the epigraph) in the final sixth of the article. Words like “rude,” “savage” and “imitative” subordinate non-Western dancers in this history lesson that is racially polarized and most clearly depicted in the article’s overall presentation of the images. The article presents three sets of imaged racialization: whiteness, blackness and in- between-ness. Tuxedoes appear to represent whiteness, as the waltz photograph and accompanying image of Hal Le Roy – a white tap dancer popular in the 1930s – feature this attire. Le Roy, who plays himself in the film, is the second most prominent image on the page; the caption beneath his likeness claims that he is “reputedly the world’s fastest stepper.” 67 The article anchors the waltz photograph as a celebration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s birthday. The “fashionable Waldorf-Astoria crowds” depicted in the photo are honoring the President by dancing like Americans: “The whole nation – and many a “good neighbor” over the borders too, no doubt – joined merrily in a midnight rendition of the Virginia Reel.” 68 Blackness, on the other hand, is depicted by a photographic still of blackfaced women and three smaller line drawings of “primitive” dancers. The “modern dusky maidens” depicted represent a large blackface number choreographed for the film entitled, “Goin’ to Heaven on a Mule.” 69 The 54 line drawings include the traditional signs of primitiveness: spears and loincloths reinforce this notion. The dancing figures are clearly indicated to be nonwhite by the shading of their illustrated bodies and underscored by core culture attributed to each: Polynesian, Indian and South Seas Islanders. Unlike the segregated nature of the other images in the article, Del Rio’s depictions represent elements of both whiteness and blackness. This in- between-ness is most visible in the centerpiece image, which places her body at the border the two main representations of whiteness and blackness on the page. But in-between-ness is also present in a medium-sized photo of a Berkeley dance numbers entitled, “Don’t Say Goodnight.” The waltz number boastfully features two hundred girls, but Del Rio is the only female dancer featured in the choreography with black hair. In this particular still, Del Rio and Cortez – both with black hair – are in the foreground and rows of blonde- wigged women mirror their movement. 70 While this image seemingly prioritizes the darker (haired) bodies by foregrounding them, it also Figure 1: “Monotonous drums beat for the Polynesian war dance.” Figure 2: “The Snowshoe Dance by the North American Indian.” Article Caption Figure 3: “South Sea Islanders dance to the light of torches.” Article Caption 55 highlights their difference and exoticism by overloading the background with blonde-ness. A final image – one of the smallest, yet located near the article’s headline in the top left corner – shows the source of Del Rio and Cortez’s difference quite plainly: their passion. This small line drawing emulates the aforementioned line drawings of primitive dance: Cortez brandishes a whip around Del Rio while she aims a dagger at his heart. Desire and danger are conflated as Del Rio and Cortez are shown in a passionate embrace fuelled by violence. Conclusion In 1942, Dolores Del Rio realized that she was not going to become the caliber of actress she desired in the United States. She decided to return to Mexico in 1943 and was welcomed as a star. Along with Maria Felix, Del Rio became a prominent figure of Mexico’s Golden Age of cinema and was one of the premiere actresses of her time. Between 1946 and 1954, she was nominated for five Ariels – the national film award in Mexico, akin to the Oscar. She won three. Still, without beginning as Hollywood’s Other Woman, Del Rio might not have become one of Mexico’s top female stars. In Mexico, she was cast as the ever-suffering, “fallen-but-redeemed-by-motherhood” star of women’s films. 71 Del Rio’s new Fallen Woman persona can easily be seen as an answer to the racialized sexuality of her roles in Hollywood: her history as 56 an exotic nightclub performer offers the perfect foundation for redemption. Yet, Del Rio simultaneously held rare acclaim as the “great actress” of Mexican melodramas – a possible and paradoxical consequence resulting from her initial validation by the first world domain of Hollywood. 72 Del Rio’s roles in Mexico eventually enabled her to return to the Hollywood screen anew. Only after she was re-imaged by Mexican cinema – complete with choice maternal roles and industry awards – did she reappear in Hollywood. Yet, upon her return, Del Rio was to again embody a sort of racialized sexuality through an affiliation with movement. In 1947, Del Rio was cast in John Ford’s The Fugitive. Shot on location in Mexico, the film featured Del Rio as the Latin American Indian mother of an illegitimate child. 73 At one point, Del Rio’s character, Maria Dolores, helps a rogue priest escape; she distracts the men in search of him with her dancing body. Thirteen years later, Del Rio’s racialized sexuality and bodily movement were again invoked in her role as the Native-American mother of a bi-racial son (Elvis Presley) in Flaming Star (1960). In cinematic terms, Del Rio could very well have birthed Elvis – his body was similarly rife with the racialized sexuality and movement as a result of his rock and roll lineage in the 1950s. Though I have been attentive to Del Rio’s filmic difference in this chapter, my goal is not to reify whiteness as normative but instead to identify the dialogue of power possible and visible within Del Rio's representation. Her decision to leave the United States was a powerful move that 57 effectively “recorded [her] ability to subvert and negotiate” the systems of representation. 74 When the contractual protections she had outlined with Warner Bros. were not enough, Del Rio returned to Mexico to “choose [her] own stories, [her] own director and cameraman.” 75 In Mexico, Del Rio was even more empowered, perhaps as a result of her affiliation with first- worldliness – whether in terms of U.S. cultural currency or the elitism of Spanish-ness. In either case, Del Rio utilized her agency and amassed enough star power to propel a formidable career in Mexican cinema. Del Rio is one of the rare stars to be exoticized and still sustain a long career in Hollywood. She proved that Mexicans/Americans in the United States would “flock” to Hollywood films – and they came to see her. 76 Yet, Del Rio’s career may not have attained its quiet power, sizable income and star status had she not first seduced the American public as an object of desire in Hollywood. Thus, Del Rio’s recuperation of her career does not diminish the fact that she was the prototypical Latina dancer in Hollywood. Del Rio’s legacy in the United States signals the conflation of overt sexuality, dance performance and race that other Latina performers – especially Rita Cansino (Rita Hayworth) – would pick up where she left off. 58 Chapter One Endnotes 1 The USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California, Wonder Bar (1934) Promotional Materials File #680A: Publicity Ideas or Exploitation Ideas, “Special Sunday Feature Mat number 88-80c.” Article “On With the Dance” by Harry Lee quoting: “M. Vuillier [as] he says in his ‘History of Dancing.’” 2 Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands: La Frontera (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1999), 3. Emphasis in original. 3 Though Latinos are technically considered an ethnicity, I use the term “racialized sexuality” to create a dialogue with similar issues regarding the representational black body and similarly Othered bodies. Though this chapter focuses on a Mexican actress in the United States, the racialized sexuality of dance is consistent for most brown women on screen, whether from Mexico, Brazil, Puerto Rico – or even the Asian-Pacific. 4 Gary D. Keller, A Biographical Handbook of Hispanics and United States Film (Tempe: Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingue, 1997), 92. 5 The picture of “Latino heritage as a quaint, but altogether disappearing element in Los Angeles culture” is continually framed within the past – a Spanish past, as exemplified by the “mission myth.” George J. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 70-71. 6 Douglas Monroy, “Making Mexico in Los Angeles,” Metropolis in the Making: Los Angeles in the 1920s, ed. Tom Sitton and William Deverell (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 161. 7 Please see the introduction of this dissertation for use of the term “American.” 8 Barbara A. Tenenbaum, ed., Latin American History and Culture (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1996), 303. 9 Juan Gonzalez, Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America (New York: Viking, 2001), 42-44, 207. 10 Joanne Hershfield, The Invention of Dolores Del Rio (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 34. 59 11 Mary Beltran, “Dolores Del Rio, the First ‘Latino Invasion,’ and Hollywood’s Transition to Sound.” Aztlán: The Journal of Chicano Studies (30:1, Winter 2005), 67. 12 Joanna (1925), American Film Institute Catalog, American Film Institute (2003-2006), ProQuest Information and Learning Company, 2006. 13 It is notable that the first chapter of Hershfield’s book, The Invention of Dolores Del Rio, begins with the “discovery” of Del Rio by an American. This narrative of “discovery” would also be utilized in Rita Hayworth’s career several years later. Born Rita Cansino, Hayworth was similarly discovered by an American male while performing in Mexico. Hershfield (2000), 1-4. 14 For Beltran, the variety and number of roles in which Del Rio performed proved that she could perform outside of racialized typecasting. I believe the movement of her body somehow undercut this otherwise true statement. Beltran, 65. 15 In the 1920s and 1930s, it was perceived that “blondes photographed best.” Larry Carr, More Fabulous Faces: The Evolution and Metamorphosis of Dolores Del Rio, Myrna Loy, Carole Lombard, Bette Davis and Katherine Hepburn (New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1979), 2-3. 16 Here, I utilize Richard Dyer’s assertion that “[B]londeness is racially unambiguous…keep[ing] the white woman distinct from the black, brown, or yellow.” Richard Dyer, Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986), 44. 17 See entries on The Red Dance (1928) and The Trail of ’98 (1929), American Film Institute Catalog, American Film Institute (2003-2006), ProQuest Information and Learning Company, 2006. 18 Joanne Hershfield offers an excellent exploration of Del Rio’s role in her article “Race and Romance in Bird of Paradise." Cinema Journal (37:3, Spring 1998): 3-15. 19 Hershfield (1998), 8. 20 The Hays/Production Code censored these images among others – including excessive depiction of alcohol. Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell, Film History: An Introduction (New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc, 1994), 160. 60 21 Hershfield (1998), 8. 22 Hershfield (1998), 8. 23 Bird of Paradise (1932) American Film Institute Catalog, American Film Institute (2003-2006), ProQuest Information and Learning Company, 2006. 24 The semi-nude shots were only censored in British Columbia. Bird of Paradise (1932) American Film Institute Catalog, American Film Institute (2003-2006), ProQuest Information and Learning Company, 2006. 25 “As Frederick B. Pike crassly sums up in his reconsideration of FDR's Good Neighbor Policy, ‘perhaps with Carmen Miranda in mind, Yankee movie addicts might see Latinas as ideal partners with whom to shack up for a night’ (112).” As quoted, James Mandrell, “Carmen Miranda Betwixt and Between, or, Neither Here nor There.” Latin American Literary Review (29: 57), 31. 26 The USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California, Dolores Del Rio Contract, Dated March 17, 1934, page 2. 27 Hershfield (1998), 7. 28 Hershfield (1998), 6. 29 Carr, 3. 30 The USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California, In Caliente (1935), Ad Campaign Booklet, “2 column poem-puzzle feature,” File #681A, page 5. 31 Please refer to the introduction of this dissertation for a discussion of the Casta paintings and Spanish lineage in the Americas. 32 Gonzalez, 100. Also see Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land (Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1946). 33 McWilliams, 50-55. 34 Hershfield (2000), 48-49. Compare with “In Caliente,” Motion Picture Herald, 1 June 1935, 43. 61 35 Hershfield (2000) 48. Several of the quotes featured in the Motion Picture Herald (1 June 1935, 43) – including “[A] New Spanish Custom… It’s Torrid! It’s Tropical! […] Seething With Senoritas!” – appear in The USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California, In Caliente (1935), Promotional Materials File #681A: Advertising Campaign Plan, “Catchlines” column 6A. 36 Phoebe S. Kropp, “Citizens of the Past?: Olvera Street and the Construction of Race and Memory in 1930s Los Angeles,” Radical History Review 81 (2002): 36. 37 Hershfield (2000), 45-46. Hershfield describes Ynez as a “Gypsy,” then later as a “Spanish Gypsy.” 38 Hershfield (2000), 40. 39 Warner Bros. press kits described him as a “villain” in their Exploitation Ideas. The USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California, Wonder Bar (1934), Mat #90 – 12A. The Hollywood Tribune and World Telegram appear in the “Clippings (Critical Reviews)” File, Dates unknown. 40 Chodorov was reporting to WB’s associate executive in charge of production, Hal Wallis. The memo’s tone is cynical and somewhat sarcastic. The USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California, In Caliente (1935), File #1806, Warner Bros. Interoffice Memo to Mr. Wallis from Mr. Chodorov, January 1, 1935. 41 Hershfield (1998), 8. 42 Kropp, 37. 43 Kropp, 39. 44 Kropp, 36. As quoted from Los Angeles Times caption May 26, 1929. 45 Like the Orient to Europe, Mexico has helped define the United States “as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience.” Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979) 1-2. 46 Anzaldúa, 3. Emphases in original. 62 47 Kropp, 48. 48 Kropp, 43, 48. 49 Kropp, 48-50. 50 “[W]hite is not anything really, not an identity, not a particularising quality, because it is everything – white is no color because it is all colours….This property of whiteness, to be everything and nothing, is the source of its representational power.” Richard Dyer, “White,” Screen 29.4 (Autumn 1988): 45. 51 Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York: Routledge, 1993), 16. 52 Simultaneously, studio publicity regularly depicted her as an image of modernity through fashion. “In product promotions…she was photographed wearing the latest fashions[.] Despite her exotic roles, del Rio was promoted by Hollywood as a thoroughly modern woman.” Hershfield (1998) 22-23. 53 Beltran, 58. 54 Even Mary Beltran states that Del Rio’s first biography was written by a publicist named Harry D. Wilson. Oddly, Beltran relies on this biography without problematizing its source. Beltran, 79. 55 In a radio advertisement or In Caliente, Del Rio tells the “true” story of how she danced for Pancho Villa’s soldiers when they came to “the Ensana’s hacienda.” The USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California, In Caliente (1935), “A New Idea in radio sketches,” Ad Campaign Booklet, File #681A, page 7. 56 For additional information on the training of dancers in the 1920s until the present, see Larry Billman, Film Choreographers and Dance Directors: An illustrated Biographical Encyclopedia (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 1997). Also, Del Rio was often cast as one of the three Latina types in early Hollywood, “The Cantina Dancer…The type has retained over time through Dolores Del Rio (even though she couldn’t dance)[.]” Gary D. Keller, A Biographical Handbook of Hispanics and United States Film (Tempe: Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingue, 1997), 91. 63 57 Marsha Kinder, “Review: Saturday Night Fever,” Film Quarterly 31.3 (Spring 1978), 40. 58 The USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California, Wonder Bar (1934), Promotional Materials File #680A: Exploitation Ideas, “Dolores Del Rio in Dizzy Dance with Ricardo Cortez,” Article accompanies “Mat number 26-20c.” 59 The USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California, Wonder Bar (1934) Promotional Materials File #680A: Exploitation Ideas, Article accompanies “Mat number 17-20c.” 60 Hershfield (2000), 38. 61 Marta E. Savigliano, Tango and the Political Economy of Passion (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), 111. 62 The USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California, Wonder Bar (1934) Promotional Materials File #680A: Exploitation Ideas, Article accompanies “Mat number 17-20c.” 63 Hershfield (2002), 46. 64 The USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California, Wonder Bar (1934) Promotional Materials File #680A: Exploitation Ideas, “Mat number 8-10c.” 65 The USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California, Wonder Bar (1934) Promotional Materials File #680A: Exploitation Ideas, “Mat number 8-10c.” 66 Respective Image Captions. The USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California, Wonder Bar (1934) Promotional Materials File #680A: Exploitation Ideas, “Mat number 8-10c.” 67 The USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California, Wonder Bar (1934) Promotional Materials File #680A: Publicity Ideas or Exploitation Ideas, “Special Sunday Feature Mat number 88-80c.” Article by Harry Lee, “On With the Dance.” 68 Ibid. 64 69 This musical performance was stressed in Wonder Bar trailers as an attraction, most likely due to the celebrity of Al Jolson (The Jazz Singer, 1927). He received 10% of the film’s gross [AFI, Wonder Bar]. “Goin’ to Heaven on a Mule” occupies a good portion of the movie’s running time and features horribly racist ideas of “black” heaven, including a “pork chop orchard” and dancers in blackface with large watermelon props. The number appears at the end of the film and indicates its prominence as a spectacular finale. Revisions for the manuscript will delve more deeply into blackface and the representation of blackness in general. 70 Joanne Hershfield notes: “In one scene, [Del Rio] dances against a backdrop of a chorus of blond women made up in matching black gowns and blond wigs. They are joined onstage by a dance troupe of blonde women and dark-haired men. Del Rio’s ‘dark’ Ynez [a “gypsy dancer”] complicates this black-and-white motif: she is neither a blonde woman nor a dark haired man. In Wonder Bar, and in each of her other Hollywood films, Del Rio’s role- playing is doubly conflicted. She is a racial and national other masquerading as a racial and national other.” Hershfield (2000), 46. 71 Ana M. Lopez, “Tears and Desire: Women and Melodrama in the ‘Old’ Mexican Cinema,” in Multiple Voices in Feminist Film Criticism, ed. Diane Carson, Linda Dittmar and Janice R. Welsch (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 262. 72 Ibid. 73 The Fugitive even opens with a spoken prologue, acknowledging “‘this picture was entirely made in our neighboring republic Mexico, at the kind invitation of the Mexican government and of the Mexican motion picture industry.’” The Fugitive (1947), American Film Institute Catalog, American Film Institute (2003-2006), ProQuest Information and Learning Company, 2006. 74 Savigliano, 69. Del Rio had tried to gain better control of her career as early as Bird of Paradise, when she became more protective of the type of character she would play and had her WB contract nearly rewritten from scratch to meet her standards. Mr. Lewis, presumably Del Rio’s lawyer, advised Warner Bros. to carefully examine the contract, “as there [was] almost nothing standard about it.” The USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California, Dolores Del Rio Contract File, Letter from Mr. Lewis of Freston and Files Law Offices to Mr. R.J. Obringer (March 20, 1934), page 1. 65 75 DeWitt Bodeen, From Hollywood: The Careers of 15 Great American Stars (Cranbury: A.S. Barnes and Company, Inc., 1976), 288. 76 As quoted from La Opinion, 20 April 1928, in George J Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 174. 66 CHAPTER 2: CARMEN MIRANDA SHAKES IT FOR THE NATION – You do not understand me when I’m talking? – No. I understand you better when you’re not talking. Scripted exchange between Carmen Miranda and Charlie McCarthy (Edgar Bergen), The Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy Show (1941) 1 Introduction Carmen Miranda is a Hollywood icon – a swirl of tropical fruit and Technicolor, the Good Neighbor who taught the United States that Brazil was ripe for the picking. Her whirling celebrity spanned over two decades – one decade in Brazil (1929–1939) and one in the United States (1939–1955). While Carmen Miranda epitomized Latin America for her Hollywood audiences, she was in fact a Portuguese émigré who had embraced the black styles of Brazil. As a white woman living in Brazil, Miranda represented a commodified blackness; once she crossed-over to the United States, she represented an amalgamated Latin-American-ness. In both countries, her image fluctuated between the poles of racial representation – specifically whiteness and blackness. Here and there, Miranda embodied a racialized in- between-ness. 67 Miranda’s in-between-ness served both Brazil and the United States in radically different ways, unifying one nation through a hybridized sameness while she unified the other through an exoticized difference. In Brazil, Miranda bridged the gaps of class and race and united the nation through the musical performance of samba. There, her early career in Brazil was primarily one of sound: she was a recording and radio star. As a white woman performing black music – samba was born from the African roots of Brazil – Miranda signified a national unity by performing as a hybrid of racial representation. However, she did not make the transition to visual media until the period immediately before coming to the United States. Once in Hollywood, Miranda’s celebrity was largely invested in her appearance. Here, she represented a spectacle of difference. Her costumed body, heavily accented English and performative hips, arms and eyes became a generic Latin American Other against which white American-ness could be measured. In this chapter, I will show how blackness was appropriated by Miranda in Brazil, then transported to the United States and commodified as a Latin fashion. Ultimately, these manipulations of racial representation were facilitated through the performance dance. While most women in this study accessed their careers and personae through whiteness (particularly through Spanish-ness or American-ness) – Miranda’s representational in-between-ness was aligned with the idea of blackness in the United States, much like 68 Jennifer Lopez in later years. But unlike Dolores Del Rio, Rita Hayworth or Lopez, Miranda’s affiliation with dance was limited; her movements were less choreographed and she rarely performed anything more complicated than a saunter across the floor. Instead, her movement was predominantly located in her eyes, hips and hands. These gestures accompanied her performance as a singer and were largely limited to the proscenium or dance floor. 2 Once in Hollywood, she invoked others to dance more than she danced herself. 3 In Brazil, Miranda’s whiteness enabled her to hybridize and appropriate blackness. But in the United States, Miranda’s image moved with blackness; thus, her specific display of non-whiteness prevented her from breaking out of her type even as she was labeled Latin. This compromised, yet powerful, simultaneity of representational whiteness and non-whiteness became Miranda’s performative strength and prison of characterization. While she enjoyed a short but spectacular career, Miranda had little range or mobility beyond her shimmying hips. Ultimately, Miranda’s difference was worn and performed through her body: as the opening epigraph suggests, her body’s movement was more articulate than her speech to U.S. audiences. To show how Miranda’s body and dance impacted her representation in Hollywood, I will first contextualize the transition of her celebrity from Brazil to the United States. Second, I will show how the in-between-ness of Carmen Miranda as Latin helped mediate 69 the commodification of blackness within the United States. Miranda’s appropriation of black styles while in Brazil provided the United States with a raw material, like coffee and sugar, to import. Thanks to Carmen Miranda, this so-called Latin style was easily commodified during the 1940s through film, music and fashion in the United States. By the end of her career, Miranda experienced a “scrambling of erotic imagery” and her racialized difference was conflated into a performance of gender and sexuality both in Hollywood and at large. 4 I will thereby conclude by showing how this history shaped Miranda’s image and its movement to result in a specific sexualization in Hollywood films and publicity. Merging Whiteness and Blackness in Biographical Brazil Before Miranda became the toast of Hollywood, her career experienced significant recalibrations inspired by blackness and mediated through whiteness in Brazil. In the Portuguese-colonized Brazil, Miranda’s whiteness stemmed from the Portuguese lineage of her body while her association with blackness was rooted in her working class origins and affinity for samba music. The result was an in-between-ness that facilitated a professional and performative hybridization of race and class. This hybridity was initially represented through Miranda’s sound and eventually through her image and style of movement. 70 Miranda’s whiteness presumably maximized her appeal as a samba singer and helped foster a national culture in Brazil. 5 Latin American historian Darién J. Davis has illustrated how Carmen Miranda’s popularity emerged alongside the first presidency of Getúlio Vargas (1930-1945). At the time, Vargas attempted to foster a unified national identity for Brazil that “presumably overcame racism.” 6 To accomplish this, the government channeled the myth of racial equality through popular culture – specifically through samba music. To effectively intersect and unify the so-called classes of this racially divided population, Vargas’s administration sought a symbol to reach and appeal to various communities. Miranda – a white woman performing in a black style – was the perfect artist to facilitate this goal; with both public and national support, her emerging popularity soared. She soon became the white face of black Brazilian samba. 7 In Carmen Miranda’s only English-language biography, Brazilian Bombshell: The Biography of Carmen Miranda, Martha Gil-Montero organizes Miranda’s rise to fame in Brazil and the United States like a dream of upward mobility come true. Born Maria do Carmo Miranda da Cunha in Porto in 1909, Miranda’s family migrated to Brazil around 1910. Her father sought a more prosperous life yet struggled to make ends meet once in Rio. 8 The family initially lived near the docks – a rough neighborhood described by Gil-Montero as “a raucous meeting place for sailors and prostitutes” – and 71 Maria enrolled in a Catholic convent school for disadvantaged children. 9 By 1925, the Cunha family relocated to another part of Rio and opened a boarding house. The house relied on the labor of family members and Maria left school to work there and as a milliner’s assistant. 10 She eventually began to perform around town as a singer and in 1928 her career accelerated when she met the first of a long string of musical collaborators and mentors, Josué de Barros. 11 With Barros’ help, Maria debuted as “Carmen Miranda” in 1929 – an alias chosen to hide the recital’s publicity from her father. Though she had begun her career by singing tangos, Miranda gained both popularity and success when she began to sing sambas. Within a year of her publicized debut, Miranda became the first singer in Brazil to receive a radio station contract; she was soon labeled the “Queen of Carioca” and the “Ambassador do Samba.” 12 Miranda’s position as a white woman in Brazil enabled her appropriation of samba music and facilitated her agency as a performer. Maria da Cunha built Carmen Miranda’s persona on an appropriation and “exaggeration of black and other popular rhythms.” 13 Her humorous and satirical repertoire utilized the existing popularity of black music among the lower classes to create a “unique character and delivery” that worked well over the radio. 14 Yet, Miranda’s overwhelming success was only possible because she could simultaneously utilize the power structure of Brazil’s 72 whiteness. 15 As a white woman, Miranda had more access to mainstream media than a black performer – male or female. 16 Though it was still considered inappropriate for a woman to sing on the radio, Miranda challenged these societal norms by capitalizing on her racial affiliation with “the urban elite and the state” despite her working class background. 17 Miranda’s appropriation of blackness was possible largely because Portugal’s enforced hierarchy of colonization and slavery ensured that privilege remained tied to whiteness while blackness was systematically subordinated in Brazilian society. Brazil’s categories of race and class were significantly re-structured after Portugal’s colonization began in 1550. Initially, Portugal held little interest in Brazil. By the late 1500s, however, the colony was Europe’s primary source for sugar. Sugar production was lucrative, but required a significant labor force. At first, Portugal tried to employ and enslave American Indians native to Brazil, but Indians were susceptible to diseases like smallpox and proved to be a less profitable source of labor. 18 Instead, Portugal imported African labor and by the late 1800s Brazil was the second largest slave importer in the New World. 19 After Brazil abolished slavery in 1888, the country began to re- position itself as a racial democracy. Though a disavowal of its racist origins, this democratization was built upon a process of cultural or literal whitening. To achieve a sense of racial equality, Brazil re-imagined its social 73 hierarchy as a class-based social structure. 20 This national ideology denied the existence of racism (within its borders) and by 1920 the term “race” was eliminated from the census. 21 Yet, Latin American scholar Ben Bollig clarifies that racial equality in Brazil was false and meant treating black Brazilians “as if they were White.” 22 Blackness posed such a problem that the “white ruling elite” encouraged interracial marriages to produce “an overall whitening of the Brazilian population” and European immigrants were increasingly admitted to the country. 23 Brazil’s solution to the problem of blackness was to create a hybridized racial identity that lightened the face of Brazil. Ironically, Brazil attempted to whiten itself as Miranda’s entertainment career proceeded to hybridize towards blackness. But Miranda’s performance of in-between-ness was the perfect instrument to manufacture a stronger sense of nation-hood in the 1930s and the Vargas administration capitalized on her appeal. As a working class descendent of the colonizer who gravitated towards the Afro-Brazilian sounds of samba in the racially complex Brazil, Miranda was the hybrid performer capable of distributing a traditionally black musical style to wider, upper-class/white audiences on a national scale. Over time, as Davis points out, Carmen Miranda’s white body and black musical style became “the embodiment of Brazilian popular music” in the service of 74 national unity. 24 Later, her body would produce a similar unity for another nation: the United States. Dancing In-Between: Mediating The Image Of Blackness While Miranda had long utilized the samba sound, she had yet to incorporate the image and movement associated with Brazilian blackness into her performance. What came to be known as the “Carmen Miranda style” was inspired by the historical descendents of Brazil’s slavery and poverty in Bahia. 25 It was a “dark-skinned” biracial man named Dorival Caymmi that inspired Miranda to adopt the Bahiana style. 26 Caymmi, originally from Bahia, had written an ode to the women of his region – describing the look and allure of a Bahiana – entitled, “O que é que a bahiana tem?” 27 The song was introduced to Miranda when it was commissioned for the Brazilian film Banana da Terra (1938), in which Miranda was featured. 28 It was in Banana da Terra that Carmen Miranda debuted the look that would become her trademark fashion: a colorfully flowing skirt, bangles and turban. 29 This look, carefully described in Caymmi’s song, was widely understood as that of the black Bahiana – a national icon 30 and one of the only female “types” identifiable in Brazil. 31 From a performer’s standpoint, the grandeur of the Bahiana style was perfect for the stage: the colors and fabrics flattered Miranda’s eye color, complexion and body shape while they 75 simultaneously enhanced her stage movement and presence. 32 Miranda’s training as a seamstress and milliner enabled her to maximize the design to compliment her body. 33 She enhanced her body’s petite frame with an exaggerated turban and platform sandals to create the illusion of height, then amplified the style with a surplus of large necklaces and a midriff shirt. Such modifications illustrate Miranda’s innovation and tenacity as a performer – as well as the impact of her working class experience. Miranda’s look illustrates her agency as a fashion designer and icon. Because men have predominantly held the empowered positions over exoticized female bodies – as spectators, “framers of women’s movement” and fashion designers – Miranda’s active role in developing her own style wrests some of this power as a shaper of her own body. 34 Such transgressions were not without their challenges, however. The Brazilian elite, for example, considered Miranda’s use of the Bahiana style to be both risqué and tacky. 35 This high society had customarily looked to Europe for its fashion sensibilities. In the United States, however, Miranda’s look eventually became one of the most identifiable elements of Miranda’s career. Banana da Terra was instrumental in Miranda’s career for another reason. The film was the first time dance became a component of her performance style and the sensuality of her movement became the model for every performance thereafter. Because dance accompanied Miranda’s 76 appropriation of the Bahiana image, the resulting style of Miranda must be discussed in relation to blackness. 36 Like the fashion, Miranda’s movement was indebted to Caymmi’s instruction: specifically, he taught her the basic yet energized hand gestures of Bahiana movement. 37 While Gil-Montero credits Caymmi as the source of Miranda’s gestures, she seems to favor Miranda’s agency in the performance and seemingly disregards the racial politics of this tutelage. Gil-Montero notes: “It is true that Dorival [Caymmi] taught her how to move her hands, but Carmen perfected the gestures and involved her whole body in a pursuit of self-expression.” 38 This statement seemingly disconnects Miranda’s self- expression from her performance of a black dance form. Though often overlooked or disregarded, non-white dance forms have long been culturally appropriated, often in the service of white sexual or sensual expression. In kind, sensuality and sexuality have regularly stereotyped or been conflated with representations of non-whiteness. Marta Savigliano’s work asserts that in Europe, for example, the Argentinean tango “opened a venue for women to exhibit sensuality in public.” 39 Miranda’s self-creation is indeed a mark of her agency, but her use of black style and movement to create a mode of sensual expression cannot be divorced from politics of race and the body. 77 A Tropical Style For A Divided Nation Miranda’s adoption of a black style in Brazil and its sweeping success in the United States epitomizes the commodification of non-white sensuality. Miranda’s costumed exoticism unwittingly packaged the perceived passion of blackness for white consumption. Miranda’s popularization of the Bahiana style in the United States simultaneously disassociated it from the blackness of both Bahia and Caymmi. For example, the origin of Miranda’s turban was rewritten as simply Latin by the end of her career. In 1950, one studio attributed Carmen’s success to her hats but revised the history behind the style. The MGM press book for Nancy Goes to Rio (1950), featured an article entitled, “Carmen’s Success Goes to Her – Hat.” The publicity piece stated: It was the Miranda head which first started the turban rage which caromed from Carmen’s native Rio to the States. Like most innovations, it was inspired by accident. “It was all because I had spent the day swimming,” Miss Miranda explains. “Then I was asked to go out dancing. My hair was a mess. I went to my wardrobe and pulled out a scarf. I twisted it around my head. It didn’t look so bad. Then I decided to pep it up with some sequins. When it was finished, I slicked back my hair and wrapped the scarf around turban-style.” 40 The revisionist history of Miranda’s style highlights how blackness was gradually erased and replaced; Rio is mentioned, but not Bahia or the Bahiana. Further, the moment of inspiration is associated with leisure (swimming and going out dancing), not the African slavery from whence it came. 78 This disavowal may have been necessary in the 1940s and 1950s. At the time, black representation was largely limited to minor, menial or stereotypical roles. 41 The only other women that regularly wore turbans in film were the black female performers cast as maids or housekeepers. The specific commodification of Miranda’s style is equally revealing in what it masks. Miranda’s hats – quite simply – hid her hair. In many ways, the absence of Miranda’s hair speaks to her non-whiteness and seemingly pressured her to conceal her hair – and possibly any black roots that may be hidden there. At a time when tensions between U.S. blacks and whites were intensifying, Miranda was able to transfer black styles and culture through a white body under the code of Latin. Because Miranda adopted the Bahiana style immediately before visiting the United States, it is important to identify how her mediation of black fashion and movement facilitated the style’s commodification for whites in the United States. 42 The Latin body – in this case, Brazilian – created a mediator between blackness and whiteness. The in-between-ness of this identification enabled U.S. audiences to more easily commodify Miranda’s style. Jane Desmond’s work on bodily performance in Staging Tourism: Bodies on Display from Waikiki to Sea World points to the cultural necessity of this in-between-ness. Desmond notes that the iconic 79 Hawaiian female is purposefully not too light and not too dark, thereby embodying “an important racialized subtext” of difference: Hawaiians are portrayed as neither black nor white. The significance of this presumed racialization in the visitor’s imaginary is that it helps to manufacture and “authenticate” at the bodily level a sense of ‘exotic’ difference while escaping from the tendentiousness of the black/white dichotomy that most powerfully frames racial discourse and fuels discord on the mainland [United States]. The resulting soft primitivism proffers a gentle, sensuous encounter with difference, different enough to be presented as ‘alluring’ but not threatening, of which the hula girl’s body is metonymic. 43 Like the Hawaiian female body, Miranda’s body provided a non-threatening difference that could be identified, desired and commodified for U.S. audiences eager to taste the exotic while disavowing the racial discord in their own back yard. Miranda proved that even black culture – as a raw material – could be imported and commodified if it was worn on or mediated through a Latin body. Miranda’s entry to the United States coincided with the nation’s emergence as an imperial power, particularly in relation to Latin America. Much has been written on the link between Miranda and the Good Neighbor Policy: Miranda embodied the Good Neighbor and was conceivably Brazil’s most important cultural import to the United States. 44 Despite Miranda’s years of success and celebrity in Brazil, she was seemingly discovered for U.S. consumption by a Broadway producer named Lee Shubert and an ice- skater-turned-Hollywood-star named Sonja Henie. In 1939, both Shubert 80 and Henie visited Rio and attended one of Miranda’s nightclub performances. Shubert, a very shrewd theater owner and producer, was scouting new talent for Broadway; presumably, Henie was his companion on the trip. While the details of Miranda’s early interactions are – even by biographical accounts – vague, both Henie and Shubert found Miranda to be an appealing property; Henie admired Miranda’s dress while Shubert eyed Miranda’s performance. 45 On Miranda’s body, a style traditionally worn by black women was transported to the United States and “revolutionized fashion with its so-called Latin style.” 46 While Miranda appropriated blackness and made it her own, her light skin and migration from Brazil enabled American women like Sonja Henie to desire and utilize the Bahiana style as Latin. In 1940, Gladys Hall equated Miranda’s fashion influence with that of Hollywood. In an interview with Modern Screen, Hall interviews Miranda. When Miranda praises Hollywood as a fashion “Mecca” for “women of the world,” Hall responds accordingly: To interrupt Miranda, briefly, and asking her Sous’ American pardon, quite a few women are turning towards Miranda as towards Mecca, too, come to that…for the heavy scarlet mouth make-up she affects has certainly been picked up by the New York debs and has since cut a crimson swatch from coast to coast…the ‘bahiana’ costume she introduced to Nors’ America has become a Thing…the Lana Turner has one, Kay Frances, Alice Faye, Vera Vague…the turbans, great hunks of gold and great chunks of jewels the size of rocs’ eggs, barbarous, exciting, melodramatic… 47 81 The fact that Francis, Faye and Vague sport such fashion does not prevent Hall from relying on inflated and Orientalist terms to describe Miranda’s “barbarous” and “melodramatic” style in detail: “the turbans, great hunks of gold and great chunks of jewels the size of rocs’ eggs.” Latin-themed fashions were soon and literally marketed through Miranda’s body. Casts were made of Miranda’s face to sell turbans at stores like Saks Fifth Avenue (fig. 4) and then affixed to mannequins featuring fashions in department store windows – Latin styles in the United States and U.S. styles in Latin America (fig. 5). 48 Miranda is still remembered as a fashion icon – her image even appears in a recent Elle article on platform shoes. When Miranda arrived in the United States, she was immediately positioned as both a discovery and international commodity in the midst of an accelerating World War. Her debut was consequently framed through three national stages once in the United States – the Brazil Pavilion of the New Figure 5 Figure 4 Figures 4 and 5 exemplify how Miranda’s likeness was used to feature fashions for consumption by both U.S. and Latin American citizens. 82 York World’s Fair, a Paris-based show on Broadway produced by Shubert and Hollywood films largely set in Latin America. 49 Each space uniquely disavowed the black-white racial tensions within the United States while lauding Miranda’s performance of difference. Marta Savigilano’s work on the tango has shown how France collected and purportedly refined its colonized cultures for commodification. 50 She states: “Western imperial stages and screens are set up to pass judgment, to frame, and to present the exotic as such.” 51 By displaying the exotic body within a “civilized” frame, the colonizing nation simultaneously affirmed its superiority while exploiting its own perceived lack of passion. This lack was then filled by a production of passion for Western consumption. The exotic female body exemplified the desire that compelled such consumption. Miranda’s entry to the United States was framed by such imperial staging. 52 While Miranda did make an appearance in the Brazil pavilion of the New York World’s Fair, a semi-annual celebration of international cultures hosted by various cities across the globe, her U.S. debut was an equally nationalized production entitled The Streets of Paris. 53 The Fair had stolen a good deal of Broadway’s audience, and Lee Shuberts’ production sought to lure many Fair patrons back with Miranda’s performance. 54 Shubert’s explicit use of Paris as a framing device to legitimize a collection of performances on a New York stage highlights the continued importance of France as a 83 center of taste. The Streets of Paris even legitimized two burlesque performers for Broadway audiences – a duo named Abbott and Costello 55 – and proved that Carmen Miranda could be a star in the United States. During WWII, Carmen Miranda embodied the Latin rhythms that “provided the desired escapism, exoticism, and potential for fantasy.” 56 As Alberto Sandoval-Sanchez’s work on Miranda asserts, such rhythms “evoked primitivism, liberation of the instincts and the body, and pervasive sexuality.” 57 The “Latin” female body often provided the “ideal [movie] partners with whom to shack up for a night. Carmen Miranda fulfilled this U.S. desire for escapism in the most spectacular way. 58 The potential of Latin America as an exotic background and compelling frame for Hollywood musicals became evident even before the emergence of Technicolor accelerated it in the 1940s. In 1933, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers debuted as a dancing duo in the film Flying Down to Rio. Though Miranda was not featured in the film, Flying Down to Rio was “the first and last U.S. musical about Rio to incorporate black performers in the cast.” 59 One of the show-stopping musical numbers famously introduced Astaire and Rogers as a dance team, but more importantly presented a three- tiered dance performance that became progressively less white as the movements were increasingly sexualized. The dance performance – entitled “The Carioca,” another term for Brazilian 60 – was invented by the 84 choreographer Hermes Pan and involved a heterosexual couple dancing forehead to forehead. As a dance, the Carioca presents a progression of passion equated with a series of racialized bodies. Three types of bodies perform their own version of the dance: white, then Latin and finally black. Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire represent whiteness; fascinated by the dance, the pair is compelled to try, but the ballroom grace with which they are later associated betrays them. Rogers and Astaire cannot dance the Carioca without colliding heads. 61 A group of Latin performers follow Rogers and Astaire, a chorus line composed of light complected, dark-haired men and women. The dancers wear costumes that seemingly amalgamate various Latin American styles: fringed mantillas, hair combs, beads and sheer skirts. The choreography is rather listless and primarily involves choreographed formations across the floor. However, the Latin dancers wear sheer skirts that reveal their legs; this contrasts with the long black and opaque gown worn by Ginger Rogers and can be read as more explicitly sexual. Finally, a black ensemble literally vibrates across the floor, dancing more vivaciously and dynamically than the previous two pairings. As these black performers take the stage, Etta Moten – an African-American singer dressed in a Bahiana costume – serenades the dancers from a balcony and, in English, instructs the audience “how to be a Carioca.” 62 85 The passions seemingly evident in this black version of the Carioca epitomize the lure of Latin rhythms while the omission of black bodies from later representations of Rio illustrates how problematic blackness was to imaging Latin America for the United States in the 1930s and 1940s. Such tensions required that a Latin body – particularly a Latin female – mediate blackness for white consumption henceforth. 63 Thus, when Carmen Miranda arrived in the United States in 1939, she embodied the most commodifiable forms of blackness – fashion, song and movement – because black bodies were no longer explicitly represented by Hollywood musicals set in Rio. Miranda’s “Hips-No-Tiz-Ing” Body and Its Performance 64 As a Latin, Miranda accessed Hollywood in ways that black performers in the United States could not. Yet, discourses about her body proved to manufacture her image for consumption in similarly oversimplified ways. Though a spectacular hit on Broadway, one article credited the Shuberts with finding the cure to lagging box office profits: the “torrid, infectious, undulant Carmen Miranda.” 65 The article, entitled “She Saved Broadway from the World’s Fair,” praised Miranda’s performance by focusing on the movement and exotic excess of her body; this trend permeated Broadway press and continued when Miranda became a Hollywood attraction. Her vivacity, exaggerated headdresses, platform shoes, bare midriff, 86 exposed leg, animated hands and eyes fulfilled the light-skinned, tropicalized stereotype of Latin America that was desired and maintained by the United States and Hollywood. Like Hall’s description of Miranda’s fashion, words like “barbarous” and “savage” were often used to describe Miranda’s body and performance style. 66 Miranda would continue to be framed by both film and publicity as a sort of exotic animal imported from a tropical locale. Miranda’s publicity often enunciated the choreographed difference her body represented and she was frequently described as a flurry of enticing movement and seductive gestures. Paramount’s studio biography for Miranda reflects the general language used to describe Carmen from the start of her career: What it is that Carmen has is difficult to describe; so difficult, in fact, that dramatic critics have grown neurotic in their attempts to get it into words that would make sense. Nevertheless, it must be attempted again. First, there is the impact on the eye of Carmen’s costumes, always barbaric and brilliant, but nearly always covering her thoroughly with the exception of a space between the seventh rib and a point about the waistline. Second, what the male spectator hopes she means with a flicker of her eyes is easily visible at the distance of one kilometer. In case anybody has missed the point, Carmen develops the idea with her singularly expressive hands. 67 While contemporary work on the female body in musicals has complicated Laura Mulvey’s theorization of the male gaze in Hollywood film, this passage clearly positions Miranda as a spectacle of male desire. 68 Yet, any attempt to categorize Miranda’s performance renders the critic neurotic, making her spectators – male, spectators, specifically – incapable of coherent thought 87 and presumably eliciting a carnal response. It becomes clear that Miranda’s power resides in the performance of her body. The writer gradually reveals the source of his neuroses: the concealment of Miranda’s body. The tiny sliver of exposed flesh – “the space between the seventh rib and a point about the waistline” – points to Miranda’s belly and hips. While these areas of the female body are commonly known as erogenous zones, they can also be identified as the solar plexus – the center of a dancer’s balance and a singer’s breath. Miranda’s true nature – as a sexual being – is purportedly betrayed by her knowing, flickering eyes and “singularly expressive hands,” despite the rather modest costuming. This particular excerpt does not mix words: the male spectator watches Miranda and waits for a signal that she is a willing participant in his fantasy. In this example, Miranda’s performance is troubling to put into words: her movement is somehow incomprehensible by standards of sensible language. Words, ironically, betray this writer. For example, the description of Miranda’s clothes – “barbaric and brilliant” – exposes the paradox of Miranda’s in-between-ness. The term “barbaric” Others Miranda by denoting a primitiveness that connotes a lack of control; yet, the word “brilliant” belies this derogatory term by hinting at a desire for Miranda’s radiance. Carmen’s eccentric movements are channeled from her voice and transmitted through her body to unite as a spectacle of excess: of 88 jewelry, of expression, of sexuality. Unlike Del Rio, Hayworth or Lopez, Miranda’s dance is located and contained in the sinuous movement of her hips and hands. Her talented body taunts the male spectator like a shiny object. He – and by extension, the United States – is giddy with desire. Perhaps as a result of this power, Miranda’s body – both in costume and expressive performance style – was regularly subjected to the scrutiny of the Production Code Administration. At the height of Miranda’s fame in the early 1940s, the Production Code Administration (PCA, created in 1934) determined whether film scripts and final products were within the limits of “good taste.” The Code decreed that dance was a potential threat to decency, because “indecent movements” might suggest or represent “sexual actions or indecent passions.” 69 Dance was such a threat that the category permeated the domain of costuming, another category under the watchful eye of the PCA. The Code stated “Dancing or costumes intended to permit undue exposure or indecent movements in the dance are forbidden.” 70 Consequently, Miranda’s costumes were scrutinized by the PCA to determine whether or not these jurisdictions were upheld. While archived PCA files for Miranda’s films contain the images of her modeling costumes, other performers were rarely included unless they were cabaret dancers or appeared in a nightgown for a particular scene. 71 89 Like the obsessive attention to her costuming, Miranda’s arrival in Hollywood films exoticized her body for a mainstream American consumption. Down Argentine Way (1940), Miranda’s cinematic debut, was the first film in a series of Technicolor musicals set in or themed around Latin America and developed by Twentieth-Century Fox. 72 Cast as a nightclub performer, Miranda’s film performance is lifted from her six-minute routine in The Streets of Paris. The cameo opened a floodgate of opportunity and Miranda became one of Fox’s biggest stars. 73 Fox gained popularity during the Depression with a series of Shirley Temple musicals; its success continued during WWII, due in large part to films that featured “south of the border” locations like Argentina (Down Argentine Way), Brazil (That Night in Rio, 1941) and Cuba (Weekend in Havana, 1941). Each of these films starred Carmen Miranda – the resident and flexible “Latin” of the studio at the time. Carmen Miranda’s cinematic debut was well received by critics and was again oriented around her exotic body and its movement. The film trade journal Variety claimed that Down Argentine Way ’s “beguiling song and music, arresting dances” provided an appropriate introduction for “the exotic and exciting Carmen Miranda” – complete in “Technicolor regalia” and with her “sway of the hips.” 74 Sadly, Down Argentine Way also mangled Latin American geography and culture, resulting in censorship by both Argentina and Brazil. The boycotts spurred significant Production Code 90 Administration reforms regarding Latin America, though with varied results. 75 Variety found Miranda’s “swift-tongued song recitals in Portuguese” to incorrectly “give an authentic Argentinean note to substantiate the title of the picture.” 76 Overall, U.S. media praise for Down Argentine Way was overwhelmingly positive, however misguided. While critical analyses of musicals has often neglected Fox films, Sean Griffin’s work on integrated musicals and racial representation has shown that Fox may have created more opportunities for nonwhite performers. According to Griffin, Fox musicals were largely based on the vaudeville format; thus, they have been overlooked by academia in favor of the more lauded integrated musicals. 77 The vaudeville format often granted nonwhite performers like the black tap-dancing Nicholas Brothers and Carmen Miranda to wield some control over their choreography and representation. 78 By 1944 Miranda was one of the highest paid female performers in the United States, but this financial success belied Miranda’s intense and variegated labor. Miranda was the highest paid female performer because she often performed nightly shows at multiple clubs and was also a radio and film performer. 79 Further, Miranda’s contract with Shubert entitled him to half of her earnings, so she was forced to work twice as hard for her worth. 80 Yet, Miranda was proud of her success and even boasted about her fortune to Hedda Hopper, one of Hollywood’s premier gossip columnists. In one 91 telegram to Hopper, Miranda outlined not only her financial worth, but also the constant movement that accompanied her a career as a performer – from Miami to Chicago to Hollywood. 81 In time, Miranda was able to buy out her contract with the Shuberts. 82 Shifting the cultural frame to a literal frame, we can see how Carmen Miranda was filmed and publicized as if she was constantly in motion. In musical numbers, the shot composition that framed Miranda was determined by the height of her turban and the swing of her moving hips: the lower edge of the frame often began below her hips and the top edge skirted the height of her increasingly outlandish turbans. For example, Miranda’s third Hollywood musical, Week-End in Havana (1941), opens as an advertisement for Cuban tourism. The first shots depict postcards of Havana and quickly dissolve to a colorfully clad band performing. 83 The camera pans to Miranda, the focal point of the scene, posed with her arms in an “Ole!” position. Miranda begins and ends the musical number in this pose. This pose quickly became the hallmark of Miranda’s stillness and publicity photos often depicted Miranda with her arms in the ever-erect pose, creating the sense of movement even while still. This pose has often been duplicated in parodies of Miranda. There are relatively few shots in Miranda’s opening sequence of Weekend in Havana, but each frames Miranda’s body in telling ways. The first shot is wide, framing Miranda – colorfully dressed in a bright pink, 92 white and blue striped skirt, midriff shirt and flowery headdress – from her ankles to the top of her hat. When the camera pushes in on Miranda, it reframes her figure from torso to hat, accentuating the exposed parts of her body: her bare shoulders, exposed midriff, lower arms, hands and her hips. The sway of Miranda’s hips are underscored by her costuming, seemingly exposed through a layer of white fishnet from the triangular cutout on each side of the skirt. Miranda sings her first verse with her eyes and hands within this frame. When the band changes to the chorus, the camera pulls out to reveal Miranda’s dance step in a wide shot. Miranda’s movement is contained and does not move beyond a few square feet. She completes three, three-point turns and shifts her weight from foot to foot in a series of ball-chains towards the band, stage right. Her arms and skirt are in constant motion, each twirling about her. The shot finally cuts to a medium shot, where it remains for Miranda for the length of song. Miranda’s singing – “con movimientos” 84 – tells of beautiful girls while her ever-moving hands enunciate this shape through a gesture outlining an hourglass shape. Each of these shots and dance gestures enunciates the importance of Miranda’s exposed body and its movement by continually presenting her within a wide frame; rarely, if ever, was Miranda captured in a close-up shot. 93 Miranda as Icon: Ambiguity and the Legacy of Flamboyance In the end, Miranda’s in-between-ness was both a source of professional agency and frustration. She never surpassed the limitations of her style and was largely cast in supporting, comedic roles that included at least one “specialty” song and dance. Already limited to these types of roles, Miranda’s options were further reduced when Hollywood’s enthusiasm for Latin America as a fantasy space declined. Miranda’s in-between-ness created a paradox. It enabled her to be seen as desirable: press reviews spoke favorably of her body and she did share a few onscreen kisses with white male stars, something ultimately out of range for black actresses in Hollywood. Yet, she was never successfully cast as a romantic lead and, cinematically, she remained an “ideal partner with whom to shack up for a night.” 85 Gradually, the complex of “culture, class and race” that Miranda initially embodied in Brazil was dissolved in favor of a performance and persona organized around gender and sexuality in the United States. 86 In Hollywood, the more fixed Carmen Miranda’s image became, the more her iconicity became a space for gender and sexual play. Miranda’s legacy as a flamboyant performer exemplifies the limitations and power of her in- between-ness. Two moments from her Hollywood career identify the ambiguities of performance while the persistence of her image motions how this ambiguity proved to have a life of its own. As a non-blonde, 87 94 Miranda’s representation was less than white and she was not cast as the primary love interest in films. Yet, her difference was not considered problematically black, even in racist pockets of the South. The absence of Miranda’s hair supports the fact that she did not access the privilege of whiteness as the other women in this study did. In the past century, a Latina performer’s hair color and style has been directly related to her stardom; the closer to blonde-ness – and by extension, whiteness – she was, the more mainstream roles she could access. The color, style and texture of a performer’s hair factored into her casting as a lead performer, particularly in the 1940s when blonde hair signified star power. These factors played a similar role in Miranda’s career, much like the other Latinas in this study. For example, Dolores Del Rio was one of the few dark-haired women in early Hollywood and impacted the types of roles she was assigned. Likewise, Rita Cansino became Rita Hayworth when her hair was modified and lightened and the expansion of Jennifer Lopez’s roles coincided with the straightening and lightening of her hair. Such tensions around blondeness may explain the attention to Miranda’s turban and her later obsession with revealing her hair from beneath it. 88 In many ways, Miranda’s lack of hair and overly prominent turban were subtle yet solid links to blackness in film; the only other women that regularly hid their hair were black women cast as maids. Miranda’s hair was rarely 95 exposed in film roles and only discussed in terms of its lack or excess: the lack of blondeness or the excess of décor. 89 In this absence, the female costars and female leads in Miranda’s films – Betty Grable, Alice Faye and Viviane Blaine – were invariably blonde. 90 However, the disavowal of blackness in U.S. films and in many parts of the country in the 1940s may have allowed Miranda to be seemingly welcomed as “white” within a U.S. context. The Gang’s All Here (1944), perhaps Miranda’s best-known film, received accolades from one member of the Atlanta motion picture review board for its lack of black representation. Surprisingly, it does not mention one word about Miranda’s non-whiteness. In a letter to MGM studios, one film reviewer from Georgia offered the following account, a telling look at the debates circulating among southern state distributors and censors in the mid-1940s: I had the real pleasure of sitting thro [sic] the very pleasing picture THE GANG’S ALL HERE and of enjoying the MANY comments such as – “At last the Producers have realized that white people CAN be entertaining without having to inject Negroes” and “Thank the Lord one picture without niggers” – Yes, I’m quoting. […] It is the same old squawk. We cannot understand the desire to exploit these people, and who to us represent paganism at its height, when they are doing their natural things, and the acts of monkeys when they are aping the white folks. That’s the way we feel, and I guess we will always feel that way so I will just continue to cut out the most objectionable parts and WALK OUT with hundreds of others on the rest. 91 The author of this letter, Zella Richardson, identifies how a simple practice of reviewing films for release in local theaters was laden with racist and 96 nationalist ideologies. While many theaters simply cut the scenes that featured black performers to avoid “offending” their audiences, many films may have been rejected based on the racist tendencies of the local censorship boards, as this letter states. 92 As a non-black performer, Miranda was welcomed onto the screens of Georgia, all the while carrying blackness with her. Yet, the complexity of these moments was again distilled to produce roles that made Miranda little more than a sexualized “Other.” Towards the end of her career, Miranda was cast as the “Other Woman” in an otherwise delightfully generic MGM musical entitled A Date with Judy (1948). The integrated musical was organized around the love life of a teenager named Judy. In the film, Judy experiences her first lover’s quarrel and loses faith in boys and men. Meanwhile, Judy’s father Melvin (Wallace Beery) decides to learn to rhumba as an anniversary surprise for his wife. Early in the film, Melvin denigrates the dance as “vulgar” – even though the version he and the audience see is tame in every way. As a result of Judy’s insecurities, she begins to suspect that her father is having an affair. Melvin is, in fact, meeting a woman in secret; he has hired a dance instructor named Rosita (Miranda) to teach him how to dance. The film makes several jokes at Miranda’s expense, particularly in connection with her well-known and sexualized dancing persona. Rosita 97 does not enter the narrative until forty-one minutes into the film, but her presence is the linchpin of the plot. One satellite cable company summarizes the film as the story of “A Santa Barbara, Calif. teen [who] thinks her father is having an affair with a Latin dancer.” 93 When Miranda does arrive in the film, she immediately explains the basic principle of the rhumba: “It’s just a matter of a little wiggle here and a little wiggle there. All you have to do is to get the right wiggle at the right place at the right time. Everything will be fine. I’ll show you.” And she does, sinuously wiggling her hips in a medium wide shot. At the sight of this movement, which the camera has fully captured, Melvin makes eye contact with the camera and closes the shades, indicating that the audience understands how embarrassing the power of Miranda’s wriggling hips can be. The implied sensuality of Miranda’s exhibition – and the shame it registers to “normal folks” – is reprised when Judy surprises her father at the office. Melvin tries to hide Rosita in a closet, but her response is indignant and she protests that her “profession is an honorable one.” Sadly, Miranda made only two more feature films after A Date with Judy; based on her career’s trajectory, Miranda’s profession may have been honorable, but it was definitely expendable. 94 These racialized examples illustrate how Miranda’s in-between-ness may have opened other spaces for the expression of gender and sexuality. The ambiguity of Miranda’s persona carved out a space for parody that allowed 98 performers – from professional entertainers to housewives and amateur drag queens – to take on the aura of the “Other.” During WWII, for example, Miranda was the female celebrity most frequently impersonated by GIs, both heterosexual and homosexual. 95 By simply searching for Carmen Miranda images on the Internet, once can see how many types of people – and animals – have invoked the spirit of Miranda. Yet, many do so by reducing her image to a bowl of fruit on the head. By this point, however, many U.S. performers had already parodied Miranda’s look and style. For example, Mickey Rooney, Jerry Lewis and Warner Bros. characters each donned Miranda’s style at one point or other in their careers – some were tributes to Miranda while others were cruel. Even Rita Moreno, at the age of nine, “donned a fruit salad chapeau made by her mother, and did Carmen Miranda impersonations at a Bar Mitzvah celebration in New York.” 96 Conclusion Miranda’s meteoric rise – though a testament to her abilities as a performer – no less signaled the privilege of her white body and the desirability of black musical styles. Her continued, posthumous popularity utilizes the ambiguity – the in-between-ness – of white representational privilege and the appropriation of blackness. 97 Following her debut, 99 Miranda’s energetic reception propelled her into the Hollywood spotlight. As the war came to a close, so did her career – an indication of the deep correlation between Miranda’s image and Hollywood escapism. Miranda was unable to break from her oversimplified characterization in musical films and eventually suffered a heart attack trying to out perform her own flamboyant style. In the United States, Miranda’s exoticism was a tropicalized Other against which idealized notions of U.S. cultural citizenship and whiteness could be cultivated during WWII. As a result, Miranda’s complex Brazilian persona was collapsed into a two-dimensional image of brightly colored fabric, fruit and mispronunciation. In the United States and Hollywood, Miranda’s hybridization of Brazilian blackness and whiteness was translated into a commodifiable in-between-ness of Latina representation. Somewhere between the poles of whiteness and blackness, Carmen Miranda was desirable, yet unstable. This moment lives on, from the top fruit of Miranda’s turban to the tip of her platform-ed toe. 100 Chapter Two Endnotes 1 University of Southern California, Cinema-Television Archive, The Bergen Files, Bergen and McCarthy, “Ventriloquism (Carmen Miranda), Experience Brazil 3-16-41,” page 12. 2 By inciting others to dance, Miranda’s performance further supported her recordings; film/theater audiences could leave the revue or cinema and buy her recordings by Decca. 3 Miranda’s movements do not appear to be heavily choreographed – little more than moving to camera marks – as the other women in this study. There are only a few examples of Miranda performing a modified duet or anything more complicated than a quick turn or saunter across the stage or dance floor. 4 James Mandrell in “Carmen Miranda Betwixt and Between, or, Neither Here nor There.” Latin American Literary Review (29: 57, 2001): 26-39: 35. 5 “[T]he administration required an image, a face, that could be applauded by the upper, middle and popular classes….Less than fifty years after the abolition of slavery…that face would naturally be one of a white person: Carmen Miranda, born in Portugal but raised in Brazil.” The context of this quote suggests that Davis is complicating the role of Miranda’s whiteness and its imperial function within a multiracial Brazil. Darién J. Davis, “Racial Purity and National Humor: Exploring Brazilian Samba from Noel Rosa to Carmen Miranda, 1930-1939,” Latin American Popular Culture: An Introduction, ed. William H. Beezley and Linda A. Curcio-Nagy (Wilmington, Del.: SR Books, 2000), 184. 6 Davis, 183. 7 Davis, 184. 8 The first chapter of Gil-Montero’s biography about Miranda chronicles Miranda’s early family struggles in Rio and is a significant resource in this pre-history. Martha Gil-Montero, Brazilian Bombshell: The Biography of Carmen Miranda (New York: D.I. Fine, 1989), 12-13. 9 Interestingly, the school was Maria’s introduction to radio; it supported itself by occasionally producing radio programs and featuring the talents of its students. Gil-Montero, 14-15. 10 Gil-Montero, 17. 101 11 Gil-Montero, 20. 12 Davis, 188. Also see Bananas Are My Business (1995) by Helena Solberg. Solberg’s intervention in Miranda’s career seems largely organized around gender and class. The female director hailed from the Brazilian elite and takes a very interesting and subjective view of Miranda’s career and life. Her fascination with Miranda seems organized around her gender transgressions and interactions with the blonde, white ideals of Hollywood – not necessarily whiteness itself. While watching the documentary, I found race to be largely unengaged by the film. 13 Davis, 184. 14 Davis, 184. 15 Davis, 184. 16 For example, Dorival Caymmi, a dark complected man instrumental in Miranda’s career, received his break into the music industry by way of Miranda. See Gil-Montero. 17 Davis, 184, 188. 18 Klein, Herbert S. “The Establishment of African Slavery in Latin America in the 16th Century,” African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 40. 19 Portugal began colonizing Brazil in 1550 and by the late 1800s, over three and a half million slaves had been transported to Brazil. Klein, Find Page. 20 The denial of this hierarchy was linked to the fact that Brazil had a multiethnic demographic. Tina Gudrun Jensen, “Discourses on Afro- Brazilian Religion: From De-Africanization to Re-Africanization,” Latin American Religion in Motion (New York: Routledge, 1999), 278. 21 “Race was omitted from the 1920 census, while the 1964 constitution forbade any mention of racism.” Ben Bollig, "White Rapper/Black Beats: Discovering a Race Problem in the Music of Gabriel o Pensador," Latin American Music Review: 23, no. 2 (2002): 161. 22 Italics in original. Bollig, 162. 102 23 Jensen, 277. 24 Davis, 186. 25 At present, Bahia’s population has shifted from an African and Indian majority to a mixed race population. “Bahia's population consists of a mulatto majority, with sizable black and white minorities. Population density varies considerably.” “Bahia.” Encyclopædia Britannica. 2005. Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service. 19 Dec. 2005 <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9011777>. 26 Gil-Montero, 51. 27 In English, the song is titled, “What does the Bahiana Girl Have?” 28 This was Miranda’s last film produced in Brazil and unaffiliated with Hollywood. 29 Banana da Terrra was Miranda’s biggest and last film in Rio. Miranda’s Brazilian film career was overall brief, consisting of short sequences that captured her singing on a stage. These include: Carnival Songs in Rio (1932), Voz do Carnival (1933) and Alô, Alô Brasil! (1935). Both Carnival Songs in Rio and Voz do Carnival were minor “documentary takes of artists” and copies of these no longer exist. Gil-Montero, 49. 30 Davis, 187. 31 Gil-Montero, 55-56. 32 Gil-Montero, 57. 33 Later, Miranda’s laboring body would become a sort of WWII icon for America’s newly laboring (white) female bodies. Her exoticism was easily modified and commodified by women eager to “spice up” their uniforms through “colorful floral scarves for factory work…bright red lipstick and costume jewelry.” Sarah Berry, Screen Style: Fashion and Femininity in 1930s Hollywood (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 126. 34 Marta E. Savigliano, Tango and the Political Economy of Passion (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), 98. 103 35 Gil-Montero, 56. 36 This transformation occurred as Miranda began the transition towards visual media. Though the timing may be coincidental, the ornate image that Miranda embodied would become ideal as Miranda became a Broadway and Hollywood star in the United States. Or, as Davis states, “Her journey north occurred precisely at the moment when she had made the appropriation of a black musical icon complete.” Davis, 197. 37 Gil-Montero, 55. 38 Gil-Montero, 55. 39 Savigliano, 127. 40 University of Southern California, Cinema-Television Archive, Special Collections, Nancy Goes to Rio “Advertising, Publicity, Exploitation,” MGM Press Book, File 1 of 2. 41 It is additionally important to attend to Miranda’s hats for the simple fact that they hid her hair. The absence of Miranda’s hair was replaced with a public (or publicity) obsession with Miranda’s hats. This absence of hair is indicative of the lack of whiteness that Miranda exhibited, when compared to other Latinas in this study. At the time – the only other women with turbans featured in film were maids. In the 1940s and 1950s, these maids were inevitably black. 42 Yet, it is important to note that these gestures were not a spontaneous and natural occurrence, as was often reported through Miranda’s famous quote, claiming that dance came naturally – the dance just needed to come out of her belly. 43 Jane C. Desmond, Staging Tourism: Bodies On Display From Waikiki To Sea World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 12. 44 See Alberto Sandoval-Sanchez, José, Can You See?: Latinos On and Off Broadway (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press) 1999.; Debra Nan Walters, “Hollywood, World War II, and Latin America: The Hollywood Good Neigbor Policy as Personified by Carmen Miranda,” University of Southern California Thesis, January 1978; Cynthia Enloe, “Carmen Miranda on My Mind: International Politics of the Banana,” Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (Berkeley: University 104 of California) 1990; Bianca Freire-Medeiros, "Hollywood Musicals and the Invention of Rio de Janeiro, 1933-1953,” Cinema Journal 41, no 4 (2002): 52- 67; and Shari Roberts, "The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat: Carmen Miranda, a Spectacle of Ethnicity," in Cinema Journal 32, no. 3 (1993): 3-23. 45 According to Gil-Montero and the lore of Miranda’s discovery, much of Shubert’s enthusiasm for Miranda may have been inspired by Henie’s interest in Miranda – and Miranda’s dress. In one variation of the story, Henie exclaims “Oh, Shubert, what a beautiful dress!” An accompanying version has Miranda give a Bahiana dress to Henie, who then wears it at a Carnival party held aboard the ship upon its return to New York. The style of blackness was a smash and Miranda’s potential – beyond her ability as a performer – was realized. Gil-Montero, 55-56. 46 Gil-Montero, 55-56. 47 This copy is taken from a draft of the actual article, which may or may not have made it into Modern Screen. This article relies on quotes from Miranda, written in paranthetical transliterations of her “bad” English. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Margaret Herrick Library, “South America Looks at Hollywood Through the Flashing Eyes of Carmen Miranda (draft)” For Modern Screen Draft by Gladys Hall, 20 December 1940. 48 Gil-Montero, 84. Figures both © Bettmann/CORBIS. Figure 4 – Image ID: U1372708INP (1940s). Figure 5, Image ID U631619ACME (December 19, 1941 in New York). Original caption reads: “Carmen Miranda (left, believe it or not!) hands a life-size manikin [sic], twin, of herself a ticket to Rio de Janeiro, which she had just purchased at the Pan American Airways ticket office, at New York's Airline terminal. The manikan replica of the glamorous Brazilian singing star of Sons o' Fun, will fly first to Havana and then to Rio, dressed in the latest Bonwit Teller fashions. In cooperation with the Nelson Rockefeller Committee on Inter-American Affairs, the "twin" will be exhibited as a "silent Good Neighbor", displaying North American fashions to South American women.” 49 This period of Latin American musicals are largely concentrated in the early 1940s. The desired escapism that these films provided began to fizzle as WWII came to an end. 50 The process goes thusly: the tango develops and is discovered in Argentinean slums, is then showcased and refined in the clubs of Paris and is only then attractive for elite Argentineans and embraced as a national form. 105 51 Savigliano, 81. 52 Savigliano, 83-98. 53 Roberts, 3. Miranda performed at the Brazilian pavilion during the fair, but it is unclear if this was a singular appearance. In 1939, the United States was experiencing a significant political and national shift; the country had not yet entered WWII, but was actively involved in international politics and economics. For Latin America and the United States, this relationship was based on the Good Neighbor Policy. 54 Lee and his brother produced theater programs. The Shuberts’ shrewdness was well known and their mistreatment of actors is reputedly the cause of Actors’ Equity in the United States. 55 “Abbott, Bud; and Costello, Lou.” Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service. 18 Apr. 2006 <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9003252>. 56 Sandoval-Sanchez, 31. 57 Sandoval-Sanchez, 31-32. 58 “As Frederick B. Pike crassly sums up in his reconsideration of FDR's Good Neighbor Policy, ‘perhaps with Carmen Miranda in mind, Yankee movie addicts might see Latinas as ideal partners with whom to shack up for a night’ (112). Quoted in Mandrell, 31. 59 Freire-Medeiros, 54. 60 “Carioca” is another term for “Brazilian.” 61 When Rogers and Astaire do decide to try the dance after seeing the Cariocas on the dance floor, they are invited by the bandleader to dance atop the entertainer’s stage and not the dance floor. The Rogers-Astaire version is more ballroom than anyone else’s. 62 The presence of Etta Moten “emphasiz[es] the presence of the African heritage in Brazilian culture and introducing an image later immortalized by Carmen Miranda.” However, it also indicates a sort of essentialized “blackness” in Hollywod film, where black Americans can stand in for black 106 Latin Americans and flattens race across national borders. Freire-Medeiros, 54. 63 Latin-ness mediates racialized performances; in this case, it is a series of dances – from white to black – that become progressively more sensual. Marsha Kinder, “Review: Saturday Night Fever,” Film Quarterly 31.3 (Spring 1978), 40. 64 This project’s focus on Hollywood film does not address the multiple meanings Miranda’s body may have exhibited as a popular stage performer in the United States, though the two are closely related. 65 University of Southern California, Cinema-Television Library Special Collections, Constance McCormick Collection, “She Saved Broadway from the World’s Fair,” No Source Available. 66 Sandoval-Sanchez points to many comparisons of Miranda and exotic animals in the press. Sandoval-Sanchez, 39. 67 This biography is from the Paramount materials for Scared Stiff (1953). University of Southern California, Cinema-Television Library Special Collections, “Carmen Miranda” clipping file. A variation of this text is quoted by Sandoval-Sanchez and appears nearly word-for-word until a second point alters it. Sandoval-Sanchez cites the source as “Robert Sullivan, ‘Carmen Miranda Loaves America and Vice Versa,’ Clipping from Carmen Miranda file, Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts, New York; no sources available.” Sandoval-Sanchez, 209. 68 Adrienne McLean’s recent biography on Rita Hayworth is an excellent example of this, particularly in her discussion of the “woman’s musical.” McLean, Adrienne L. Being Rita Hayworth: Labor, Identity and Hollywood Stardom. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2004. 69 Production Code, Category Seven. The two categories of the Production Code that specifically impacted Miranda’s career were “Costume” and “Dances.” 70 Production Code, Category Six. 71 The Gang’s All Here (1943) required significant correspondence regarding the costuming – most of it for Miranda. The few exceptions were for chorus girl costumes. 107 72 See Sandoval-Sanchez, 38. 73 Fox Studios even shot Miranda’s scenes in New York to accommodate her hectic schedule. See Solberg, Bananas is My Business. 74 Preview of Down Argentine Way, Variety, 2 October 1940. 75 Oddly, the Production Code office, charged with regulating the decency of film content in the United States, had “strongly urged” the studio to “consult [their] Foreign Department to make certain that the finished picture contain[ed] nothing that might cause [them] difficulty with [their] release in Latin America.” Margaret Herrick Research Archive, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Production Code Administration Collection Files, Down Argentine Way file. Letter to Colonel Jason S. Joy from Joseph I. Breen, 15 June 1940 76 Preview of Down Argentine Way, Variety, 2 October 1940. 77 Despite the seeming pun, an integrated musical is not racially integrated, but simply a musical featuring musical numbers that are integral to the plot’s development. This contrasts musicals with musical performances that could easily be removed without a loss of narrative. 78 Sean Griffin, “The Gang’s All Here: Generic versus Racial Integration in the 1940s Musical,” Cinema Journal 42, no. 1 (2002), 28-29. 79 Gil-Montero 89-90. 80 As yet, I am unsure if this percentage included her film work; it may only encompass her stage appearances. 81 In a telegram from Carmen Miranda to Hedda Hopper, dated February 14, 1946, Miranda states: “Darling Hedda. Notice your item about me being offered four thousand dollars in London. This figure is incorrect as I am now getting ten thousand dollars a week at the Roxy and have also been offered engagements at Palm Island Miami ten thousand dollars per week and Detroit Chicago theatres also offered ten thousand dollars a week. I cannot accept these engagements as I am returning to Hollywood immediately after finishing here at Roxy. I am having wonderful time here and business is terrific see you soon love=Carmen Miranda.” Text is modified from upper case, non- punctuated telegram. Margaret Herrick Research Archive, Academy of 108 Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In Special Collections, Hedda Hopper Collection, File #1821. 82 Gil-Montero, 90. 83 The sixth shot in the opening sequence is a dissolve from cardboard cutouts of the band in a travel agency window to the actual band performing on a soundstage version of a stage on a beach. The band “comes alive” from the cutout and begins to play. 84 Miranda’s singing was identified as being “with movement” in publicity. “Carmen Miranda: The Technicolor Riot.” University of Southern California, Cinema-Television Library Special Collections, Constance McCormick Collection. Also see Gil-Montero, 80. 85 “As Frederick B. Pike crassly sums up in his reconsideration of FDR's Good Neighbor Policy, ‘perhaps with Carmen Miranda in mind, Yankee movie addicts might see Latinas as ideal partners with whom to shack up for a night’ (112). Quoted in Mandrell, 31. 86 Mandrell, 35. 87 I explore the impact of being a non-blonde in chapter one. 88 The pressure to prove that she had hair is evident in one newsreel interview: Miranda pulls her turban off to prove she has hair and that hair is revealed as dyed blonde. Solberg uses this archival clip in her documentary, Bananas Are My Business. 89 Even the aforementioned paper dolls feature the “undressed” Miranda does not expose her hair and wears a hair-cap. 90 Roberts, 4. 91 Letter from The City Of Atlanta Board Of Review by Zella Richardson to Mr. E. J. Mannix, MGM. 8 January 1944. Margaret Herrick Research Archive, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Production Code Administration Collection Files, The Gang’s All Here (1943). 92 Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films (New York: Viking, 1973), 121. 109 93 A Date with Judy description from Direct TV. 94 Miranda was “the allowable cultural Other for wartime Hollywood[.]” Roberts, 4. 95 Mandrell, 35. 96 Margaret Herrick Research Archive, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. “Tintype of Rita Moreno” by Wolfson. Special Collections, Sidney Skolsky Collection, Folder 80, Tintypes: M. 97 “With reason, she was known as ‘The Remarkable Little Girl,’ practically an upstart, who had taken black music and was promoting it as Brazilian.” Davis, 188. 110 CHAPTER THREE: RITA HAYWORTH AND THE COSMETIC BORDERS OF RACE You are not one woman, but many. And never the same. Tyrone Powers to Rita Hayworth in Blood and Sand (1941) This chapter explores the transformation of a Spanish dancer named Rita Cansino into Rita Hayworth and how this pre-history authenticated the exoticism that underscored Hayworth’s Hollywood career as a “Love Goddess.” 1 Like the contemporary performer Jennifer Lopez and Del Rio before her, Hayworth’s career and popularity were predicated on a careful manipulation and simultaneous semiotic representation of whiteness and non- whiteness. Rita combined the appearance of whiteness through hair color and name change with the performance of non-whiteness through dance to cultivate a longstanding career in Hollywood film. She embodied a persona that was exotic and sexual, yet simultaneously glamorous and All-American. The fusion of Hayworth’s history as a dancer with her penchant for cosmetic transformation resulted in a complex persona at a transitional moment in the twentieth century – during and after World War II. I argue that Rita’s star persona represented a high profile and complex matrix of race, gender and sexuality. Her transition from “Cansino” to “Hayworth” illustrates the 111 tangle of these signifiers during a key moment of nationalism and social restructuring in the United States. Hayworth’s transition from ethnic Spanish dancer to Hollywood femme fatale offers an interesting case study in the mythology of the Latina body in the United States. This chapter pays close attention to Hayworth’s transition from minor to major performer, beginning in 1941 and ending around the peak of her celebrity in 1947. First, I will illustrate how studio publicity sexualized Rita’s persona in relation to her dance background, Spanish lineage and discovery in Mexico. Second, I will address Rita Cansino’s rebirth as Rita Hayworth and the eventual Americanization of her persona through a revival and adaptation of her dance skills within the Hollywood musical genre. Finally, I will briefly illustrate how the historical trajectory of this persona was disrupted by the blonde-ness and immobility of her famous femme fatale role in The Lady From Shanghai (1948). The transition of Rita Hayworth’s persona paralleled the shifting construction of gender in the United States during and after World War II. Hayworth’s commodification of whiteness and representational sexuality were mediated by the racialization of her dancing body to produce the Love Goddess icon in mainstream media. Her agency as a performer, coupled with her personification of sexual empowerment, was eventually policed by Hollywood at the peak of her career – either in her film narratives or their 112 publicity. By analyzing how Hayworth’s persona was sold to advertise the films she made at Columbia Studios – in particular You’ll Never Get Rich (1941), Tonight and Every Night (1945) and Gilda (1946) – this chapter also shows how Rita Hayworth’s Love Goddess persona fully emerged as a dancer in war-themed films. 2 (Re)Discovering Rita Information about the life and career of Rita Hayworth is abundant yet unreliable. Publicity has permeated her legacy. Biographies, including Barbara Leaming’s If This Was Happiness (1989), continue to function like tabloids, recycling and revising information disseminated by studio publicity articles and press books. Even the recent documentary by Turner Classic Movies entitled Rita (2003, co-produced by Hugh Hefner), reprocesses much of the same information about her life. The incongruence of many of these biographical accounts are addressed in the most comprehensive and complex study of Rita’s career, Adrienne L. McLean’s Being Rita Hayworth: Labor, Identity and Hollywood Stardom (2004). McLean illustrates that 1940s and 1950s audiences were well aware of Rita’s exoticized origins as Rita Cansino; many biographers overlook this fact or assume that her past was erased for publicity purposes. Instead, McLean proves that Rita Hayworth’s evolution from Rita Cansino 113 was a key aspect of her film publicity. McLean’s extensive archival research identifies overlaps between publicity and biography. For example, Leaming’s biography gained popularity when it alleged that Rita was sexually abused by her father; however, McLean points out that nearly forty years earlier, fan magazines and other popular publications discretely made similar allegations. 3 Most importantly, McLean’s work highlights the labor of Hayworth’s stardom and her agency as a performer by paying careful attention to her professional discipline and craft as a dancer and actor. Further, McLean does not disregard the significant moments of labor and agency often overlooked by publicity and biographies; often, such publications only present Hayworth as a manufactured image of dyed hair and dubbed singing crafted by various men – such as her father, her five husbands and Columbia Studios chief Harry Cohn. Rita’s agency was a landmark and she gained control of her celebrity at its peak, capitalizing on the sexualization of her own body for personal profit. 4 McLean’s radical shift from popular analyses and biographies of Hayworth’s life provides a valuable foundation for this chapter – particularly as I see the ideologies of race, gender and sexuality (or sexualization) intersecting in Rita’s persona. Like McLean, I do not subordinate the representation of Rita’s dancing body, but instead argue for the power of its mobility. Yet, I build upon McLean’s scholarship to demonstrate how Hayworth’s success reified the 114 mythology of the Latina as a racialized and sexualized body in U.S. history. I explore why dance was the means by which Hayworth ultimately achieved fame and how this process works in tandem with the larger cultural and historical trajectory of the Latina body in Hollywood film and in U.S. history. Rita’s lineage is fraught with the ambiguities of early 20 th century citizenship, but these ambiguities may have contributed to her success. Born Margarita “Rita” Carmen Cansino, Rita’s father was born in Spain while her mother was an American citizen of English/Irish descent. 5 In the context of racial formations and Hollywood representation in the 1930s and 1940s, Rita’s potential cultural or national whiteness would have been mediated through whiteness as she was continually exoticized because of her Spanish foreign-ness. 6 While Rita’s Spanish roots are categorically European and not Latin American, the many cultural and national identities of the region were often amalgamated into an exotic Latin hybrid in the service of Hollywood spectacle among which Spanish was classified. 7 As a Spanish-American woman discovered dancing in a Mexican nightclub by American film producers, Rita Hayworth’s sex appeal was underwritten by her non-whiteness even as she was transformed into a glamorous white Hollywood star. Her celebrity history illustrates how specific myths about the nonwhite female body have been used to mass-market sexuality to a hegemonic, white American public. 8 115 I am particularly attentive to studio press books because they functioned as the voice of the studio and demonstrate how star images were constructed for public consumption. These film publicity packages effectively pre-contextualized Rita for public distribution and map the trajectory of her career. Such publicity continually framed her as “torrid” or exotic and further contextualized Rita as Latin American – and nonwhite – in U.S. popular culture. 9 This representational difference underscored the sexual persona that Rita displayed in her dance performances. The presentation and performance of Rita Hayworth’s body through Hollywood film and its print advertising help gauge the historical and political climate surrounding the Latina body in the United States in the 1940s. Naturalizing Rita’s Discovery in Mexico Rita began her professional performance career as a young child. Her father, Eduardo Cansino, was a famed Spanish dancer and her mother, Volga Haworth (Rita’s mother’s maiden name, upon which Hayworth is based), was a vaudevillian performer. Because the Cansino household revolved around Eduardo’s dancing, the family moved to Los Angeles in 1927 when he decided to leave the stage and pursue a career in film. 10 In California, Eduardo’s work primarily consisted of choreographing the live shows that prefaced film features; in 1932, Rita danced one of these Spanish routines 116 at the Universal premiere of Back Street. 11 By biographical accounts, it is during this performance when Eduardo noticed that his fourteen-year old daughter was becoming a woman: “All of a sudden, I wake up! Wow! She has a figure! She ain’t no baby anymore!” 12 Soon, Eduardo reformed the “Dancing Cansinos” act – originally featuring Eduardo and his sister – into a father-daughter duo performing in nightclubs south of the U.S. border. It is in one of these clubs that Hayworth was discovered for Hollywood. 13 Notably, it is Rita, not Eduardo, that gained attention at the clubs; indeed, Eduardo’s subsequent careers as studio choreographer and dance director were often tied to Rita’s studio contracts, first at Fox in 1935 and later at Columbia. 14 As a wage earner for the Cansino family, Rita’s worth depended on her success on stage and later in the studio system. 15 In Mexico, the Dancing Cansinos gained a reputation, performing at the Foreign Club in Tijuana and a “notorious” gambling boat off the coast of Santa Monica, California. 16 It is in a similar nightclub two miles south of Tijuana named Agua Caliente, that Rita’s discovery by the Hollywood producer Winfield Sheehan occurred. Despite the fairy tale nature of this meeting, it was no coincidence that a Hollywood producer would be present: the club was largely owned by Joe Schenck, co-founder of 20 th Century films. 17 Rita was soon signed to Fox Studios, but quickly lost the contract when Daryl Zanuck took over the studio. In the process, Rita gained a 117 manager, an automobile salesman named Ed Judson. When the six-month Fox contract expired, Judson began to escort Rita to Hollywood functions with the promise that he could sell her to another studio. In 1937, Rita signed with Harry Cohn at Columbia Pictures and two months later, Rita and Ed – twenty years Rita’s senior – eloped. 18 This short biography functions as background to the real transformation of Rita’s early career. During the Cansino tours in Mexico and off the Southern California coast, Rita was billed as a Spanish dancer in Mexico. While Rita’s lineage is in part Spanish, biographical accounts (including McLean) neglect to contextualize Rita’s evolution towards stardom amidst the political and patriarchal structure of Mexican-American border nightclubs in the 1930s. The cultural weight of this origin story has largely been disregarded, as though it is perfectly normal that a young American female performer would be discovered as a Spanish dancer in Mexican nightclubs owned by Hollywood moguls at the end of Prohibition. Mexican nightclubs along the U.S.-Mexico border – largely co-owned by and/or catering to wealthy Americans – created a financial and political relationship built on the industries of pleasure: liquor, bars, nightclubs and casinos. 19 At the crux of the United States and Mexico, these pleasure 118 industries often staged dancing Latina bodies for white male desire. In the context of the United States, these “production[s] of passion” appropriated, reshaped and Other-ed Mexican bodies to help define and differentiate first world tastes. 20 The manufacture and exhibition of such Others helped U.S. tourist-consumers assume and sustain a sense of cultural superiority. 21 This differentiation was crucial at an otherwise disempowering moment for the United States. During the decade of the Great Depression, the border became a source of panic and confusion, particularly in Los Angeles. As historian George Sanchez has demonstrated, this panic was complex and often ambiguous for both whites and Mexicans. 22 Ultimately, the 1930s pushed many bodies south of the border – not only repatriated Mexican/Mexican- Americans, but also white Americans seeking liquor and gambling in the overlapping decade of Prohibition. 23 Both movements south constructed Mexico as an economic “center of vice and moral abandon” in the larger cultural imagination of the United States, a process in which Hollywood played an intimate role as discussed in the Del Rio chapter. 24 Nightclub audiences – U.S. patrons able to recreationally cross the border – sought a romanticized, idealized and exoticized representation of a Mexico that did not in fact exist. In Mexico and later in the United States, the “most idealized and assimilable form of non-whiteness possible” was the Spanish female 119 body. 25 While there is often a certain historical slippage in use of the terms “Mexican” and “Spanish,” there is, too, a privileged use of the Spanish label that whitens or erases the presence of Mexican-ness in favor of a presumably more European commodity. In the time leading up to Rita’s discovery in Mexico, Los Angeles was an emerging metropolitan area in California. To promote its sense of modernity, Los Angeles looked to refurbish its resident Mexican population in the image of an idealized, Spanish past. In the case of Olvera Street, a downtown center where Mexican communities congregated, certain spaces were literally whitewashed and reconstructed in the image of a fictionalized and Spanish-stylized Mexico. 26 The reconfiguration of this space not only fixed the very present Mexican community as thing of or from the past, but also revised the area into a more consumer friendly space for tourists and white Angelenos. In order to maximize its potential for commodification and U.S. consumption, Mexican culture in Los Angeles required a makeover. Similarly, Rita’s path to stardom began as an embodiment of U.S. idealizations of Mexico. Early in her career, Rita was cosmetically enhanced to exemplify a Spanish woman. Biographies suggest that Eduardo darkened Rita’s hair to a “glossy black” then pulled into a tight bun, a crucial physical manipulation meant to project a more elite (or white) exoticization while performing in Mexico. 27 This Spanish look worked for Rita in nightclubs and 120 later at Fox studios, where Rita was initially signed by studio chief Sheehan as a Latin-type in the vein of Dolores Del Rio. As a Dolores Del Rio type, Rita was groomed by her father and Fox Studios to project the kind of nonwhite sexuality – often identified as Spanish – popular in the 1930s. Sarah Berry’s work on Hollywood exoticism has shown that Spanish-ness often served as an “ethnically acceptable alibi for hot-blooded sexuality.” 28 This “image of exotic beauty” was versatile, working for both Hollywood films and the emerging cosmetics industry. 29 As the “default racial setting” for performers playing a variety of ethnic roles, Spanish-ness was easily assigned to Dolores Del Rio and Rita Cansino, despite their different lineage. 30 Unlike Del Rio who was born in Mexico, Rita was born in the United States and spoke English without an accent; yet, both suffered similar career limitations because of their look. Figure 6: Dolores Del Rio Figure 7: Rita Cansino 121 Rita’s pre-history, as a dark-haired, sensuous beauty provided a viable foundation for the cultivation of her later persona as the Columbia Studios Love Goddess. Both incarnations of Rita might be considered “products of Hollywood’s participation in a long tradition of projecting sexual licentiousness and exoticism onto colonized subjects.” 31 Rita Cansino’s early film roles remain relatively minor to her overall star legacy, except that they effectively fixed her image within the studio system as a cantina girl with a compulsory dance routine, such as her minor role in Dante’s Inferno (Fox 1935, choreographed by Eduardo Cansino). 32 The matrix of race, gender and class embedded in Rita’s pre-history as a Cansino created an ambiguity that Rita Hayworth was able to exploit. As a whitened Other, Rita was primed to transgress the limitations on sexuality and autonomy sanctioned for white women in Hollywood film and 1940s society. She effectively used dance and cosmetic manipulation to transgress the bounds of Hollywood typecasting, moving beyond the limitations of typical roles as a female and/or exotic Other to develop narrative and career agency. The Cosmetics of Transition, or Building a Star from the Name Up The transformation from Rita Cansino to Rita Hayworth was not magical and did not occur overnight, but was instead facilitated as an economic decision by a studio looking for a marketable commodity. As 122 Rita transitioned from Fox to Columbia Studios, the limitations of her visual exoticism became evident. 33 At Columbia, studio head Harry Cohn ordered Rita to change her name. Cohn was looking for a future star to empower his studio’s stock in Hollywood, not an ethnic starlet whose range (and profit) would be limited by her type. Even after signing with Columbia Studios, it required twenty films (out of her fifty-nine total) before Rita’s star potential was recognized. 34 The fact that Rita’s Spanish surname was deemed unacceptable for the purposes of mainstreaming her career indicates how specific markers of non- whiteness threatened to hinder wider, national appeal in the United States during the late 1930s. Thus, Rita officially changed her surname to “Hayworth,” adding a “y” to her maternal maiden name of Haworth. This revision would be most fully realized on Hayworth’s body, however, as she was made-over to fit an idealized mainstream look. While at Columbia Studios, Rita’s physical makeover was attributed to her husband/manager Judson: he regulated her diet and weight, programmed her clothing, paraded her at popular Hollywood clubs, and enlisted a private publicist to document her appearances for celebrity columns. 35 Yet, Rita’s most significant transformation concluded as it began: with her hair. Previously, Rita’s hair color was dark, wavering only between black and brown. 36 At Columbia, studio hairstylist Helen Hunt dyed Rita’s hair 123 a hue of auburn to “brighten” her face. 37 Rita’s hairline was then famously reshaped through two years of painful electrolysis to reduce her hairline as a final polish. As McLean points out, such transformations were uniquely accomplished in full view of the public through studio publicity. 38 But the metamorphosis paid off and Cohn’s interest in Rita’s career increased. Her roles slowly began to exceed the early vixen or bit-part dance characters that had changed little since her days as Rita Cansino; in Paid to Dance (1937), Rita’s role was reduced from leading to minimal, appearing instead as an “underpaid dance hall hostess.” 39 Rita’s roles at Columbia would remain cursory until 1941, when a successful loan-out period changed the trajectory of her career and persona. 40 Two 1941 films illustrate the connection between Hayworth’s performances, popularity and her hair color: Strawberry Blonde at Warner Bros. and Blood and Sand at 20 th Century Fox. Strawberry Blonde was particularly crucial to Hayworth’s tenure at Columbia as it signaled her screen worth. Cohn finally possessed a star commodity desired by other studios; by loaning out Hayworth to another studio, Columbia not only reaped financial rewards but also declared its coming of age. 41 Strawberry Blonde’s title and publicity announced Rita’s newly dyed red locks and she was reintroduced to the public as the “luscious siren, Rita Hayworth, playing the naughty but oh so lovable ‘Strawberry Blonde.’” 42 Though the film was shot in black and 124 white, Strawberry Blonde effectively colorized one of Hayworth’s most infamous assets: her red hair. Rita’s visual transformation became a major selling point of Strawberry Blonde’s publicity. Warner Bros. advertised the film by writing and nationally distributing the following feature to newspapers and magazines: Rita Hayworth died her brunette Spanish locks to play the title role, thereby creating a new fad for hair stylists…. Several weeks after the conclusion of Strawberry Blonde, Rita Hayworth was still strawberry blonde. She says she liked it and intended to stay that way. 43 In articles and publicity like this, Rita’s Spanish origin was invoked and it remained a significant facet of her persona. 44 The evolution from dark-haired senorita to All-American Strawberry Blonde provided an undercurrent of upward mobility, evinced by the caliber and variety of film roles available soon after her name gained a “good old American ring.” 45 In many ways, cosmetic transformation and its ensuing social mobility echoed the cultural shift in attitudes towards cosmetics and the emergence of women – and their grooming habits – in the workforce. 46 Perhaps attentive to this increasingly (white) female workforce, Warner Bros. portrayed Hayworth as a hard worker in its publicity for Strawberry Blonde. For example, Rita’s ability to perform “through the entire picture without forgetting her lines or missing a cue” was attributed to her studying “nightly with a dramatic coach.” 47 While the habit of rehearsal and preparation should be normal 125 for a performer employed since the age of fourteen, the studio publicity’s attention to Rita’s hard work and diligence might also be considered in the context of assimilation. Like the stories accompanying Hayworth’s name and hair color changes, such publicity moments illustrate the public discourse around Rita’s transformation into an American actress. Once a “Hayworth,” Rita was decreasingly cast in explicitly ethnicized roles, with few significant exceptions. 48 Despite Rita’s transition to American-ness by way of whiteness, markers of her underlying ethnic difference lingered in her characterizations. In Strawberry Blonde for instance, Rita was a strawberry blonde – characterized by publicity as a “brunette with a blonde temperament, a blonde with a red-headed temper.” According to studio publicity, the inbetween-ness of this shade made it the most dangerous of all six types of blondes. 49 Such an ambiguous hair color might signal the unknown danger of Rita’s character. In the film, Rita’s character is the protagonist’s (James Cagney) temptation, but “Rita turns out to be a querulous, complaining woman who makes life miserable for her husband despite his wealth.” 50 Yet, it was Rita’s subsequent role as a temptress in the Technicolor film Blood and Sand that would put her – and her hair color – on the map. 51 Blood and Sand is the story of peasant boy, Juan (Tyrone Power), who grows up to become the greatest matador in Spain. He marries his childhood 126 sweetheart, Carmen. Along with Juan’s religious mother, Carmen begs for Juan to give up his dangerous yet lucrative profession. But the fame gets the better of Juan, and his downfall begins when he meets the wealthy socialite, Doña Sol (Hayworth). Throughout the film, supporting characters comment on Doña Sol’s prowess and affection for matadors; though warned that Doña Sol would soon tire of him, Juan cannot help himself. In this film, Rita’s hair color embodied the “hot-blooded sexuality” of her character and directly contrasted with the dark-hair and pious characterization of Juan’s wife and mother in the film. 52 Because the film was shot in Technicolor, a labor intensive and expensive investment in 1941, Blood and Sand’s director Rouben Mamoulian reportedly focused on the use of color and its symbolism. 53 In one Fox publicity article, entitled “Bright Colors Fascinate Men Says Mamoulian,” he purportedly notes the importance of red in connoting the escalating passion of a scene. The scene’s climax is color-coded, with Hayworth and Power’s characters moving from a black and white setting to a pink environment – resonating with the symbolism of red during a bullfight. Finally “when they’re…madly in love, [the film] surround[s] them with reds.” 54 While certainly color-coded, the scene does not fully represent the passion that Mamoulian suggests; instead, it is a scene of manipulation, where Doña Sol sings Juan to sleep at her house, knowing that his wife is waiting up for 127 him. In the film, red is equally the color of seduction, betrayal and death: it is the bullfighter’s cape that Doña Sol uses to seduce Juan; the dress Doña Sol wears as she flagrantly dances like a bull with another bullfighter in front of Juan; and it is the color of the blood left in the sand by less fortunate matadors. Rita’s performance as Doña Sol refashioned her persona and reintroduced her as a red-haired “fiery temptress,” yet one rarely beyond some form of redemption. 55 Thus, Rita entered the Hollywood spotlight by combining the perceived passion of her dancing and ethnicized past with a Spanish pre-history and characterization, Anglicized name and red hair. Later roles would soon manipulate and build upon this hybridized persona, as this combination proved to be successful: Rita’s triumph in Blood and Sand was evident when many red haired look-alikes appeared in Hollywood after the film’s release. 56 Rita Hayworth was now committed as a red-haired performer. 57 More importantly, she was now identified as an actress and not a bit player. However, these roles would remain scaffolding to the emergence of Rita’s full persona as an All-American dancer in another 1941 film, You’ll Never Get Rich. Dancing Queen: The All-American, Technicolor Love Goddess Despite Rita’s dance training and dance family origin, it was not until You’ll Never Get Rich that she captured Hollywood’s imagination as 128 a musical performer – particularly an All-American one. Until You’ll Never Get Rich, dance had primarily served as a measure and limit of characterization for Rita’s Latina-ness in roles as dancers or cantina-girls. In fact, Blood and Sand’s press book offers the trajectory of Hayworth as such: “For several pictures, she did nothing but dance. After changing her name to Hayworth, she decided to carry on the Haworth tradition and devoted her time to acting.” 58 You’ll Never Get Rich marked Rita’s greatest transformation in the movie-going public’s eye: she was now cast as an All-American girl (Sheila Winthrop) opposite the premier musical performer, Fred Astaire. You’ll Never Get Rich changed the type of dancing that Rita performed on screen. Beyond Astaire, Ginger Rogers and the few musical celebrities or dance directors of the 1930s, dance had a relatively low status; the best known dance director of the time, Busby Berkeley, employed women for their faces and legs, not their skills. Further, dance was often a signal of ethnicity or cultural difference. Thus, dance had remained a facet of Rita’s Otherness and was not considered a valid talent. 59 As McLean points out, various modes of publicity heralded the end of Rita’s dance career in favor of an acting career; this disavowal of dance was an attempt to break Rita typecasting as a (nonwhite) ethnic as late as 1941. 60 You’ll Never Get Rich was the first film to integrate Rita’s dance skills into the narrative and not solely serve as a marker of her difference or 129 characterization. For example, Rita’s brief dance performance in Blood and Sand is contextualized and sexualized within the space of a cantina: Rita’s character uses dance to make Juan jealous of another man. Fred Astaire, recently on hiatus from Ginger Rogers and a popular box office draw, was Hayworth’s most prominent film partnership to that date. Astaire’s persona as “dancing’s elegant gentleman” 61 crucially helped to develop and Americanize Rita Hayworth – at least while she danced in his spotlight. 62 You’ll Never Get Rich frames the reluctant romance between a chorus dancer named Sheila (Hayworth) and her choreographer, Bob (Astaire). Sheila fancies Bob, but Bob is resistant to romance. Mr. Hubbard, their mutual boss, complicates matters by attempting to woo Sheila with an engraved diamond bracelet. Sheila refuses the boss’s gift and advances, but Mrs. Hubbard discovers the abandoned evidence, forcing Mr. Hubbard’s alibi: he is simply helping Bob woo Sheila. Because the wealthy Mrs. Hubbard threatens to divorce and financially ruin her husband if he cheats, Mr. Hubbard forces Bob to pursue Sheila on his behalf. The ensuing mishaps sour the feelings between Sheila and Bob; to rectify this situation, Bob enlists (or is drafted?) in the army. In order to live happily ever after, Bob organizes a militaristic dance show finale and exchanges binding marital vows with Sheila against her consent. 130 Beyond its relatively benign narrative, You’ll Never Get Rich adjusts the conventions of the classic musical genre by creating a new type of “musical female” role for Hayworth. According to traditional critical analysis of Hollywood musicals, the musical male performer courts his love interest through dance. 63 Dance functions as a symbolic copulation: by teaching the musical female to dance, the musical male awakens his female partner’s sexuality. This sexual awakening is fulfilled when the virgin-musical female gains the ability to dance. Often, a musical siren intervenes to complicate the narrative, testing the musical male’s fidelity to his love interest. The siren appeals to the musical male’s weak sexual appetite and is often characterized as a dancer that requires no tutelage – a perfectly tempting partner. The siren – solely for her pleasure – attempts to seduce the musical male, but he triumphs and proves worthy of the virginal, musical female. The musical male is thus rewarded with domestication, gaining a legitimized social position through marriage. 64 You’ll Never Get Rich, however, plays with this musical formula. Rita’s character Sheila Winthrop hybridizes the love interest and other woman (or virgin and siren). First, You’ll Never Get Rich stresses that Hayworth already possesses the skills worthy of a dance partnership with Astaire. Astaire’s female partners were expected to be of a certain caliber – of both dance and constitution, as epitomized by Ginger Rogers. Rogers’ 131 romantic partnerships with Astaire were often characterized as inevitable, long-term and rooted in a previous friendship. 65 Astaire’s professional break from Rogers, caused audiences to pine for their reunion, and You’ll Never Get Rich provided an opportunity to surprise Astaire’s audiences with Rita’s dance skills, abilities that had not been fully utilized since her transformation from Cansino. 66 While Rita had cosmetically and nominally refashioned herself according to the dictates of whiteness, dancing in the Astaire style – both ballroom and lyrical –repositioned Hayworth as a mainstream musical performer. This style of performance exuded American-ness and, as a result, propelled Rita’s career out from the margins. This American-ness would prove paradoxical, however. Hayworth’s persona retained an exoticized sexuality. Beyond adjusting the genre to suit the requirements of a Fred Astaire musical, You’ll Never Get Rich provided a hybridized female role for Hayworth, one that would foresee new wave of female sexual identity through dance performance. Two dance performances in the film signify the difference of Hayworth’s character in the musical film. The first, also the film’s opening dance performance, is a challenge initiated by Hayworth’s character. The “Rehearsal Duet” unfurls as such: Sheila is introduced as a chorus dancer. At rehearsal, she dances one count behind the rest of the company in the presence of her choreographer, Bob. This error is both visible and audible, as the 132 routine incorporates elements of tap. It is clear – and later confirmed through dialogue – that Sheila’s missteps are deliberate, a calculated attempt to gain the attention of Bob. This manipulation ultimately fulfills Sheila’s desire to dance a duet with her supervisor, effectively undermining his position as choreographer by making him dance as she pleases. This upper hand is reinforced by Sheila’s gaze: one shot clearly shows Sheila watching Bob dance, even as both are mid-step during rehearsal with the entire company. Thus, Rita’s performance in You’ll Never Get Rich signals a very different type of musical female, a hybridized woman capable of representing an assertive sexuality while retaining a wholesome quality. 67 The intent of this first scene is to prove – to both Astaire and the film’s audience – that Rita is a “capable and confident dancer.” 68 When this confidence is contextualized in relation to Astaire’s musical partners, this agency and assuredness surpasses dancing to illustrate Rita’s character’s assertive sexuality. 69 Given the Figure 8: Still from You’ll Never Get Rich (1941). Sheila Winthrop (Rita Hayworth) admires her choreographer, Bob (Astaire, off camera), while in mid-step. 133 traditional tropes of musical structure, it is significant that this scene re- introduces Rita Hayworth as a dancer – worthy of Astaire himself – in a scene where the female initiates and leads the film’s dancing. This “rehearsal duet” is turning point in Rita’s star status: in this film, her power as a siren – the ability to motivate characters through their desire for her – is channeled into a type of narrative agency. This power would eventually create leading roles and full star power. 70 The simultaneity of this characterization – apparent sexuality, narrative agency and leading star status – was made possible through the combination of Rita’s makeover and residual vixen history from her time as the ethnic Rita Cansino. In a rare moment, McLean explicitly addresses the function of Rita’s ethnic background in her persona, an observation worth quoting at length: Hayworth is able to express her feelings of frustration, anger, jealousy, and fear (and also joy) not by attempting to merge with other ethnic or racial groups [like Bette Davis in Jezebel (1938)] but because she is already herself ‘nonwhite.’ This all is certainly true of her musicals, as well as Gilda, and helps to explain the presence of Hayworth numbers utilizing types of music and dance often characterized as torrid or hot – stereotypically modes of ‘nonwhite’ expression – in virtually every film, generic musical or not, that Hayworth made as a star at Columbia (the notable exception being The Lady from Shanghai). 71 Rita’s potential for character emotion and its unfettered expression (including desire) can be linked to her pre-history as a Cansino. While the public would have been familiar with this origin-story, her films often included one or two moments of explicit – or overtly implicit – references to her background. 134 The use of dance as a signal of Hayworth’s undergirding non-whiteness enabled a hybridized sexuality that was simultaneously desirable and desiring; indeed, it is most frequently through Rita’s dance numbers that her agency and desire are expressed most fully. Hayworth’s power and allure – and the power of her allure – as an emerging dance star more fully unfolds in the Latin styled choreography of the song “So Near Yet So Far.” This Cole Porter rhumba is the modified exotic tempo against which Hayworth leads Fred Astaire in a second dance performance. This time, Hayworth manipulates Astaire within the dance movement itself – an unusual detail in Astaire choreography. 72 The performance of “So Near Yet So Far,” like all Astaire routines, is meticulously analyzed in John Mueller’s book, Astaire Dancing (1985). Because Mueller favors Ginger Rogers when evaluating Rita as Astaire’s partner, it is noteworthy that he finds Rita’s dance style desirable in this rhumba number – “especially her torso undulations, and the way her arms seem naturally to embellish the choreography.” 73 Later in the analysis of the performance, Mueller again mentions the “enticing” undulation of Rita’s hips and notes that this movement is the impetus for Astaire to follow her lead into the dance’s movement from its initially static position. Mueller states, “[H]aving the woman manipulate him into the dance is a witty reversal of the usual procedure in Astaire duets.” 74 Throughout Astaire’s career, he led 135 his female dance partners, but the undulations of Hayworth’s hips cause him to follow. Several steps later, the undulations seem to marvel Astaire as the pair walks a few measures, arms seemingly framing the isolated movement of Rita’s hips. Hayworth’s partnership with Astaire went beyond legitimizing her ability to dance; the union effectively hybridized her sexuality into something more tangible and American. By the film’s final number – an army camp benefit dance show finale entitled the “Wedding Cake Walk” – Robert regains lead in the narrative, rigging the performance by replacing the number’s minister (played by a diegetic actor) with a real minister so as to marry Sheila without her consent. By ending in marriage, Rita Hayworth’s partnership with Astaire in You’ll Never Get Rich extended beyond a legitimization of Rita’s dance skills. 75 In this case, Astaire’s “gentlemanly” persona lent a twinge of domestication to the lingering siren quality that followed Hayworth after films like Only Angels Have Wings (1939), Figure 9: Hayworth and Astaire in You’ll Never Get Rich (1941). Rita’s Manipulating Undulations Figure 10: Hayworth and Astaire in You’ll Never Get Rich (1941). Astaire Presents Rita’s Hips 136 Strawberry Blonde (1941) and Blood and Sand (1941). 76 However, this domestication – a revision of the musical genre’s conventions by its application to Hayworth – would never be complete. A Siren on the Side: The Pin-Up of Rita Hayworth After You’ll Never Get Rich, Rita Hayworth went on to build a very successful career upon the tension between virgin and siren, a paradoxical cornerstone of her Love Goddess appeal. Any domestication that Astaire might have lent Hayworth by the film’s end was contradicted by publicity for You’ll Never Get Rich. The August 1941 issue of Life, released one month before the film’s premiere, famously featured Rita in a lace negligee atop a tousled, satiny bed. 77 The image solidified Hayworth’s transition to celebrity: her rise to stardom was a topic in the mainstream periodical Life and she became as a pinup for the soon to be mobilized troops of WWII. The image, so popular with GIs that magazine copies were sent out “by the millions,” positioned Rita as a top-ranked pinup model throughout WWII. 78 The iconography of Hayworth’s pin-up sexuality reinforced her paradoxical embodiment and maintained a sexuality that originated in ethnic difference but became a new breed of woman. Her simultaneous debut as a dancer in You’ll Never Get Rich and as a WWII pinup model signals the complex relationship the film and Rita had with the war. Such risqué 137 publicity may seem at odds with You’ll Never Get Rich’s otherwise boy- meets-girl narrative, but the photograph’s sexual allure underscored the militarism of the film by catering to an audience of young men that would eventually depart for war. Hayworth’s sexualized representation in mainstream media gained popularity with young GIs and enhanced her later career as these men returned home from war. You’ll Never Get Rich not only re-introduced Rita as a musical star, it also ushered in a wave of war-themed musicals. In 1941, You’ll Never Get Rich was one of the first Hollywood films to incorporate war into its mise-en- scene. 79 Like many stars of the period, Hayworth’s persona was intertwined with the war effort, most evident in the war- or military-themed films of her career: You’ll Never Get Rich (1941), Tonight and Every Night (1945), Gilda (1946) and Miss Sadie Thompson (1953). Notably, the concept of war is never mentioned in You’ll Never Get Rich; there is simply an excess of marching troops, guns and guardhouses. But what best fuses militarism and domesticity – a paradox not unlike Hayworth’s – was the finale performance of “The Wedding Cake Walk.” This rather propagandistic event ends with Astaire and Hayworth exchanging vows atop a wedding cake. 80 This wedding cake, however, is shaped like a tank, effectively linking the overlap of the public and private spheres of war and domesticity. The visibility of Rita’s career played a significant role in the nation’s re-articulation of a working 138 woman active during the war effort. With a persona that fused both American-ness and sexuality, Hayworth was exemplified the simultaneously laboring and cosmetically feminine body advertised during the period. 81 Leading Men: Choreographing Rita’s Post-War Sexuality Two male partners further enhanced Rita’s persona and Americanized her emerging sexual representation: Gene Kelly and Jack Cole. After the success of You’ll Never Get Rich, Hayworth and Astaire were again partnered in the film You Were Never Lovelier, set in Argentina. 82 But it was on the set of Cover Girl (1944), Columbia’s first Technicolor musical, that Hayworth would collaborate with a less established musical performer: Gene Kelly. 83 Kelly’s performance style contrasted with that of Astaire: Kelly preferred a more working-class representation (signaled by his signature white socks and loafers) and athleticized dance style to contrast with the white-tie-and-tails, upper-class ballroom persona of Astaire. To quote Kelly: “I didn't want to move or act like a rich man. I wanted to dance in a pair of jeans. I wanted to dance like the man in the streets.” 84 This sentiment, and its inherent masculinity, was epitomized by the 1958 Ominbus documentary directed by Kelly entitled, “Dancing: A Man’s Game.” 85 Hayworth’s transition from Astaire to Kelly coincided with an acquisition of star power for both of them. 86 Kelly’s sexuality also anticipated the even more overt masculinity of her most prominent co-star to come, Glenn Ford. 139 Hayworth’s collaboration with the choreographer Jack Cole effectively counter-balanced such masculinized performances. The feminized yet sexual movements of Cole’s oeuvre, including his work with Hayworth in Tonight and Every Night, Gilda (1946) and Down to Earth (1947), were designed to highlight the female dancers’ talents. While the sexual expression visible in Cole’s choreography proved to be unpopular with film censors, the movements were integral to many prominent female celebrities in the 1940s and 1950s. 87 Cole’s collaboration with Marilyn Monroe – particularly the sensual displays in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and Some Like It Hot (1959) – best epitomizes his reputation. 88 Hayworth and Cole were briefly united on the set of Cover Girl, but it is the film Tonight and Every Night (1945) that featured the choreographed sensuality, resulting in Hayworth’s title of Love Goddess. 89 Tonight and Every Night takes place in a musical theater during the British air raids by the German air force from 1940-1941. A Life magazine reporter has come to investigate a story: this particular music hall never missed a performance during the Blitz. The film is a generic musical and centers on the gradual romance of two Americans in England: Rosalind Bruce (Rita Hayworth), a musical performer, and Paul Lundy (Lee Bowman), the RAF aviator who pursues her. The musical numbers are largely nationalistic, with brash lyrics such as, “We’re going to win. C’mon grin. Therein lies 140 our might.” Despite some unique performances and moments of reflexivity, the primary performance of the film is arguably “You Excite Me.” 90 Cole’s controversial style enhanced Hayworth’s dance skills and ethnic background to cultivate her legacy as a sexual woman, not solely an object of desire. The performance of “You Excite Me” in Tonight and Every Night exemplifies the sensuality of Rita’s dance work with Cole, particularly as it invokes a sort of racialized difference through samba movements choreographed to heavy percussion. Beyond the jitterbug number “What Does an English Girl Think of a Yank,” “You Excite Me” is the only Hayworth performance in Tonight and Every Night to utilize appropriated, yet exoticized, rhythms. 91 Unlike the jitterbug number, however, various styles of foreign exoticism – from Middle-Eastern style props and background to the vaguely Latin American costuming – are seemingly included to reinforce the notion of temptation and excitement suggested by the song’s lyrics and performance. This semblance of seduction is so strong that the song becomes a motif to signify desire throughout the film and the combined effect of the dance and lyrics warranted some intervention by movie censors. 92 Like Hayworth’s hybridized persona, the performance of “You Excite Me” is one of simultaneity that appears to works in her character’s favor. The language of the song – both in terms of lyric and movement – supports the agency and power of Rosalind Bruce (Hayworth). She is an active 141 subject, simultaneously positioned by the performance as desired (through dancing on stage) and desiring (through lyric): “You Excite Me. You Lead Me On and I Pursue.” Meanwhile, the kinetic energy of Hayworth’s quick and intense body bends, leaps and shakes highlights the physical intensity and power of her performance. The effect is evident in film reviews and popular work on Hayworth’s career: one of the most comprehensive books on choreographers and dance directors considers “You Excite Me” to be a central component of Hayworth’s Love Goddess persona. 93 Through the dance of “You Excite Me,” it can be argued that Rosalind Bruce initiates the relationship by assuming the position of desiring subject. Yet, after Rosalind’s performance, the song is repeated thereafter as a signal of male desire, illustrating the tenuous and ambiguous nature of Rosalind’s agency in the film. From the perspective of dance and performance, “You Excite Me” effectively challenges the usual position of feminist film studies 94 by illustrating the (female) dancer’s power to actively hold the (male) spectator’s gaze; in this case, Hayworth’s character declares and exhibits her own desire through song and dance. Though cutaways of the aviator denote his desire (via an agape mouth), corresponding shots show Rosalind looking at him while singing. Thus, while we may be positioned as a voyeur of Rita’s 142 dance spectacle through the aviator, it is she who holds our gaze and declares her passion, preventing us from identifying her as simply an object of desire. But it is the moments of the song’s reprisal that illuminate Rosalind’s ambiguous agency in the film, particularly as she is paralleled with war imagery throughout the film. The introduction of the RAF aviator shows him passing the theater and stopping to admire Rosalind’s picture on the marquee. Upon noticing it, he tells his fellow troops that they have successfully found “tonight’s objective,” to which one crewmate replies, “Our target?” Indeed, the aviator does target Rosalind, especially after he sees her performance of “You Excite Me.” As an audience, we are positioned with the aviator and view Rosalind’s performance from his perspective: we enter the club and are seated with him as the performance begins. What I am interested in here, as exemplified by “You Excite Me,” is how the undercurrent of exoticism and war-themed musicals helped to develop Rita Hayworth’s persona as inherently sexual. For the first half of the film – before she instantaneously falls in love with the aviator – Rosalind is her own woman, but these moments are eventually tempered by the film’s war theme and contrived romance. 95 For example, an air raid forces the cast, crew and audience into the basement shelter soon after the “You Excite Me” performance. Attempting to woo Rosalind in the basement, the infatuated aviator states that she frightened him and explains, “You did a little 143 bombing tonight yourself, you know. That dance you did…It’s not only unfair, it’s practically illegal.” Rosalind (Hayworth) coolly responds: “I hope I didn’t hurt anything vital.” Because Hayworth proved to be a popular pinup during the war, it was no surprise that her fame would escalate as the GIs returned to the United States at the war’s conclusion and that films would regularly feature her in war themed films during and after the war. It is crucial to stress, however, that such dance performances were not solely spectacles for male movie audiences. McLean provides significant evidence that women composed a large percentage of Hayworth’s audience, particularly in what she terms “women’s musicals.” 96 However, the fact that these film performances were organized around the ideals of nation and gender after World War II greatly complicates Rita’s remarkable career, a complexity of race, gender and sexuality that heightens with the film Gilda (1946). There NEVER Was a Woman Like Rita! 97 By the time of Gilda’s release in 1946, Rita Hayworth’s role in World War II went beyond GI pinup to something less tangible but no less lasting: an idealized representation of American womanhood for a generation of U.S. soldiers and a nation recuperating from war. Thus, Hayworth’s sexuality and popularity among returning GIs made Gilda yet another turning point in 144 Hayworth’s career. Interestingly, this moment would result in a seemingly less racialized sexuality for Hayworth – at least on the surface. The film noir Gilda is a love-hate-love triangle set immediately before and after the end of WWII. A down and out gambler, Johnny (Glenn Ford), is taken in by a wealthy but crooked casino owner named Ballin (George Macready). Johnny becomes Balllin’s right-hand man until the day Ballin returns from travel with a wife, the beautiful Gilda (Hayworth). Complications ensue as it is revealed that Johnny and Gilda had once been married, but are now estranged. Gilda and Johnny engage in equally cruel games of jealousy and punishment while Ballin – on the run after extorting money from the Nazis – fakes his own death. To quote the Gilda press book, “However they felt about each other in the past, their passions are now primitive. Playing a savage game of hate, each tries to make the other suffer.” 98 By the end of the film, Gilda and Johnny acknowledge their love; Ballin is conveniently killed and the reconciled couple resume their union. The film is set in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Allegedly conceived as a gangster picture set in the United States, the location was switched to Argentina as the result of opposition from the Production Code Administration. 99 One might fathom that gangsters and sexuality played better against a Latin American backdrop. One excuse, cited by the Columbia 145 press books, suggests that Latin America was a temporary substitute for war- ravaged Europe: Europe, still in the throes of post-war upheaval, isn’t the proper setting for escapist films. Thus, the love duets that formerly flourished in the continental playgrounds have been moved to Mexico and South America, where life is gay – gay as it hasn’t been in Europe. Now, the background is Argentina and Uruguay, where a gal like the one that Rita portrays can still get silk stockings without difficulty, and rare metal cloths for evening dresses. No need to worry about rationing below the border – tires are fine, and a bottle of Scotch can be shown without getting a snicker from audiences. Yet Latin America is still seen as undeserving. Later, the tone of the article suggests that Latin America and Mexico unwittingly and illegitimately benefited from the recently concluded war. Following the sub-heading, “Free Ads for Mexico,” the article states that, “Mexico is getting more than its share of free advertising these days.” 100 To make its point that regions south of the U.S. border were less deserving and ultimately inferior, the feature concludes, “The Pan-American Chambers of Commerce are undoubtedly feeling pretty good these days. You would, too, with a billion dollars worth of publicity dumped in your lap for nothing!” 101 This last sentence, the final one in the article, illustrates how important Hayworth’s own reformation was to her success. As Hayworth, she now deserved her success, symbolized by her turn to “dramatic” roles. But certain expectations would still need to be met. Although the Argentine setting did not seem essential for the film narrative, it proved the ideal setting for Hayworth’s achievement of a new 146 peak of sexuality in her career. By Gilda, Hayworth had collected a goodly number of seductive roles, but this film was perceived as a turning point. One Columbia writ review from the Gilda press book advertised the film as Hayworth’s “first important dramatic role.” Though this distinction demarcated Hayworth’s previous work as a dancing star, it also invoked her prehistory as a dancing ethnic. First, the press book quickly states, “She sings and dances, too! Stunningly gowned, swaying to throbbing Latin rhythms and softly rendering a torchy tune, Rita brings down the house.” 102 By returning to Rita’s dancing, Spanish roots, her past (non-white) and present (white) personalities were effectively juxtaposed and renewed. Thus, it is significant that the character Gilda represented Hayworth’s most provocative role – at the time and in film history. Hayworth’s sexual allure, gradually cultivated through her underlying Spanish-ness, dance history and status as a musical performer, was memorialized in Gilda’s public rendition of “Put the Blame on Mame.” A defiant, mock striptease, this number remains one of the most outstanding images of Hayworth’s career – a notoriety achieved through movement and the removal of a pair of gloves and necklace. 103 Combined with a lifetime of sexualized dancing, this performance seemed to lock Hayworth into femme fatale roles for the remainder of her career. Interestingly, studio publicity did not consider “Put the Blame on Mame” to be its most seductive number; 147 instead, a rather tame “samba” was assigned the honor of this distinction, claiming: “Rita whirls through one of the most torrid sambas ever brought to the screen.” 104 This samba is nearly all but forgotten in critical analyses of the film, suggesting that a “torrid” performance disembodied from an overt Otherness makes a more lasting impression. This tension between Hayworth’s sameness and difference – her racialized past and sexualized yet Anglicized present – effectively recast her as a femme fatale. While this label is arguable – Gilda does not, after all, directly endanger Johnny – Hayworth’s legacy as the other woman with an ethnic past enabled moviegoers and historians alike to read her as such. 105 But as Richard Dyer points out in his article “Resistance Through Charisma: Rita Hayworth and Gilda,” women in film noir are “unknowable” and this unknowability makes them fatal. 106 While Dyer succinctly notes that we know Gilda because we know Rita Hayworth through her publicity and persona, I would argue that Hayworth’s transformation from Cansino to Hayworth provided an element of unknowability because of that process of change. I do, however, agree with Dyer’s assertion that Rita’s dancing recuperates her autonomy in the film, as it offers the glimpse that her erotic dancing is for her own pleasure as much as for ours. 107 Still, Rita’s rather liberating and challenging performance in “Put the Blame on Mame,” like her performance in “You Excite Me” is ultimately contained – and in many ways 148 reprimanded – by the publicity surrounding Gilda and her co-star Glenn Ford’s persona as a recently discharged Marine. Since You’ll Never Get Rich, Hayworth’s glowing fame had become inextricably tied to her dance performances and the role of women in the transition to a post-war period. The importance of dance to Hayworth’s career is illustrated by accounts that: “[S]inging and dancing sequences in [Gilda]…were included after terrific pressure was exerted on the studio by Rita’s many admirers, including a host of GI’s who requested that she be allowed to display her shapely gams in some torrid dance routines.” 108 Because this information was disseminated by studio press books and offered as stories to news and fan magazines, it is difficult to know if there truly was GI fan pressure to alter the representation of Hayworth in Gilda. Whatever the truth, it was important to make it seem that audience members returning from the war felt a sense of control over how their favorite pinup of 1945 performed on screen “in her first picture of 1946.” 109 Glenn Ford, an actor well publicized for returning to Hollywood after active duty as a Marine, embodied this sense of control. 110 With Gilda, Glenn Ford’s representation is in some ways an attempt to tame Hayworth’s persona. The widespread visual ad campaign for Gilda supports the masculine, militarized power behind Ford’s cultivated persona. The first of the three primary poses for the marketing campaign support 149 the assertion of Gilda and Hayworth as a femme fatale: Hayworth lounges languidly upon a couch or stands alone against a dark background while smoking a cigarette. The second series features Hayworth at Ford’s feet; accompanying taglines state: “Now They All Know What I Am.” The third and most prevalent advertising series features a static image of Hayworth being slapped by Ford. This series represent Ford’s power; as an advertising tool, these poses are particularly interesting, given that Ford’s character is depicted as somewhat emasculated and manipulated by Gilda in the film. Because Gilda is not a traditional femme fatale, this aspect of her persona is manifested through a direct association of Hayworth’s character with the war. First, Gilda does not appear in the film until after the narrative casually mentions the war’s conclusion via Johnny’s voiceover – “By the way, about that time the war ended” – while a newspaper headline declares “Germany Surrenders.” In one publicity article, Hayworth is directly compared with a military tank – the photographer Rudy Maté is quoted, “It is easier to photograph a glamour girl than it is an army tank” – and her image (as Gilda) was affixed to a bomb. 111 In Gilda, Hayworth’s sex appeal – and masqueraded ethnicity – had gained such a momentum that it was now mortally dangerous. The tensions signaled in this publicity would be echoed in the press books for The Lady From Shanghai, perhaps explaining the unique disavowal of Rita’s previous associations with Mexico. 150 Shanghai’d by Mexico Like Glenn Ford’s characters in Gilda and The Loves of Carmen (1948) – where publicity also features him slapping her – Orson Welles seemed to reprimand Rita’s persona and character. In The Lady from Shanghai (1948), Rita is symbolically castrated: she is stripped of both her hair and mobility. This film is unique to Hayworth’s persona for many reasons. First, as McLean has noted, the canonization of Welles as a film auteur has incorporated this specific performance of Rita into academia. Second, this film is the “notable exception” of Rita’s star career at Columbia: though she sings a song, Rita does not dance in The Lady From Shanghai. In a film where Rita’s dancing ability is disempowered, she is no longer recognizable. I am particularly interested in one particular aspect of this film: The Lady from Shanghai marks the singular departure from Hayworth’s infamous red tresses. With the cropping and dying of Rita’s hair to blonde, Orson Welles – the purported mastermind of this decision – effectively destroyed Rita’s image in service of the film. As Dyer notes, “Only by the most implacable destruction of Hayworth’s image, including, crucially, cropping her hair and changing its color, was Orson Welles able to [make Rita unknowable] in The Lady from Shanghai.” 112 By making Rita unknowable as a “topaz blonde” with a “‘cinema swirl’” bob could Rita fully embody the femme fatale, killing her husband in a gunfight. 113 In a reversal of 151 Samson and Delilah, “a score of cameramen clicked away” as Rita’s hair was cut and dyed by Orson Welles and Helen Hunt – Columbia’s hair stylist and one of the people often credited with Rita’s initial transformation to a redhead. 114 Interestingly, Rita’s revised image enables her to be positioned as an outsider – an American? – while in Mexico. In articles entitled, “Even Glamour Has Its Problems When Hollywood Goes Mexican,” the press books position Rita as impractical for Mexico while exoticizing and primitivizing Mexico: Hayworth purportedly requires a special makeup to withstand the “blazing tropical sun” while an armed bodyguard wards off “crocodiles and snakes on land and cannibal fish in the water.” 115 Another article chronicles Rita’s amazement at the ability of a peso (“approximately 20 cents”) to purchase, not a single orchid, but “several hundred of the most gorgeous orchids I have ever seen.” Beyond tropicalizing Mexico, the article also Figure 11: Helen Hunt cuts Hayworth’s hair. Figure 12: Orson Welles inspects Hayworth’s new style. 152 positions Rita and the production crew as saviors bringing (first world) medical attention to quiet a crying, Indian baby that was holding up the production schedule. 116 As a blonde, Rita was now able to traverse back across the border – back to her origin – and engage with the country as a star from the United States (not as Rita Cansino). 117 Conclusion Rita Hayworth became a screen legend and one of the most successful Latina actresses through a paradoxical performance of dance, fashion and hair color – the precise result of her simultaneous representation of whiteness and nonwhiteness. 118 Her persona progressed along a complicated line of race, gender and national identity: while the façade of cosmetic whiteness eventually enabled Rita to access leading roles in major Hollywood films, the routine mention of her prehistory as a Spanish dancer reified an ever-present and underlying level of exotic Otherness in her persona. Even as Rita became a star, dance remained a constant signifier of sexuality. Yet, her transformation towards whiteness indicated a wholesomeness that cultivated the primary paradox or simultaneity of her career as the All American “Love Goddess” and her racialized sexuality was eventually and effectively rephrased as general sex appeal. Thus, the juxtaposition of Rita’s body and dance performances created an idealized screen woman for a nation in 153 transition from a prewar to postwar era. 119 Yet, Rita remained an ambiguous embodiment of race and sexuality through which U.S. female agency and sexual identity were reinterpreted after World War II. The popularity of Rita Hayworth’s hybrid persona preceded the emergence of the “girl next door sexuality” lauded by Playboy magazine and other sex-literature of the time. 120 Further, the “singles culture” of the 1950s and 1960s was “premised on an ethic of success, prosperity and consumption” considered necessary in the postwar era. 121 In light of this, Rita Hayworth was a prototypical “liberated woman,” an emerging idealization expected to work in the public and private spheres and desire sex, all while maintaining a visually desirable façade. 122 As a supposed product of successful cosmetic manipulation, Hayworth personified the consumption necessary to become a fully functioning member of this reformulated society in the United States. For women, whether factory workers or leading Hollywood stars, traditional gender roles were simultaneously being tested, contested and reified during WWII. 123 Because race, gender and class are all ensnared in the colonial or imperial project, Rita’s body – like many other women’s bodies – was entangled in the war. 124 The beginning and end of Hayworth’s heyday – ending with her “final sex symbol role” in Miss Sadie Thompson (1953) – was marked by the relationship between war and the duality of Hayworth’s identity, most 154 visible through her hair. 125 It is therefore telling that the trajectory of Rita’s persona (an artful performance in itself) reached the full designation of femme fatale just as she cosmetically adjusted herself to the extreme end of idealized white representation as a blonde. In a sense, Hayworth was at her most dangerous when the signifiers of her racialized difference were less plainly in view. Fortunately for audiences, Rita’s career boomed beyond Gilda and The Lady From Shanghai. In films like The Loves of Carmen (1948, the first Beckworth production) and Affair in Trinidad (1952), Hayworth beamed as an actress and continued to represent the complicated factors of an independent womanhood in the 1950s. With The Lady from Shanghai, the racial, gendered and national elements of Rita’s persona had, at very least, been untangled from her hair. 155 Chapter Three Endnotes 1 This title, one that followed Rita through the end of her career, was dubbed by Winthrop Sargeant’s Life article entitled “The Cult of the Love Goddess” on November 10, 1947. The article does much to discredit Rita’s agency, as Adrienne McLean analyzes in her book. Adrienne L. McLean, Being Rita Hayworth: Labor, Identity and Hollywood Stardom (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 57-63. 2 Other films to consider include Strawberry Blonde (1941), You Were Never Lovelier (1942), Cover Girl (1944), Down to Earth (1947), The Lady From Shanghai (1948), The Loves of Carmen (1948), Affair in Trinidad (1952), Salome (1953) and Miss Sadie Thompson (1953). 3 Barbara Leaming, If This Was Happiness: A Biography of Rita Hayworth (New York: Viking, 1989), 17-18. McLean 66-67. 4 McLean’s research argues that Hayworth’s deal with the studio is the first recorded instance of an actor or actress receiving a percentage of the profits by forming her own production company, Beckworth. McLean 12, 211n28. 5 It is interesting to note that Hayworth’s ethnic whiteness was facilitated through what could be read as Irish lineage via her red hair – a category of whiteness largely contested until more recently in U.S. history. 6 When Rita is seen from outside of the United States, she becomes something else altogether. For example, in the Italian neorealist film Bicycle Thieves (1949), Rita’s image – a poster for Gilda – symbolizes a sardonic contrast between the excess of Hollywood/United States and poverty in Italy in the late 1940s. 7 In chapter one, I elaborate on the example of this amalgamation in a scene from Flying Down to Rio (1933): the women wear a semblance of a mismatched, hybrid of Mexican folkloric and Spanish styled clothing in Brazil. Though there is often little distinction between Mexican, Cuban or Puerto Rican in early Hollywood and characters of Spanish descent are often classified with these identities, the term Spanish often indicates a preferential position in this Latin hierarchy. 8 This discovery is more of a re-discovery: Hayworth was reportedly featured in a “short-subject on folk dancing” that premiered before the Warner Bros. film Don Juan (1926); this experience precedes her engagement at the Agua Caliente club, where she was signed to Fox. To the best of my knowledge, this first bit part was a Vitaphone production, likely Anna Case with the 156 Dancing Cansinos, but possibly La Fiesta. See James Robert Parish, The Fox Girls (Secaucus: Castle Books, 1972), 219. 9 This term was often used to describe Rita and her dancing during the height of her career. The USC Special Collections, Cinema-Television Library. Gilda (1946). “Biographical Feature.” In “Hayworth, Ford, MacReady, Calleia Biographies,” Columbia Studios Press Book Collection, page 22. McLean makes the case that this description is true of all women appearing in nightclub scenes, but I consider the use of this term in relation to a history of Hollywood Latinas in the early part of the century, including Dolores Del Rio. 10 Larry Billman, Film Choreographers and Dance Directors: An Illustrated Biographical Encyclopedia (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 1997), 251. See also Leaming, 11. It is also suggested that Eduardo’s sister’s death in 1928 is to blame, dissolving the “Dancing Cansinos” brother-sister dance act. See Parish, 220. 11 Parish, 220. Also see “Back Street (1932).” Film Record, American Film Institute Catalog. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88- 2003&xri:pqil:res_ver=0.2&res_id=xri:afi-us&rft_id=xri:afi:film:10018 (accessed January 23, 2006). 12 Both Leaming and Parish make mention of this exclamation, though Leming alleges that this is indicative of the sexual abuse that Rita experienced in her youth. 13 McLean’s analysis does an excellent job of illustrating how this mythology – considered to be a revelation in some more contemporary biographical accounts – was actually a standard representation of Hayworth as her career became more and more mainstream. 14 Leaming, 25. 15 Hayworth biographies often highlight this exploitation. For example, If This Was Happiness proposes that Eduardo used Rita to further his own professional visibility; Leaming further asserts that Rita posed as Mrs. Eduardo Cansino, a professional maneuver supporting her thesis that was sexually abused during their tour of Mexican nightclubs. This posing may also speak to the propositions that a young girl might regularly encounter in a town known for prostitution. Leaming, 17-18. 157 16 The duo performed for eighteen months at the Foreign Club, a name that bears consideration as a tourist club located in Mexico. The gambling boat was called the Rex. Parish, 220. 17 Schenck owned a large percentage of the club, but began his career by building amusement parks. He worked at United Artists before 20 th Century Pictures and was instrumental in merging 20 th Century Pictures with Fox Film Corporation. Thomas Schatz, The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1996), 44, 177. Also see Leaming, 19. 18 While their marriage may not have been sanctioned by the Cansino family, Judson and the family reconciled enough to benefit from Rita’s early success at Columbia. 19 Barbara A. Tenenbaum, ed., Latin American History and Culture (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1996), 303. 20 Marta E. Savigliano, Tango and the Political Economy of Passion (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), 85. 21 As Marta Savigliano contends, “[W]ithout the manufacturing of exoticism and the constitution of exotic subjects and cultures, the bourgeois consumerist societies [here, U.S. consumers]…would not have had a sense of their own lacks or of their own decadence.” Savigliano, 89 22 George J. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). Chapter 10 – “Where is Home?: The Dilemma of Repatriation” – is of particular interest. 23 The Great Depression is earmarked as 1929-1939, while Prohibition officially spanned 1919-1933. 24 Tenenbaum, 303. 25 Sarah Berry, Screen Style: Fashion and Femininity in 1930s Hollywood (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 112. 26 See chapter one on Dolores Del Rio for more on Olvera Street. 27 “She wore her dyed black hair parted severely in the center and pulled back into a knot at the nape of her neck.” Curiously, Leaming points out that in 158 1913 Eduardo and Elisa “had wasted no time in Americanizing their costumes” once in the United States, “but now Eduardo dressed Margarita as a Spanish girl so that the audience would perceive them to be a local couple.” Leaming, 16. 28 Berry, 113. 29 Berry, 95, 98 and 113. 30 Ibid. 31 Berry, 110. 32 Soon after Dante’s Inferno, Rita signed a six-month contract at Fox for $200 per week Eduardo Cansino was hired as an on-lot studio dance instructor. Parish, 221. 33 Sheehan was eventually overthrown at Fox; with this transition, Rita lost the title role in Ramona (1936), a remake of the film that once featured Dolores Del Rio, based on the popular California-based novel. Parrish, 222. 34 Hayworth’s unofficial screen debut may have begun as a bit dancer in the 1926 film The Fiesta, choreographed by Eduardo Cansino. Rita is not officially credited with a film role until Under the Pampas Moon (1935). It can be argued that Rita Hayworth’s star potential was identified in Howard Hawks’ Only Angels Have Wings, a film often acknowledged as an early Hayworth film due to Hawks’ reputation as an auteur. However, I contend that Hayworth begins to gain notice in the film Strawberry Blonde (Rita’s twentieth film at Columbia) in 1941. 35 Rita (2003) and various biographies. 36 For instance, Rita’s hair color is dark, not raven for The Game That Kills. Gene Ringgold, Rita Hayworth: The Legend and Career of a Love Goddess (Secaucus, NJ: The Citadel Press, 1974), 87. 37 This term is frequently used to describe the process of dying her hair. 38 McLean, 33. 39 Ringgold, 89. 159 40 “And changing the color of hair for [Blood and Sand] to the coppery red it was to remain through the bulk of her career turned out to be the extra fillip which turned ‘Lady Loan-Out’ into ‘Lady Luck.’” Ringgold, 32. 41 Studios would loan out their contracted stars to other studio productions for a fee. 42 Strawberry Blonde Promotional Packet page 13. “Advance Publicity Releases,” Warner Bros., Press Book Collection, USC Cinema-Television Library or USC Warner Bros. Archive, School of Cinema Television- University of Southern California, Strawberry Blonde (1941) Production Notes File #1741. 43 The USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California. Strawberry Blonde (1941). “Advance Publicity Releases” from Production Notes. In Warner Bros. Press Book Collection, File #1741, page 13. 44 McLean also stresses this point, suggesting that this “visible” transformation process indicates just how “American” Rita’s rise to fame was. McLean, 45. 45 From the September 1940 issue of Motion Picture, as quoted by McLean. McLean, 37. 46 Kathy Lee Peiss, Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture. (New York: Henry Holt, 1999), 192-196. 47 The USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California. Strawberry Blonde (1941). “Advance Publicity Releases” from Production Notes. In Warner Bros. Press Book Collection, File #1741, page 13. 48 The exceptions are Doña Sol in Blood and Sand (1941), Maria Acuña in You Were Never Lovelier (1942) and Carmen in The Loves of Carmen (1948). Of these, both Doña Sol and Carmen are Spanish. Yet Rita’s ethnic alignment is often signaled in ways beyond dance, such as the film settings: Argentina, Mexico/Shanghai and the Pacific Islands. 49 In the “Woman’s Page Features,” Rita is quoted as stating: “The first time I looked in a mirror and saw myself with light red hair with golden glints, I felt positively wicked.” “I’ve discovered that blonde-ness suits my real disposition better and I’m going to stay this way. Why not?” Another feature 160 on the page adds: ““There are six kinds of blondes [platinum, peroxide, golden, natural, dirty and strawberry], all preferred by gentlemen, but the most dangerous of these is the strawberry blonde.” Strawberry Blonde Promotional Packet, Production Notes File #1741, page 17. 50 Rita’s character is named Virginia, but the press book uses the actor’s names interchangeably with character names. Strawberry Blonde Promotional Packet, Production Notes File #1741, page 13. 51 With Blood and Sand, Rita returned to Fox for the first time since her contract was cancelled there, commanding a significantly higher price for her services upon return. 52 Ringgold, 123. The original film version of this novel featured Rudolph Valentino, another star presented as an “exotic-erotic spectacle,” speaking to both the versatility of ethnicity and the sensuality attributed to the Spanish subjects in these films. See Miriam Hansen, Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 260. 53 The USC Special Collections, Cinema-Television Library. Blood and Sand (1941). “Bright Colors Fascinate Men Says Mamoulian.” In Fox Studios (MCMXLI) Press Book Collection, page 26. 54 Blood and Sand Press Book, 26. 55 “Rita Hayworth Cast as Siren in New Hit Film.” In Blood and Sand Press Book, 24. 56 Ringgold, 91. 57 Hair color significantly impacts a female performer’s roles and persona. For example, Rita was cast as Doña Sol after Carole Landis refused to become a redhead for the part; it had taken Landis time to cultivate her persona as a “blonde bombshell,” and she did not want to disrupt it with this film. As punishment for her refusal of Dona Sol, Landis was cast in a secondary role to Hayworth in My Gal Sal, a lead Landis was originally promised. Ringgold, 123. I would also suggest that contemporary female performers must adopt or move towards blonde-ness in hopes of expanding their careers in the mainstream. 58 “Rita Hayworth Cast as Siren in New Film Hit.” It is particularly interesting that this same press book article cites the Haworth as an “English 161 acting family, famous for its Shakespearean interpretations.” Blood and Sand Press Book, 24. 59 Because all Latinas were perceived to be synonomous with dancing, this ability was not perceived as anything of merit or skill. Mueller and others quote Hayworth as stating that “Fred knew I was a dancer, he knew what all those dumb dumbs at Columbia didn’t know.” John Mueller, Astaire Dancing: The Musical Films (New York: Knopf, 1985), 188. Refer to the introduction for a discussion of the continually low status of dancers in Hollywood – then and now. For example, dancers and dance directors do not have their own union or guild. Further, dancers (here, female dancers) were typically seen as merely a “Berkeley”: a pretty face with little to no training. 60 McLean, 37. 61 Billman, 66. 62 Astaire was familiar with Rita’s dance training, as he knew the Cansino family from his days as a vaudevillian performer. Whether Astaire asked for Hayworth or Cohn asked for Astaire depends upon whose biographical account you select. Compare Ringgold, 128-129 with Mueller. 63 McLean makes the point that musicals have largely been made validated through analyses focused on male authorship – either in terms of the performer (Astaire, Kelly, etc) or auteur (Minelli, Freed Unit, etc). 64 See Rick Altman, American Film Musical (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987). Chapters 2 and 3 are of particular interest. 65 For an interesting revision of the Rogers-Astaire dynamic, see Edward Gallafent’s Astaire and Rogers, which chronicles the pair’s films as a serial. Edward Gallafent, Astaire and Rogers (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004). 66 In addition, historians continually compare Astaire’s later partners to Rogers, as is evident with Mueller in Astaire Dancing. 67 McLean phrases this as the “paradoxical” elements of “eroticism and decency.” McLean, 63. 68 Mueller, 190. 162 69 Of Astaire’s partners, Rita is perhaps the star with the most sexual/sexualized persona – with the exception of Cyd Charisse in The Band Wagon (1953) and Silk Stockings (1957). 70 Like the importance of women in the general genre, this female power is often disregarded or subjugated in favor of the male performer. See McLean’s discussion of the musical female and “women’s musicals.” McLean, 112-117. 71 McLean, 53. 72 Mueller, 194. 73 Mueller, 194. 74 Italics in original. Mueller, 194-195. 75 This domestication was enhanced by their second film, You Were Never Lovelier (1942). In You Were Never Lovelier, Hayworth is cast as the daughter of a wealthy Argentinian family; here, Argentina is primarily evoked as an exotic locale and does not figure much into the narrative of the film beyond the father’s paternalism. 76 Fred Astaire is considered the more “gentlemanly” dance performer of the musical era, contrasted against the more contemporary, working class persona of Gene Kelly. Billman, 66. 77 Life 11 August 1941 Life. Life soon dubs Hayworth “The Love Goddess” and Time declares her a huge star. 78 Hayworth was second only to Betty Grable. Variety Obituaries, May 20, 1987. 79 Mueller, 187. 80 Mueller, 187 and 196. 81 McLean, 54 and 55. 82 After the release of Cover Girl, both it and You’ll Never Get Rich were released as a double feature. Audiences were asked to judge “the dance battle of the century” between Hayworth, Astaire and Kelly. 163 83 “Cover Girl (1944).” Film Record, American Film Institute Catalog. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88- 2003&xri:pqil:res_ver=0.2&res_id=xri:afi-us&rft_id=xri:afi:film:378 (accessed January 23, 2006). Cover Girl established Kelly as a musical performer and was the first film in which he began to significantly contribute to film choreography, specifically his own dance numbers. See Roman, Robert C. “Gene Kelly: 1912-96 (dancer), Obituary,” Dance Magazine 70 (April 1996): 94-95. 84 Source: American Masters Feature Essay, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/kelly_g.html 85 Ann Barzel, “The Moving Image: Dance and Television – 70th Anniversary Issue.” Dance Magazine 71 (June 1997): 120-124. 86 It was not until Kelly starred with Hayworth in Cover Girl that he was recognized as a star. Likewise, Hayworth had not achieved such acclaim until her earlier partnership with Astaire. A similar celebrity occurred for George Clooney when he was paired with Jennifer Lopez in Out of Sight (1998). For more on this, see chapter four on Jennifer Lopez. 87 Billman, 79. 88 For an excellent example of this, see The “I Don’t Care” Girl (1953). 89 While Cole was called in for Hayworth during Cover Girl, he fully molded the choreography for Hayworth in the films Tonight and Every Night, Gilda and Down to Earth – the very films earmarking her “Love Goddess” period. Billman 79. 90 One performance, entitled “Radio Dance,” is a series of movements to “random” snatches of radio sound – everything from classical music to a speech by Hitler. Another scene features a show performance centered on a projected newsreel. Eventually, sailors, cadets and civilians are beckoned by the on-stage singer to “walk” off the projection screen and onto the stage. They do! Because the magazine Life is involved in the narrative, there are also reflexive moments, particularly the scene where the Life photographer tries to take Rosalind’s picture. As she poses for the picture, Rosalind slyly covers her/Rita’s famous legs with a copy of Life magazine; at the insistence of the photographer (“For the boys!”), Rosalind/Rita finally reveals her gams. Based on a true life story, this overlap of fiction and reality is interesting, particularly when it is whitewashed: the theater upon which this film is based was a burlesque venue, featuring naked women; this may help explain why it 164 never missed a show. See Glenn Loney, Unsung Genius: The Passion of Dancer-Choreographer Jack Cole (New York: F. Watts, 1984). 91 The remaining Hayworth performances include the comedic pantomime of female soldiers in “The Boy I Left Behind,” a drama-tragedy inspired modern- esque performance in “Cry and You Cry Alone” and a very tame vaudevillian striptease in “Anywhere.” 92 Ringgold, 153-154. 93 Billman, 92. Further Weekly Variety stated, “This picture also explores some comparatively new aspects of sex in connection with Miss Hayworth, which will not detract from the [box office].” Quote from Weekly Variety as cited in Ringgold, 155. Ringgold himself states that this “truly lush production number” is “probably Rita’s all-time best staged and performed song.” Ringgold, 154. 94 I take this cue from McLean, who effectively argues the selective way musicals and musical women have been written about in film history and feminist scholarship. She turns to dance scholarship to revise these assertions. McLean, 118-119. 95 By the end of the film, however, Rosalind chooses to delay marriage to pay respects to her dead friends by remaining with the theater company. 96 McLean, 117. 97 This sub-heading is a play on the popular tagline for Gilda, “There NEVER was a woman like Gilda!” 98 The USC Special Collections, Cinema-Television Library. Gilda (1946). “Hayworth, Ford Bring New Drama to State Screen.” In General Advance, Columbia Studios Press Book Collection. 99 According to a September 1945 news item in the New York Times, Gilda was originally written as an American gangster story, but was switched to Buenos Aires because of opposition from the Breen Office. 100 The USC Special Collections, Cinema-Television Library. Gilda (1946). “Film Backgrounds in Latin America Becoming Popular.” In “Prepared Reviews, Theater Notices and Feature,” Columbia Studios Press Book Collection, 17. 165 101 Ibid. 102 The USC Special Collections, Cinema-Television Library. Gilda (1946). “Hayworth Scores As Spicy ‘Gilda’ In Dramatic Film (review).” In “Prepared Reviews, Theater Notices and Feature,” Columbia Studios Press Book Collection, 17. 103 There may be some contention here, as McLean cites The Lady from Shanghai as Hayworth’s most academically discussed film. Yet, as an example of popular knowledge outside of the academic realm of cinema studies, Encyclopedia Britannica states: “The definitive Hayworth film is undoubtedly Gilda (1946), in which she appeared opposite Glenn Ford, her frequent costar.” Hayworth, Rita. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved March 5, 2005, from Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service. <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?tocId=9039680> 104 Caption to Prod Still No. 318 of Hayworth laughing in midriff samba gown with cigarette and fur coat dragging on floor. The USC Special Collections, Cinema-Television Library. Gilda (1946). In Columbia Studios Press Book Collection, 28. 105 The American Film Institute catalogue states that this film “forever marked her as a femme fatale.” “Gilda (1946).” Film Record, American Film Institute Catalog. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88- 2003&xri:pqil:res_ver=0.2&res_id=xri:afi-us&rft_id=xri:afi:film:378 (accessed January 23, 2006). 106 Dyer, Richard. “Resistance Through Charisma: Rita Hayworth and Gilda.” In Women and Film Noir, ed. E. Ann Kaplan (London: BFI, 1978), 92-93. 107 Dyer (1978), 96-97. 108 The USC Special Collections, Cinema-Television Library. Gilda (1946). “Biographical Feature.” In “Hayworth, Ford, MacReady, Calleia Biographies,” Columbia Studios Press Book Collection, 22. 109 The USC Special Collections, Cinema-Television Library. Gilda (1946). “Gal GI’s Picked” from “Theater and Lobby Suggestions.” In Columbia Studios Press Book Collection, 10. 110 “Returning to the screen after years in the Marine Corps, Glenn Ford has been acclaimed by the previewers.” The USC Special Collections, Cinema- Television Library. Gilda (1946). “General Advance.” In “Romantic Drama 166 Stars Hayworth in New Type Role,” Columbia Studios Press Book Collection, 16. Columbia publicity surrounding Glenn Ford focused his recent discharge from the Marines. For example, Gilda publicity details about Ford – his brisk walk, ability to handle dice and shoot a gun – are all attributed or linked to his time in the armed forces. The USC Special Collections, Cinema-Television Library. Gilda (1946). “General Advance.” In “Gilda Publicity: Glamorous Rita Hayworth Appears as ‘Gilda.’” Columbia Studios Press Book Collection, 16. 111 New York Times 30 June 1946. 112 Dyer (1978), 96. 113 Publicity for the film routinely identifies Rita’s new hairstyle in these terms. The USC Special Collections, Cinema-Television Library. The Lady from Shanghai (1948). “Beauty Shops.” In “News Promotions/Campaign Ideas,” Columbia Studios Press Book Collection, 10. 114 The USC Special Collections, Cinema-Television Library. The Lady from Shanghai (1948). “ Nations News Tickers Vibrate When Hayworth Bobs Hair.” In Columbia Studios Press Book Collection, 5. 115 The USC Special Collections, Cinema-Television Library. The Lady from Shanghai (1948). “Even Glamour Has Its Problems When Hollywood Goes Mexican.” In Columbia Studios Press Book Collection, 5. 116 The USC Special Collections, Cinema-Television Library. The Lady from Shanghai (1948). “Rita Hayworth Goes to Mexico and All Mexico Goes for Rita.” In Columbia Studios Press Book Collection, 5. 117 One article in The Lady from Shanghai press books that mentions Rita’s origins and discovery in Agua Caliente. However, the article remains more ambiguous than previous publicity in its connection between Rita and Mexico. 118 The modality of what I term mobile whiteness more fully explains this phenomenon. I have coined this term to illustrate how the Latina body oscillates between whiteness and blackness in visual representation, specifically through dance. The term aims to destabilize what we view as visual “markers” of race by illustrating how certain nonwhite female bodies maneuver within and across these standardized poles. See introduction for more on this term. 167 119 As a redhead, Hayworth’s roles became more along the lines of a white exotic, not a dark exotic. We can see this transition simply in the names of her characters. As Rita Cansino, she was cast as Angela Gonzales, Paula Castillo, Maria Maringola, plain “dancer,” & Carmen Zoro. As the early Rita Hayworth, she appeared as Judith 'Judy' MacPherson (Only Angels Have Wings, 1939) and Patricia 'Patsy' O'Malley (Music in My Heart, 1940). With a few notable exceptions, Rita’s screen names were further de-ethnicized as she became more of a star: Rosalind 'Roz' Bruce, Rusty Parker, Sadie Thompson, Elsa 'Rosalie' Bannister, Terpsichore/Kitty Pendleton and simply “Gilda.” 120 Playboy premiered in 1953, the year that marks the end of Hayworth’s peak years with the films Salome and Miss Sadie Thomson. Further, we might extrapolate a connection between the look of Playboy’s premiere centerfold, Marilyn Monroe and Hayworth. 121 John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 302-305. 122 One press book encouraged publicity that aimed at women by stating that women were “the nation’s shoppers.” Like women in the postwar era, Hayworth’s domestic labor was necessary to the economic life of the postwar period, particularly as white, non-working class women were increasingly rushed back into the home. 123 Delano’s article on the use of makeup by women during the war offers a fascinating example of the complexity of these gendered structures during and after the war. 124 For more about the matrix of gender, race and class as an imperial project, see Anne McClintock’s Imperial Leather. Though focused primarily on British imperialism, there is much overlap with nation building in and by the United States. McClintock, Anne. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York: Routledge, 1995. Strikingly, the dangerous desire suggested in the star term “bombshell” is literally applicable to Hayworth: her image was affixed to an atomic test-bomb and detonated over islands in the Pacific Ocean as a token of adoration by GIs. In one press piece – “Hollywood Photographer Discusses His Subjects: Rudy Maté Finds Lensing Hayworth Easy But Tank in ‘Sahara’ Worried Him For Weeks” – Hayworth was compared to a military tank. Leaming, 129 and The USC Special Collections, Cinema-Television Library. Gilda (1946), Columbia Press Book Collection, 24. The bomb was a test detonated on Bikini atoll; this association reportedly upset Hayworth but was a publicity stunt orchestrated 168 by Harry Cohn. See Joe Morella and Edward J. Epstein, Rita: The Life of Rita Hayworth (New York: Delacorte Press, 1983), 99-100. The picture used was reportedly the bedroom pinup pose featured in Life. 125 This statement is the caption that accompanies the production still for Miss Sadie Thompson in Rita: The Life of Rita. 169 CHAPTER 4: FRAMING JENNIFER LOPEZ The [beauty] pageant illustrates that women’s natural ‘asset’ continues to be primarily located in and through the body, whereas men’s natural assets include talent, intellect, and entrepreneurial ambition. Sarah Banet-Weiser, The Most Beautiful Girl in the World 1 – Just when I get them to focus on your assets, they’re focusing on hers. – They’re fantastic assets, don’t you think? Scripted exchange between Stanley Tucci and Ralph Fiennes, regarding an image of Marisa Ventura (Jennifer Lopez), in Maid in Manhattan (2002) Jennifer Lopez’s recent rise as a multimedia star is compelling given the history of Latina celebrity and the persistence of racialized binaries of representation. Using Lopez’s career, this chapter shows how the screen Latina has remained tenuously between types throughout Hollywood’s history, resulting in a malleable media and economic space ripe for Lopez to exploit at this specific multicultural moment in U.S. history. Seventy years after Del Rio’s debut, Lopez’s on-screen identity as a Latina is still composed within the tension of sameness (One) and difference (Other). This essay 170 uses the film language of the close-up and wide shot to explore the evolution of Lopez’s appearance within the film frame. I argue that the close-up encapsulates the cosmetic changes Lopez has made to access mainstream Hollywood film while the wide shot reiterates her difference by reinstating and reiterating the popularity of her butt and the non-whiteness it represents. By using these terms – particularly the way each composition has traditionally framed the female face and body – I will illustrate the continual and complex process of racialized representation that has depicted one of the most famous Latina stars in Hollywood. 2 “Between and Betwixt”: The Tempo(rary) of the Dancing Brown Body As the previous chapters on Del Rio, Miranda and Hayworth have shown, the screen depiction of Latinas has traditionally centered on her dancing body. Each of these women became famous by dancing onto the screen and Jennifer Lopez is no exception. 3 As Jane C. Desmond has shown, the belief in the so-called natural rhythm of nonwhite bodies effectively positions race and nationality on/through the body to construct and perpetuate a division between “moving and thinking, mind and body.” 4 As a result, the conventions of dance have come to “represent a highly codified and highly mediated representation of social distinctions” – collapsing passion and lust into the stereotype of the Latina. 5 171 In this chapter, I am interested in how the Latina body must change to simultaneously exhibit sameness and difference. Lopez is the first Latina whose celebrity has opened a Hollywood film at the box office since Rita Hayworth. 6 While Hayworth’s mainstream success required an Anglicized revision of her name from the Spanish “Rita Cansino,” Lopez has remained “Jennifer Lopez.” 7 Still, access to mainstream Hollywood film for both women meant – to varying degrees – alterations in cosmetic appearance of the hair and face. While such physical negotiations are often considered necessary for both white and black actresses, Lopez conformed to idealized beauty standards yet retained an exoticized difference – a simultaneity that has contributed to her mainstream success in the late twentieth century. Yet, like Latina celebrities before her, dance has shaped Lopez’s career trajectory. If dance indicates a popularly recognized difference, the mainstream success Jennifer Lopez and Rita Hayworth achieved through it can be, at least partially, attributed to citizenship. Here, I define this citizenship as socioeconomic ascension – exemplified by an association with work ethic and the American Dream. Del Rio, Miranda and Moreno were born, if not raised, abroad; the perceived foreignness of their origins may explain how their personas, though successful, remained marginalized by mainstream roles. 8 Lopez and Hayworth were born in the United States – New York, to be 172 specific. As such, Hayworth and Lopez ostensibly better support and sustain the nationalized narrative of the American Dream. In Lopez’s version of this Dream come true, her mother and father were born in Puerto Rico; both parents came to New York, making Jennifer – though technically already a U.S. citizen – a first generation mainlander and full cultural citizen of the United States. Both of Lopez’s parents worked and expected their daughter to attend college; against their wishes, Lopez left college to pursue a career in dance. Despite early professional struggles, she eventually won a spot on the television program In Living Color as one of the Fly Girls. Gradually, Lopez earned television and film roles, capturing the public’s attention when, after a national search, she was cast in the title role of Selena (1997). The breadth of the film’s publicity and casting call as well as the tragic narrative of Selena’s emerging cross-over success proved an ideal springboard for Lopez’s career. Because Jennifer’s upbringing seems to straddle the working class and middle-class, this biography is not exactly one of rags-to-riches. The fact that the Lopez family was able to purchase a home and expected Jennifer to attend college indicates intentions of upward mobility. Perhaps because of her fan base and persona, Lopez categorizes her own background rather vaguely; in one interview, Lopez identifies it as “lower to middle class, working class.” 9 This vagueness is culturally crucial. First, it is in line with a general 173 American-ness that imagines itself as middle-class despite the economic truth. But secondly, in the case of Lopez’s success, this back story seemingly proves that with hard work anyone – even immigrants but especially the children of immigrants – can prosper in the United States. Despite Lopez’s background, a working class status was effectively collapsed into her persona to fulfill the bootstrap mythology and reinstate popular national narratives that cast Latinas solely as domestic, garment, farm or other low-wage workers (in the real and reel worlds). 10 Because of Lopez’s fiscal accomplishments – particularly her triumph as the first Latina to earn $1 million per picture – her persona ultimately bears the symbolic weight of a country invested in perpetuating itself as the land of opportunity. Since the rise of her star in Selena, Lopez’s body – particularly her derriere – has remained a site of public fascination. 11 Despite the public obsession with Lopez’s assets, her career has continually maneuvered beyond the limitations that such attention might foster/forge. Instead, Lopez’s image has capitalized on Hollywood’s depictions of Latina-ness, which have historically straddled the prescribed codes of whiteness and non-whiteness. In other words, as a Latina performer Lopez presents the best of both polarized representations to reap the greatest rewards during a period of multiculturalism and a shift in popular culture practices. 174 As in the case of Del Rio and Miranda, Latinas previously depicted an international Otherness; today, however, the national project of the United States is to articulate itself against an intra-national Other –nonwhite but assimilable persons operating within hegemonic U.S. culture. 12 This project serves to reify the racial and structural status quo while offering the illusion of diversity and inclusion. Ideally, this intra-national Other works within (but never fully achieves) the dominant codes of whiteness, so as to be distinguished from so-called illegal or less assimilable immigrants. In this way, fetishized assets like the butt or actions like dance reiterate the necessary difference of the Other (even as it is being re-presented as diverse) while other bodily markers (hair, fashion, etc.) perpetuate the ideals to which beauty must strive. Lopez has utilized her in-between-ness to cultivate and manipulate a persona that simultaneously presents both as needed; in this way, she mobilizes race by moving through whiteness and blackness across various forms of media. The celebrity of Jennifer Lopez has exploited this transitional position to its fullest. The prototypical Latina body – not too light or too dark – efficiently illustrates diversity and economizes representation: it diversifies both white and black venues. As a dancer, Lopez seemed conscious of this unique position. 13 A 1998 Mirabella interview finds Lopez musing on her early 175 success in the Fly Girl world. Beyond her dance training, Lopez offered something different during a specific (multi)cultural moment: [Lopez] studied jazz and ballet, and aspired to dance on Broadway, but then, she says, “Hammer came out with ‘U Can’t Touch This,’ and all the auditions started becoming hip-hop auditions. I was good at it, and they were like, ‘Ooh, a light skinned girl who can do that. Great, let’s hire her!’” 14 Though classically trained, Lopez’s skin seemed her most marketable feature in the competitive hip-hop dance world. While Lopez’s complexion is arguably light, this statement suggests that Latinas with the right skin and hair remain privileged in the media – and assimilation – process. The lightening of skin and straightening of hair has long been a means of accessing the artificial hierarchy of whiteness, an attempt to assimilate through aesthetic and/or social identity. The history of African Americans in the United States illustrates the impact of Anglicized ideals on the perception of skin tone and hair texture as codes for the hierarchical arrangement of mainstream culture. This ascent is not solely cultural or national, but also economical. The 1998 Coca-Cola commercial featuring Jennifer Lopez exemplifies the pervasive American Dream as hegemonic and economic access. The advertisement presents Lopez’s life as a then-and-now narrative: staged scenes of her glamorous Hollywood present are juxtaposed with sepia-hued footage of her re-enacted past. The commercial begins as an elegantly dressed Lopez runs into frame, rapidly exiting a mansion and forcefully climbing 176 into a red Lamborghini. The car speeds away and the action sequence’s intensity is heightened by the frenetic editing style and the sound effect of barking dogs. In voiceover, Lopez says: “Wow, things have really changed since my dad used to walk me to school.” The past appears in faux home movie footage, showing a man and little girl standing before an urban stoop. The man’s hands are full: one holds his daughter’s hand while the other holds a Coke. The commercial cuts to the present, with the getaway scene mid- action. Lopez then exits the Lamborghini and hugs the director of a film crew; the opening scene is revealed to be a (staged) film shoot. Then Lopez states, “It wasn’t easy to find an open door…” as the commercial cuts to the past and a young, brown-haired child actor playing Lopez extinguishes the candles of a birthday cake. With a Coke bottle prominently displayed in the foreground, Lopez continues that it wasn’t easy “…to make my dreams come true.” At the party, the girl/Lopez embraces an actress playing her mother. The real/present-day Lopez addresses the camera: “But here I am…working hard yesterday, working hard today.” To illustrate the hard work of yesteryear, a pre-teen actress playing Lopez is shown completing a jazz dance turn. A wider shot reveals that she is dancing onstage and being evaluated by an anonymous gentleman. As he waves his hand in judgment, the expression of disappointment on the pre-teen’s face indicates the judge’s negative decision. But the success of Lopez’s hard work today 177 is clear when the commercial cuts to a chef serving the real Lopez food as she enjoys the Coca-Cola in her hand and laughs with others. Closing the commercial, Lopez reminds us that “what’s important will never change” as she sits with her (real) mother. A separate shot shows her actual father with an obscured, yet unmistakable, Coke bottle in the foreground. After a glamorous sip from her Coke, Lopez directly addresses the audience in close- up to complete her thought: “Family, Friends” remain important to her. Lopez hugs her mother. A close-up then shows Lopez laughing and looking screen left; the reverse shot suggests that Lopez is addressing a little girl with dark and tight curls giggling at her. In the final shot, Lopez takes us in confidence, placing hand over heart as she says: “They’ll always be here.” And so will Coke, suggests the logo branding the top right of the screen. The ad’s insistent juxtaposition of Lopez’s past and present marks it as an American Dream; this commercial narrative is less convincing for non- Latinos/as, as the hard-work-and-family formula remains unique to national advertising aimed at the marginalized, particularly the working class and/or nonwhite/immigrants. 15 The commercial is clearly negotiating a representational tension between the marginal past and mainstream present, a tension played out through ethnicity and cosmetic appearance. For example, a classic all-American birthday scene depicts Lopez’s youth, but it is sonically marked as different by a musical bridge: the birthday-past is scored with 178 the sounds of a folkloric guitar, beginning faintly then swelling as the young actress/mother embraces the child actress/Lopez. This musical moment cues the difference we are witnessing but does not reappear in the rest of the commercial. Similarly, familial moments like the birthday hug signal Lopez’s difference as a Latino/a in America: the overwhelmingly strong familial commitment keeps her family in heart and is the true secret to her success. Further, Lopez’s transition to success is marked in her clothing and hair. Lopez’s costumes – both present and past – are primarily Coca-Cola- hued red: a red gown in the present and a red leotard in the past. In this subtle way, Lopez is both branded and equated with the product itself. We can also see a transition in hair, from the first shot of Lopez as a wavy haired girl to the increasingly straightened and lightened hairstyle of the present. Such assimilation, the commercial suggests, is possible for every little Latina with a dream. The shot/reverse shot of Lopez looking at the girl with ethnically dark curls offers us this promise. Finally, the use of dance to link the past and present is of particular interest. Lopez’s hard work of the past is depicted as dance auditions and rejection. The present day Lopez, however, works in the similarly physical realm of action, as suggested by the commercial’s staged film-shoot. Both present and past center on the body; the body is clothed in the color of the product, but all endorsements are composed in close-up. 179 The timing of Jennifer Lopez’s presence and success might be considered temporal and transitional, a smoothing over of some of the historically constructed, racialized lines in mainstream media. Cornell West’s assertion that we are experiencing a recent cultural shift towards the “African Americanization of American popular culture” sets the stage for Lopez’s rise. 16 Beyond the skin tone that Lopez brought to hip hop, the dance (and music) form’s impact on Lopez’s success is striking, as it signals the increasing importance of this music and dance form in mainstream representation. Despite the increased attention to black aesthetic practices like hip-hop or the current attention to diversity, a tension remains around the bodies that perform in line with blackness. The rise of a brown screen identity like Lopez from the world of hip hop may be the result of black popular culture’s emergence within the confines of hegemonic whiteness in the United States. Lopez’s in-between-ness has helped soothe the anxiety of whiteness as representation has inched closer towards blackness. The variety of visual media formats – including film, print, interactive, music videos and television appearances – offers multiple spaces through which Jennifer Lopez has mobilized her racial representation. Each medium encodes its message differently, creating multiple planes through which Lopez’s image plays with bodily codes and narratives. Regardless of talent, the few types that women – particularly Latinas – can play in Hollywood 180 film limit their careers. The Lopez interview in Mirabella illustrates Lopez’s consciousness of her Hollywood identity – and the need to aim beyond her limited type. But all along, Lopez has been determined not to market herself as just a Latina actress. “My managers and agents and I realized that I’m not white,” she says with a laugh, “so I’ve always wanted to show that I could play any kind of character. Not only a range of emotions, but also race-wise.” 17 [emphasis mine] The importance of moving beyond Latina-type roles underscores the complexity of race and gender in Hollywood representation. In the case of Lopez, the compromises necessary for standardization have primarily occurred through hair and cosmetic style, echoing the conventions of lightness and whiteness in Hollywood film even as the films themselves reiterate her difference in ways beyond character name. 18 Race, Up-Close The close-up directs the audience’s full attention to the subject of the frame’s composition, reinforcing the cultivation of the Latina type by typically excluding her from its gaze. The close-up presents the audience with the most valuable or informative detail within a scene; the importance of a gesture, object or other visual cue is indicated by the way it is fully magnified within the frame. However, the shot’s cultural value primarily resides in its use to capture the film star’s face: within this frame, the star may use this space to emote, react, glow or simply be. Cinematography is organized 181 around the proper exposure of the face; historically, this face has been white. Dyer has identified the many ways that, technically but no less culturally, traditional cinematic lighting and framing techniques have reinstated whiteness by operating according to mechanical requirements standardized for white complexions – even when recording black bodies. On a symbolic level, the tradition of backlighting (creating a specific glow or halo around the star to signal importance) comes from a mythical representation of white virtuousness. This technique has most commonly been used with white female stars: brightness cues the framed subject’s “idealized representation” by cultivating the illusion of a “glow.” 19 The artificial glow effectively and economically collapses lightness, beauty and subject/narrative positioning in a single shot. While Dyer states that the moral and sexual superiority associated with such imagery is not as prevalent, “the language [and power] of this image remains powerful.” 20 Thus, the fiery Latina type has typically been neglected by the full cultural weight of the close-up. As visual real estate, the spatial value of the close-up is exemplified by the April 1997 cover of Vanity Fair. While the outer magazine cover features blondes Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet and Claire Danes, the inside cover highlights “emerging actresses” Jennifer Lopez, Charlize Theron and Fairuza Balk. 21 Captioned “Not Quite Ready For Their Close-Ups,” these three actresses close out a ten-person spread, following other performers like Renee Zellwegger, Minnie Driver, Alison Elliot and Jada Pinket (pre- 182 Smith). Lopez’s position in this Hollywood lineup indicates the newness of her celebrity but may also illustrate the unmet potential of her non-conformed image. 22 Like the front cover, the image of Lopez, Theron and Balk seems to privilege blondeness. Both brunettes, Lopez and Balk, are seated. Each flanks Theron’s left and right sides. Theron stands front and center in the picture; the nude color of her dress, blonde hair and central placement in the light make her the image’s focal point. While such composition may be a coincidence, Theron is given additional significance: on the same page is another inset, captioned image of Charlize sitting with her boyfriend. No additional images of Lopez or Balk appear on the page. Theron may not have her close-up, but she clearly deserved more screen time. Much has changed since Vanity Fair first identified Lopez as an up and comer in the Hollywood Issue. In the early period of Lopez’s career, she primarily appeared as a Latina actress in films like Money Train (1995), Selena (1997) and Anaconda (1997). In these films, Lopez’s characters are identified by Spanish surnames such as Santiago (Grace), Flores (Terri) and Quintanilla (Selena) respectively. Over time, overtly Latina characters/names have disappeared from Lopez’s films. In some cases, Lopez’s Latina-ness was replaced by Italian-ness. The transition to Italian characters, besides providing some excuse for Lopez’s ethnic body, signals a symbolic upward mobility: Italian-ness provided an intermediary station towards whiteness. 183 This process mirrors the relational assimilation of new immigrants in the early 1900s, as noted by David Roediger’s recent work on the whitening of Italian, Jewish, Irish and Polish people in the United States. 23 The malleability of Lopez’s visual representation, particularly her hair styling, has served to mobilize her climb in Hollywood film towards less ethnically defined roles. Though Hollywood was content to typecast Lopez as the love interest, her aspirations and consciousness caused her instead to select a B-film Anaconda. “‘I was offered another movie at the same time. It was like, Am I going to be the woman between two men again, or am I gonna’ be a strong woman character who’s a hero of an action movie, which is what I wanted to do.’” 24 We can conclude that such calculated decisions increasingly propelled Lopez into the mainstream roles that she desired. As her career has matured, she has decreasingly been (overtly) defined by ethnicity; instead, as we will see with the wide shot, marks of Lopez’s difference have manifested themselves in other ways across her more recent performances. One could argue that the Latin and Italian surnames have no impact on the narrative, that we should instead celebrate the appearance of a Latina character without overanalyzing these roles. Such an approach idealizes mainstream representation and overlooks the casting strategies of certain films. In Money Train, the Latina-ness of Lopez’s character mediates the sexual and racial tensions between an unlikely pair of brothers, played by 184 Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson. In one interview, Lopez remarks: “‘They wanted a Latina….They wanted somebody who could be with Wesley and with Woody.’” This comment prompted the Buzz magazine writer to (quite rightly) note, “Apparently, in Hollywood, brown is some kind of mediating color between black and white.” 25 In a film that challenges the racial taboos of biracial families, Lopez’s in-between-ness served as a convenient bridge, a detail utilized by the film’s publicity: one Money Train advertisement literally places the body of Lopez between and against close- ups of Snipes and Harrelson. The process of becoming visually American in the United States has played out through the politics of hair. While American-ness has primarily been determined by class, it has been normalized through beauty ideals. Access to the American Dream is a rite of passage requiring the marks of assimilation: a strong work ethic and/or acceptance of hegemonic beauty standards. Ayana D. Bird and Lori L. Tharps have noted that – as some members of the black community chose to resolve the process of assimilation – racially passing from one category to another was negotiated through “skin tone and hair texture.” 26 The lightening of skin and straightening of hair became a currency to access the artificial hierarchy of whiteness, enabling a sort of cultural citizenship in the United States. Lopez’s appearance has similarly required tailoring to conform to idealized notions of screen 185 beauty, effectively moving her career beyond “just a Latina actress.” 27 Since the beginning of Lopez’s career, audiences have witnessed the transformation from her true hair in films like Money Train towards lightened and straightened hair in films like Angel Eyes (2001) or Monster-in-Law (2005). 28 Lopez’s transformation has opened many doors, making her marketable beyond the ghetto of marginalized audiences. Curiously, as Lopez’s hair moved from curly to straight, her star power in mainstream film increased. Evidence of this transition to the mainstream exists in Lopez’s leading men: each leading man in Lopez’s films (and real life in the case of Sean Combs and Ben Affleck) has helped usher her racial mobility. Since Anaconda, Lopez’s romantic leads have consistently been white males: George Clooney (Out of Sight), an animated Woody Allen (Antz), Matthew McConaughey (The Wedding Planner), Ralph Fiennes (Maid in Manhattan) and Richard Gere (Shall We Dance). 29 In this sense, Anaconda is the transitional film from Latina star to mainstream star, theoretically pairing a curly haired Lopez with Eric Stoltz. The relationship is literally dormant over the course of the film because Stoltz’s character is in a coma; the narrative incapacitates Stoltz, effectively appointing Lopez heroine with Ice Cube as her sidekick. Yet, as Mary C. Beltran has noted in her work on Lopez as a crossover star, it was Lopez’s pairing with Clooney in Out of Sight that announced her status as a 186 “rising global star property,” particularly as she followed the film with her music career. 30 The cultural desire for lightness has been routinely reified through cinematic practice of Lopez’s image. 31 Cultural ideals become cultural norms when glorified and emulated through mass media’s technical practice. Though Lopez has rarely gone completely blonde for a film role (with the near exception of Angel Eyes or Monster-in-Law), she routinely wears dramatic hair highlights. The coloring effect lightens and brightens Lopez’s image, as in the publicity stills for Angel Eyes and The Wedding Planner illustrate. In The Wedding Planner publicity, Lopez’s hair and complexion nearly match that of Matthew McConaughey while in Angel Eyes posters, Lopez’s face becomes a blown-out ghost of whiteness. Illustrating the equation of the American Dream with lightness is the hair coloring in Maid in Manhattan. Here, Lopez (Marisa Ventura) plays a maid employed at the elite Beresford hotel. Because the narrative centers on a domestic worker and because this role is occupied by Lopez, her hair remains true to the character type: Lopez is a dark-hued brunette in this film. In fact, hair coloring significantly and subtly connotes cultural capital in the film. Marisa’s fellow maids each have dark hair: two of her friends are dark-haired black women while her confidante is a crass (Italian?) woman from Brooklyn with black hair. Beyond the maids, two female figures are significant in 187 Maid: the housekeeping manager and a character residing at the hotel, nicknamed “The Goddess.” The housekeeping manager is an auburn haired white woman and the goddess is a blonde socialite. 32 Significantly, both characters represent what Marisa – either directly or indirectly – aspires to be. Though Lopez is clearly the female lead, she remains subdued through hair coloring to remain consistent with her characterization. As a sort of compromise, Lopez’s hair is never curly or even unruly; instead, it remains neatly slicked into a low ponytail or bun with the exception of a few key scenes, where hair is mobilized in performance. For example, Lopez’s hair is used to show a transition at the beauty salon, from maid to princess, as called for by the narrative’s love story. The film negotiates an unlikely love story as a journey towards the American Dream, depicted here as a managerial position. Lopez’s character is mistaken for a hotel patron and attracts a Republican New York Assemblyman named Chris Marshall (Ralph Fiennes). As a maid, Marisa is instructed by the Beresford managerial staff to strive towards invisibility. Marisa is quite successful at being invisible, even anonymously meeting Fiennes’ character while servicing his bathroom. The narrative asks us to believe that Fiennes character does not notice Lopez’s face (or recognize her upon their second meeting) because her long brown bangs – for the only time in the film – obscures it. It is not until Lopez illicitly tries on the 188 goddess’s glowingly white Dolce & Gabbana suit that Chris (Fiennes) begins to woo her relentlessly. The film’s narrative, hinged on a case of mistaken identity facilitated by the white suit, creates a modernized passing narrative in a multicultural era. The brilliance of the suit – so white several characters ponder how to keep it clean (“Scotch Guard”) – works as a surrogate for whiteness (or whiteface?) in the film. Though this passing could simply be in terms of class, two moments suggest otherwise. First, Fiennes character describes Lopez as “kind of Mediterranean,” phrasing often used to soften Otherness by Europeanizing it. 33 Later, when Marisa Ventura’s full name is revealed to Fiennes’ character and his aide (Stanley Tucci), Tucci’s response is a quizzical “Ventura? Spanish?” Once Marisa’s character is outed as an Other, she confirms it by listing her childhood residence: “I grew up [in the projects]. I lived in a four block radius my whole life.” In the Lopez/Fiennes romance, each fills a lack for the other. Marisa legitimizes Chris’ connection to nonwhite or poor people by offering her thoughts on public housing and poverty; in exchange, Chris fills the paternal gap left by Marisa’s predictably unreliable ex-husband. This substitution of Fiennes for the missing father figure of Lopez’s son signals a significant absence in Hollywood film: the Latino male. Unlike the Latina, Latinos rarely possess a vertical racial mobility; leading Latino actors are rarely paired 189 with white actresses. Their racial mobility (when possible) occurs laterally where their sexuality can be contained – as in the case of Anthony Quinn’s ability to play other brown men such as Arabs, Greeks and Italians. Perhaps this absence (or lack of mobility) explains why only two of Lopez’s films since Mi Familia (1995) feature Latino love interests. Such a double standard suggests that Latinas – as a near-white female – still serves as a “metaphor for the raising up of what were deemed primitive societies to a more civilized rung on the ladder of societies.” 34 With a few highlights and a spotlight, we Latinas clean up real nice. However, such mobility is only possible so long as Lopez’s difference was continually reinscribed upon the image – in the cultural or media frame. The Asset Shot One year after Vanity Fair determined Lopez too new for a close-up, the magazine decided that she was ready for her wide shot: the infamous photo of a nearly naked Lopez (from the rear), wearing nothing more than lace-up satin bloomers and matching mules. 35 190 This image represents the general framing for media depictions of Lopez. In portraits like this one or through lingering shots of her butt on the film screen, Jennifer Lopez’s difference is reiterated by the framing of her body. Her body performs – even when she does not – in the pages of magazine or tabloid articles, exposés, news clips and music video screens. If Jennifer Lopez were never to dance another step, exotic sexuality – like her ethnicity – would still already always be inscribed on her body. The attention paid to Lopez’s rear in every medium echoes past discourses around Saartje/Sarah Baartman – most commonly known as “The Hottentot Venus”; Saartje supposedly carried an excess of sexuality in her large derriere and was commissioned to simply exhibit herself as an example of difference in Europe. 36 As Beltran states: [D]espite the generally positive discussion of Lopez’s acting abilities in her publicity in late 1998, it was pretty hard to focus on her acting when most of what we saw of her was her backside. From this perspective, Lopez can be considered a modern-day Hottentot Venus with respect to this publicity, kin to other nonwhite film actresses who have been similarly constructed before her. 37 Figure 13: Lopez in Vanity Fair, July 1998. 191 Like her predecessor Carmen Miranda, Lopez’s signifies excess. While the excess of Miranda was worn as a costume, Lopez’s body is her excess. A good example of this fascination with and overt fetishization of Lopez appears on the cover of the Sunday Times (London) “Style” section. Lopez fills the left side of the cover’s frame, standing in profile with her face tilted downward and to the left. Her body is shown from the top of her head to her upper thighs. The cover’s text settles on the right side of the frame, with the The Sunday Times Style banner at the top. The magazine feature’s title sits low right and reads: “Hot Bot: Why Jennifer Lopez is Hollywood’s biggest star.” The brightness/lightness of the lettering contrasts the dark background and dress that clings to Lopez’s body. The words “Hot Bot,” emboldened in a sans serif font, are level with the curve of Lopez’s butt. The absence of text and image between the masthead and “Hot Bot” pulls the weight of the cover’s composition, focusing the eye on Lopez’s butt and the phrase “Hot Bot,” an easy play on the words “Hot Butt.” Because the article ran early in Lopez’s career, her title as “Hollywood’s biggest star” does not seem to be career-centric. Such a constant fixation on the butt orients discussion of Lopez’s body in terms of excess and sexuality; its display is intended and linguistically affirmed as an example of difference – her big- ness. While countless examples of such images reiterate that Lopez’s 192 difference is ample, her performance as a dancer has simultaneously functioned in line with and against these dominant cultural narratives. While the suggestive movements of Latinas dancing on screen were built upon negative cultural beliefs about nonwhite women, these movements also challenge traditional inactive female roles and bodies in film. Lopez’s paradoxical manipulation of bodily codes thereby offers us another way to read the wide shot: as a transgressive space. With the exception of Busby Berkeley and particularly after Fred Astaire revolutionized the form, dance in film has primarily been exhibited through the wide shot. This framing illustrates a sense of authenticity in the movement, particularly how, where and when the body moves. Because the wide shot exposes the full body within a single frame’s composition, attention is paid to the whole figure’s movement. For the Latina, the wide shot further depicts her difference by the cues present – often little more than setting and costuming. As an in-between identity, however, Latina representations may transgress the ideals of both image and culture. The hybridity of the Latina’s racial representation enabled her to perform dance styles that were not yet deemed appropriate for transfer between the lower to upper class, as in the case of hip-hop’s mainstreaming in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Dance has challenging the passivity of mainstream female representation by providing the screen Latina with a niche 193 opportunity and narrative agency (however tenuous) typically reserved for men. Yet the re-articulation of dance in film since the 1980s exposes another facet in the success of Lopez’s dancing body: the slippage between dance and race in media representation, exemplified by the more recent phenomenon of 1980s dance films and MTV (Music Television). Though hip-hop emerged in New York during the 1970s, it did not infiltrate Hollywood until the 1980s. The slew of films which rode the first mainstream hip hop wave – including Flashdance (1983), Beat Street (1984), Breakin’ (1984) and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo (1984) – centered on the lives of inner-city youth. In this way, the terms “urban” or “youth” were/are used to describe (the process of commodifying) dance, music and fashion and have served as code for race. With the exception of Beat Street, the dance films cited – easily the most popular urban dance films of the 1980s – featured female protagonists, specifically ambiguously raced women, none of whom were stars. 38 The nonwhite female has become the most family-friendly means of depicting difference to a mainstream audience. For example, Flashdance’s lead character, Alex, is played by the biracial Jennifer Beals. 39 The film is about a girl with a dream. But Alex is not just any girl – she is a welder by day and an erotic dancer by night. The working class-ness of both jobs 194 reinforces Alex’s upwardly mobile dream of becoming a ballet dancer. Unfortunately for Beals, her emerging career was derailed by an inability to dance in the real world: Paramount studios misrepresented her talent by employing dance doubles throughout the film. The scandal that resulted from this (contractually silenced) revelation shows the significance of dance in the film career of a brown skinned woman. While the dance film genre has faded with a few exceptions of late, its benefactor and successor MTV has continued to escalate the exposure and importance of hip hop music and dance. Lopez’s dance ability, however, is bona fide, simultaneously authenticating her difference through one medium (her own music videos) to naturalize that difference in another (her film features). It should come as no surprise that Lopez would eventually remake Flashdance in the form of a music video for her song “I’m Glad.” The videos for “I’m Glad” and “Get Right” provide interesting examples of the wide shot representation of Lopez’s body. As promotional pieces for the records, Lopez’s music videos always showcase her trendsetting abilities in fashion and style. The “I’m Glad” video, however, places Lopez in the “girl with a dream” narrative popularized by Flashdance while she wears costumes inspired by (or actually from) the movie. 40 Beyond recreating the film, Lopez’s dancing is the central component of the video; she commissioned David LaChapelle to specifically direct a dance video (“I’m Glad”), focusing on her solo performance. 195 Flashdance mirrors Lopez’s own mythology – working class girl works hard, lives dancing dream and makes millions – to fulfill what Angela McRobbie describes as a “narrative of desired social mobility.” 41 But this mobility is not without compromise. While Beals’s performance was criticized for its lack of dance, Lopez’s bodily performance faced scrutiny for its excess. The combination of vigorous choreography and skimpy costuming reveal the “wiggle and jiggle” of Lopez’s body in the video “I’m Glad.” 42 The obvious athleticism of Lopez’s body was overruled and the excess of her fleshy movement was edited: I really worked out and did the diet thing…and then after the video…there’s always that one guy who’s like, “We should retouch this.” I was like, “You’re going to leave everything the way it is. That’s how it wiggles and jiggles in real life, that’s how they’re going to see it in the video.” And I noticed – [the editors] sent [the video] to me and they had shaved off a little bit of my hips and – I was like, “That ain’t me – those are not my hips. Just leave them the way they are. Do me a favor – don’t touch my hips. Don’t try to make me look skinnier. It’s fine, it’s fine the way it is.” And that’s what they did. 43 Despite the training and physical intensity of Lopez’s performance, her body did not represent or conform to the ideals of femininity. This desire to police Lopez’s flesh illustrates the ingrained equation of unfirm flesh with a lack of physical and/or moral discipline. 44 In other words, Jennifer’s body, like her Hollywood hair, required taming. The attempt to artificially slim Lopez’s body in the video is curious, however, when one compares the natural movement of her body with thickness and jiggle currently in vogue for 196 backup dancer bodies in (primarily) male performed rap/hip-hop videos. As Lopez has moved from backup dancer to music video star, has her body become a more malleable commodity? In this case, however, Lopez’s will to keep it real displays her significant level of creative control and representational agency. Lopez’s authority over her music video image and ability to transform herself from close-up to wide shot are dependent upon the fact that she – body and all – remains a high-demand commodity. Lopez knows this fact and utilizes it. For all its transgressions and racial mobility, the successful mainstream representation of Latinas still leans towards whiteness. For example, Lopez’s 2004 video “Get Right” spans a spectrum of hair colors and character types. In the video, Lopez plays multiple characters, each congregating at a club where her song is spinning. We enter the narrative of the club through a female disc jockey (DJ) who is accompanied by her younger, brown-haired sister. As the DJ settles in her booth, places her sister under the counter and begins her musical set, we are introduced to several other Lopez characters: a cocktail waitress, go-go dancer and chola. Other characters – a diva and mousey girl – appear over the course of the video. Beyond showing the multiple sides of Lopez – in this way, the video serves as a microcosm of Latina-ness and Lopez-ness in Hollywood – the video also 197 intercuts footage of Lopez, singing and dancing in a studio performance of the song. Despite the many types of Lopez present in the video (figures 14- 19), the DJ is the most curious character. While all the other Lopez Figures 14-16: The many faces and poses of Lopez in “Get Right.” Figures 17-19: The many faces and poses of Lopez in “Get Right.” Figures 20 and 21: The many faces and poses of Lopez in “Get Right.” Figures 22 and 23: The many faces and poses of Lopez in “Get Right.” 198 incarnations receive establishing close-ups, the DJ character is only ever seen from behind, with the outline of her afro providing a convenient distinction as she enters the crowded club. For the course of the five-minute song, the DJ remains anonymous to the audience (figure 20), though we recognize the character as Lopez by her voice in the video’s prologue. The DJ-Lopez face is not revealed until the final shot of the video (figure 21). While the go-go dancer (figure 22) and studio dance sequences (figure 23) presumably appear in wide shots to best present the body and its movement, it is curious that the DJ remains in a wide shot until a final reveal in the very last frame of the video. It is possible that the DJ’s difference of framing is a coincidence or that this reveal makes it somehow more important than the others, but it is equally possible that the frontal close-up of Lopez in an afro swung too closely towards blackness and was better left as a cameo from behind. Conclusion The rise of a Latina star like Lopez confirmed that – during a time of revoking affirmative action and other propositions against Latinos in the United States – minority members of the nation could prosper with a little hard work. Lopez symbolized the work ethic necessary to achieve the American Dream and was rewarded with a successful screen, music and fashion career. But despite the access it provides, the complications of in- 199 between-ness are vast. Lopez’s figure (as an actor and body) has presented contradictory messages throughout its career. In many ways, her emergence paralleled the ambivalence of her debut program. As a Fly Girl for the 1990s variety show In Living Color, both Lopez and black sketch comedy gained mainstream media representation. Like Lopez, the prime-time network program navigated through a complex and often contradictory agenda. For In Living Color, the show aimed to simultaneously present comedy sketches primarily organized around contemporary black issues while addressing a wider mainstream market/audience. This compromised position prompted Herman Gray to critique In Living Color as ambivalent in its “representations of blackness.” 45 The commodification of culture has its casualties, but the brunt of this labor often falls on the doubly marked body of the nonwhite female. In this light, it is striking that the multicultural Fly Girls were used to transition In Living Color from commercial breaks to the program itself through dance. In effect, the Fly Girls were also represented in-between. Jennifer Lopez’s eventual negotiation of these polarized and racialized spheres, though problematic, offers a unique case study in the cultivation and necessity of a hybrid persona for contemporary nonwhite success. The “multicultural self” that Lopez embodies has worked particularly well after the U.S. visual culture “crisis” between whiteness and blackness. 46 200 Ultimately, Jennifer Lopez cultivates a paradox of whiteness and non- whiteness by mobilizing race for the sake of a mainstream career. Despite the access that dance has afforded Lopez and the Latinas before her, it has simultaneously marked their difference. The moving Latina body has clearly been visually and culturally coded as overtly sexual and in the process perpetuated and reified licentious myths about nonwhite women. Yet, Lopez actively wielded dance in exchange for an incredibly ambitious and successful career: she is now a performer, corporate entity and a pioneer on many fiscal fronts. 47 The negotiations of her Hollywood success – minority representation in mainstream media, active female roles and autonomous (sexual) identity in exchange for a sexualized and narrowly defined characterization – mirror the complexities of nationality and sexuality that Latinas experience in everyday life (granted, with significantly less financial return). 48 Despite this success, the threat of illegitimacy lingers beneath the surface. The 2005 Sony BMG (Lopez’s music company) “pay for play” scandal has thrust the legitimacy of Lopez’s musical success into the spotlight; somehow, the scandal seems less damaging to the credibility of Britney Spears or Beyonce Knowles, also represented by Sony BMG. 49 Still, Lopez continues to push at the boundaries of mainstream culture from within, now that she is in it. The September 2005 issue of Elle features a glamorous and curly haired Lopez on the cover. Within, Lopez fills out the usual 201 article/profile and fashion shoot. Of the six-page poses, four feature at least one article of clothing from Sweetface, Lopez’s newly launched line in collaboration with the Hilfiger family: three outfits are fully Sweetface while the other two featured designers are Dior and Oscar de la Renta. The representation of Lopez’s business and performance personas offers, at very least, a more complex depiction of the American Latina in 2005. Fashion, cosmetics and hair coloring have long played a role in cultural and national transformations; breast and (more recently) butt implants now allow the body itself to be fully manipulated by everyone – white and nonwhite women inside and outside of Hollywood – to achieve a redefined/re- raced/re-packaged physical ideal. Such trends will only last, I contend, so long as the market will bear it. How, then, will the next Latina performer shake her assets into the national/media spotlight? 202 Chapter Four Endnotes 1 Sarah Banet-Weiser, The Most Beautiful Girl In The World: Beauty Pageants and National Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 65. 2 I use these formal expressions to indicate a more general discussion of how the body is traditionally framed in mainstream film and how Lopez’s career might be understood as navigating between the physical expectations of both. While I do analyze specific shots, my examination of Lopez’s representation through the close-up and wide shot should be read metaphorically. For example, not all close-ups strictly focus on the face; I am certain that Lopez’s derriere has commanded more than its share of these specific shots. For these reasons, this essay uses the terms close-up and wide-shot more openly. 3 This list does not attempt to account for all of the Latinas that have been featured in Hollywood film. Rather, I compose a snapshot of Latina’s leading women in film – either in terms of mainstream popularity, box office records or other means of mainstream success in Hollywood. For this reason, actresses like Rosie Perez, Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz are not included as primary figures. Though I do not include Rosie in my overall analysis, it is striking that her career follows my central argument: she began as a dancer and served as a dancer/choreographer for In Living Color. 4 Jane C. Desmond, “Embodying Difference: Issues in Dance and Cultural Studies” in Meaning in Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 33. Dancing “lump[s] together ‘race,’ ‘national origin’ and [a] supposed genetic propensity for rhythmic movement [to rest] on an implicit division between moving and thinking, mind and body.” Also, “the ascription of sexuality (or dangerous, potentially overwhelming sexuality) to subordinate classes and ‘races’ or to groups of specific national origin (blacks, ‘Latins,’ and other such lumped together terms to denote non- Anglo-European ancestry) yields such descriptions [and depictions] as ‘fiery,’ ‘hot,’ ‘sultry,’ ‘passionate (40-41).’” 5 Charles Ramirez Berg, Latino Images in Film: Stereotypes, Subversion, & Resistance (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002), 70-71. 6 Yxta Maya Murray, “Jennifer Lopez,” Buzz, April 1997, 70. Murray notes, “But with the possible exception of Hayworth, none rose to high-roller, leading lady status.” 7 The only real exception is Lopez’s moniker/clothing line, entitled “J.Lo” 203 8 As previous chapters illustrates, Del Rio and Miranda experienced significant fame and fortune, but their personas were not mainstreamed in the vein of Hayworth and Lopez. 9 “J.Lo” Revealed with Jules Asner (Talk Show), 1:00, 2002. 10 Angharad N. Valdivia, A Latina in the Land of Hollywood (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2000), 97. This collapse is also noted in Valdivia’s work on Rosie Perez. Valdivia finds: “[Perez] is at once Latina because she is working class and working class because she is Latina. One codetermines the other in a classic case of piggybacking undervalued positionsof dominant binary explanatory frameworks.” 11 Frances Negrón-Muntaner’s article does an excellent job of outlining the discourse around Lopez’s assets during Selena’s press junkets. Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Boricua Pop: Puerto Ricans and the Latinization of American Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 228-246. 12 A good example of this is the importation of Carmen Miranda during the Good Neighbor period. Miranda’s presence signaled a symbolic cooperation between the United States and South America during WWII. 13 Lopez’s complexion can certainly be problematized in this process: she is not exactly light complected, yet routinely elaborates her brown-ness with bronzer or her lightness with hair color. 14 Mirabella, July 1998, 84. 15 Arlene Davila, Latinos Inc.: The Marketing and Making of a People (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 216-217. 16 Herman Gray citing Cornell West. Herman Gray, Watching Race: Television and the Struggle for Blackness (Minneapolis: University Of Minnesota Press, 1995), 148. 17 Mirabella, 82. 18 This de-ethnicizing can and does, of course, happen in wide shots. The incredibly light ad campaign for Glow by J.Lo perfume functions in both a wide and close-up. While the silhouette of her body is “hidden” behind a translucent sheet, her face becomes the focus of the advertisement, as it is revealed from behind the sheet (effectively re-framing it) and is easily the brightest element. For more on the ability of Latinas to play other types of 204 (specifically) nonwhite roles in classical Hollywood film, please see my chapter on Dolores Del Rio. 19 Richard Dyer, White (London: Routledge, 1997), 127 and 132. 20 Dyer, 131. 21 Vanity Fair, April 1997, 88. 22 This conformity is supported by the fact that – as yet – Fairuza Balk has not achieved the same level of media representation as Lopez and Theron. Of the three, Theron’s persona is the only full “blonde.” Though Lopez’s media exposure is arguably more vast than the other two, Theron is the only star of the trio to be recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. 23 David R. Roediger, Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey From Ellis Island To The Suburbs (New York: Basic Books, 2005). 24 Entertainment Today, 1997, date and page unknown. Located in clipping files on Jennifer Lopez at the Margaret Herrick Research Archive, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. 25 Buzz, 72. 26 Ayana Byrd and Lori Tharps, Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2001), 26, 27, 30. 27 Mirabella, 82. Emphasis mine. 28 Jennifer Lopez: The Reel Me (DVD), Sony Studios, 155 minutes, 2003. In the commentary for her video “I’m Glad,” Lopez remarks that her hair is naturally curly like the style in this video. 29 Though Lopez and Harrelson exhibit romantic tension in Money Train, their relationship is tempered and mediated by her dance and eventual sex scene with Wesley Snipes. 30 Mary C. Beltran, “The Hollywood Latina Body as Site of Social Struggle: Media Constructions of Stardom and Jennifer Lopez’s ‘Cross-over Butt.’” The Quarterly Review of Film and Video 19.1 (January 2002): 76. 205 31 Diane Simon, Hair: Public, Political, Extremely Personal (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000), 61. 32 Even the jewelry and department store clerks (in “higher end” service jobs) sport sandy/blonde hair. 33 Leland Saito’s analysis of Atlantic Square shows how an architectural style can be “whitened” through a strategic use of adjectives. He shows how one shopping center can evolve from “Mexican” to “Spanish” to “Mediterranean” – without any modification to design. Leland Saito, Race and Politics: Asian Americans, Latinos, and Whites in a Los Angeles Suburb (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 47. 34 Jane C. Desmond, Staging Tourism: Bodies On Display From Waikiki To Sea World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 50 (citing Womacks), 110. 35 Vanity Fair, July 1998, page unknown. 36 Coco Fusco, English Is Broken Here: Notes On Cultural Fusion In The Americas (New York: New Press 1995), 47. 37 Beltran, 83. 38 Jennifer Beals’ race is never mentioned in the film and her family is never shown. Likewise, Kelly in Breakin’ can be easily read a variety of ways, as one 1984 review noted. 39 Alex is a working class erotic dancer striving for a “better life,” indicated by her desire to become a ballerina. She does not have a visible family, simply a mysterious Russian “aunt,” and her leading man is the ambiguously raced boss of the steel factory at which she works (Michael Nouri, of Lebanese descent). 40 The same red teddy worn by Jennifer Beals in the famous “water-bucket” dance number is worn by Lopez in the video. Jennifer Lopez: The Reel Me, “I’m Glad” video commentary. 41 McRobbie, 228. 42 Jennifer Lopez: The Reel Me, “I’m Glad” video commentary. 43 Jennifer Lopez: The Reel Me, “I’m Glad” video commentary. 206 44 Banet-Weiser, 68. 45 Gray, 145. 46 I borrow this term for Sarah Banet-Wiser’s critique of beauty pageant’s “nonthreatening” approaches to race. Banet-Weiser, 105. 47 Not only is Lopez the highest paid Latina in Hollywood (and the first to break $1 million per picture), but she was also the first performer to open at #1 in the box office and music charts with The Wedding Planner and the single “Love Don’t Cost a Thing.” 48 Dance challenges the passivity of female representation, granting the screen Latina with narrative agency (however tenuous) typically reserved for men in film, particularly in the musical genre. 49 Sony BMG was accused of paying radio stations for the airtime used to play recordings by BMG musical artists. 207 BIBLIOGRAPHY "Abbott, Bud; and Costello, Lou." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service. 18 Apr. 2006 <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9003252>. Arrizón, Alicia. Traversing the Stage: Latina Performance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. Altman, Rick. American Film Musical. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. “Bahia.” Encyclopædia Britannica. 2005. Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service. 19 Dec. 2005 <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9011777>. Banet-Weiser, Sarah. The Most Beautiful Girl In The World: Beauty Pageants and National Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Barzel, Ann. “The Moving Image: Dance and Television – 70th Anniversary Issue,” Dance Magazine 71 (June 1997): 120-124. Beltrán, Mary C. “The Hollywood Latina Body as Site of Social Struggle: Media Constructions of Stardom and Jennifer Lopez’s ‘Cross-over Butt.’” The Quarterly Review of Film and Video 19 (January 2002): 71-86. Beltrán, Mary. “Dolores Del Rio, the First ‘Latino Invasion,’ and Hollywood’s Transition to Sound.” Aztlán: The Journal of Chicano Studies 30 (Winter 2005): 55-86. Berry, Sarah. Screen Style: Fashion and Femininity in 1930s Hollywood. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. "Bikini." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2004. Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service. 29 Apr. 2004 <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=1558>. Billman, Larry. Film Choreographers and Dance Directors: An Illustrated Biographical Encyclopedia. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 1997. “Bird of Paradise (1932).” Film Record, American Film Institute Catalog. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88- 2003&xri:pqil:res_ver=0.2&res_id=xri:afi-us&rft_id=xri:afi:film:4271 (accessed January 23, 2006). 208 Byrd, Ayana and Lori Tharps. Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2001. Bodeen, DeWitt. From Hollywood: The Careers of 15 Great American Stars. Cranbury: A.S. Barnes and Company, Inc., 1976. Bogle, Donald. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films. New York: Viking, 1973. Bollig, Ben. "White Rapper/Black Beats: Discovering a Race Problem in the Music of Gabriel o Pensador," Latin American Music Review 23 (Fall/Winter 2002): 159-178. Bordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” New York: Routledge, 1993. Carr, Larry. More Fabulous Faces: The Evolution and Metamorphosis of Dolores Del Rio, Myrna Loy, Carole Lombard, Bette Davis and Katherine Hepburn. New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1979. “Cover Girl (1944).” Film Record, American Film Institute Catalog. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88- 2003&xri:pqil:res_ver=0.2&res_id=xri:afi-us&rft_id=xri:afi:film:378 (accessed January 23, 2006). Davila, Arlene. Latinos Inc.: The Marketing and Making of a People. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Davis, Darién J. “Racial Purity and National Humor: Exploring Brazilian Samba from Noel Rosa to Carmen Miranda, 1930-1939.” In Latin American Popular Culture: An Introduction, ed. William H. Beezley and Linda A. Curcio-Nagy, 183-200. Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 2000. D'Emilio, John and Estelle B. Freedman. Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Desmond, Jane C., ed. Meaning in Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance. Durham: Duke University Press, 1997. Desmond, Jane C. Staging Tourism: Bodies On Display From Waikiki To Sea World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. 209 Dyer, Richard. “Resistance Through Charisma: Rita Hayworth and Gilda.” In Women and Film Noir, ed. E. Ann Kaplan, 91-99. London: BFI, 1978. Dyer, Richard. Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986. Dyer, Richard. “White,” Screen 29 (Autumn 1988): 45-64. Dyer, Richard. White. London: Routledge, 1997. Enloe, Cynthia. Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. Berkeley: University of California, 1990. Freire-Medeiros, Bianca. "Hollywood Musicals and the Invention of Rio de Janeiro, 1933-1953,” Cinema Journal 41 (Summer 2002): 52-67. “The Fugitive (1947).” Film Record, American Film Institute Catalog. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88- 2003&xri:pqil:res_ver=0.2&res_id=xri:afi-us&rft_id=xri:afi:film:25173 (accessed January 23, 2006). Fusco, Coco. English Is Broken Here: Notes On Cultural Fusion In The Americas. New York: New Press, 1995. Gallafent, Edward. Astaire and Rogers. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. “Gilda (1946).” Film Record, American Film Institute Catalog. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88- 2003&xri:pqil:res_ver=0.2&res_id=xri:afi-us&rft_id=xri:afi:film:378 (accessed January 23, 2006). Gil-Montero, Martha. Brazilian Bombshell: The Biography of Carmen Miranda. New York: D.I. Fine, 1989. Gonzalez, Juan. Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America. New York: Viking, 2000. Gray, Herman. Watching Race: Television and the Struggle for Blackness. Minneapolis: University Of Minnesota Press, 1995. Griffin, Sean. “The Gang’s All Here: Generic versus Racial Integration in the 1940s Musical,” Cinema Journal 42 (Fall 2002): 21-45. 210 Hansen, Miriam. Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991. “Hayworth, Rita.” Encyclopædia Britannica. 2005. Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service. 5 March 2005 <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?tocId=9039680> Hershfield, Joanne. “Race and Romance in Bird of Paradise," Cinema Journal 37 (Spring 1998): 3-15. Hershfield, Joanne. The Invention of Dolores Del Rio. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. Jensen, Tina Gudrun. “Discourses on Afro-Brazilian Religion: From De- Africanization to Re-Africanization,” Latin American Religion in Motion. New York: Routledge, 1999. “Joanna (1925).” Film Record, American Film Institute Catalog. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88- 2003&xri:pqil:res_ver=0.2&res_id=xri:afi-us&rft_id=xri:afi:film:10018 (accessed January 23, 2006). Keller, Gary D. A Biographical Handbook of Hispanics and United States Film. Tempe: Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingue, 1997. Kinder, Marsha. “Review: Saturday Night Fever,” Film Quarterly 31 (Spring 1978): 40-42. Klein, Herbert S. “The Establishment of African Slavery in Latin America in the 16th Century,” African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Kropp, Phoebe S. “Citizens of the Past?: Olvera Street and the Construction of Race and Memory in 1930s Los Angeles,” Radical History Review 81 (2001): 35-60. Leaming, Barbara. If This Was Happiness: A Biography of Rita Hayworth. New York: Viking, 1989. López, Ana M. “Tears and Desire: Women and Melodrama in the ‘Old’ Mexican Cinema.” In Multiple Voices in Feminist Film Criticism, ed. Diane Carson, Linda Dittmar and Janice R. Welsch, 254-270. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994. 211 Loney, Glenn. Unsung Genius: The Passion of Dancer-Choreographer Jack Cole. New York: F. Watts, 1984. Lott, Eric. “Love and Theft: The Racial Unconscious of Blackface Minstrelsy,” Representations 39 (Summer, 1992): 23-50. Mandrell, James. “Carmen Miranda Betwixt and Between, or, Neither Here nor There.” Latin American Literary Review 29 (Jan-Jun 2001): 26-39. McClintock, Anne. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York: Routledge, 1995. McLean, Adrienne L. Being Rita Hayworth: Labor, Identity and Hollywood Stardom. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2004. Carey McWilliams. Southern California: An Island on the Land. Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1946. Monroy, Douglas. “Making Mexico in Los Angeles.” In Metropolis in the Making: Los Angeles in the 1920s, ed. Tom Sitton and William Deverell, 161- 178. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Morella, Joe and Edward J. Epstein. Rita: The Life of Rita Hayworth. New York: Delacorte Press, 1983. Mueller, John. Astaire Dancing: The Musical Films. New York: Knopf, 1985. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” In Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, 833- 844. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Murray, Yxta Maya. “Jennifer Lopez,” Buzz, April 1997. Negrón-Muntaner, Frances. Boricua Pop: Puerto Ricans and the Latinization of American Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2004. Parish, James Robert. The Fox Girls. Secaucus: Castle Books, 1972. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. Peiss, Kathy Lee. Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture. New York: Henry Holt, 1999. 212 Ramirez Berg, Charles. Latino Images in Film: Stereotypes, Subversion, & Resistance. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002. Roediger, David R. Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey From Ellis Island To The Suburbs. New York: Basic Books, 2005. Roman, David. Performance in America: Contemporary U.S. Culture and the Performing Arts. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005. Roman, Robert C. “Gene Kelly: 1912-96 (dancer), Obituary,” Dance Magazine 70 (April 1996): 94-95. Ringgold, Gene. Rita Hayworth: The Legend and Career of a Love Goddess. Secaucus, NJ: The Citadel Press, 1974. Saito, Leland. Race and Politics: Asian Americans, Latinos, and Whites in a Los Angeles Suburb. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998. Sánchez, George J. Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Sandoval-Sanchez, Alberto. José, Can You See?: Latinos On and Off Broadway. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999. Savigliano, Marta E. Tango and the Political Economy of Passion. Boulder: Westview Press, 1995. Schatz, Thomas. The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1996. Simon, Diane. Hair: Public, Political, Extremely Personal. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000. Tenenbaum, Barbara A., ed., Latin American History and Culture. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1996. Tierney, Tom. Carmen Miranda Paper Dolls in Full Color. Dover Publications, 1982. Thompson, Kristin and David Bordwell. Film History: An Introduction. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc, 1994. 213 Valdivia, Angharad N. A Latina in the Land of Hollywood. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2000. Walters, Debra Nan. “Hollywood, World War II, and Latin America: The Hollywood Good Neighbor Policy as Personified by Carmen Miranda.” University of Southern California Thesis, January 1978. Williams, Linda. Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the Frenzy of the Visible. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989. 214 ARCHIVAL SOURCES BY CHAPTER Chapter One The USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California. “Dolores Del Rio Contract,” 17 March 1934. Dolores Del Rio Contract File. The USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California. Wonder Bar (1934). “On With the Dance” by Harry Lee.” In “Special Sunday Feature Mat number 88-80c.” In Publicity Ideas or Exploitation Ideas. Promotional Materials, File #680A. The USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California. Wonder Bar (1934). Mat #90 – 12A. In Exploitation Ideas. The USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California. Wonder Bar (1934). Hollywood Tribune and World Telegram reviews. In “Clippings (Critical Reviews).” Dates unknown. The USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California. In Caliente (1935). “Interoffice Memo to Mr. Wallis from Mr. Chodorov.” 1 January 1935. File #1806. The USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California. In Caliente (1935). “In Caliente, A Warner Bros.-First National Picture, The Story.” In Promotional Materials File #1806. The USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California. In Caliente (1935). “A New Idea in Radio Sketches.” In Ad Campaign Booklet, File #681A. The USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California. Wonder Bar (1934). “Dolores Del Rio in Dizzy Dance with Ricardo Cortez” above Mat number 26-20c. In Promotional Materials – Exploitation Ideas, File #680A. The USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California. Wonder Bar (1934). Mat number 17-20c. In Promotional Materials – Exploitation Ideas, File #680A. The USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California. Wonder Bar (1934). “Mat number 8- 10c,” Exploitation Ideas. In Promotional Materials, File #680A. 215 The USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California. Letter from Mr. Lewis of Freston and Files Law Offices to Mr. R.J. Obringer, 20 March 1934. Dolores Del Rio Contract File. The USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California. In Caliente (1935). “2 column poem-puzzle feature.” In Ad Campaign Booklet, File #681A, page 5. Chapter Two The USC Special Collections, Cinema-Television Library. Nancy Goes to Rio (1950). “Advertising, Publicity, Exploitation,” MGM Press Book, File 1 of 2. The USC Special Collections, Cinema-Television Library. “She Saved Broadway from the World’s Fair,” Constance McCormick Collection. Margaret Herrick Research Archive, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. “South America Looks at Hollywood Through the Flashing Eyes of Carmen Miranda (draft).” In Modern Screen by Gladys Hall, 20 December 1940. Margaret Herrick Research Archive, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Telegram from Carmen Miranda to Hedda Hopper, 14 February 1946. In Hedda Hopper Collection. Margaret Herrick Research Archive, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. “Tintype of Rita Moreno” by Wolfson. Special Collections, Sidney Skolsky Collection, Folder 80, Tintypes: M. Margaret Herrick Research Archive, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Production Code Administration Collection Files. CITY OF ATLANTA BOARD OF REVIEW, 1 October 1944. Correspondence from Zella Richardson to Mr. E. J. Mannix, MGM Studios. Chapter Three The USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California. Strawberry Blonde (1941). “Women’s Page Features,” “Advance Publicity Releases” from Production Notes. In Warner Bros. Press Book Collection, Promotional Packet, File #1741, page 17. The USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California. Strawberry Blonde (1941). “Advance 216 Publicity Releases” from Production Notes. In Warner Bros. Press Book Collection, File #1741, page 13. The USC Special Collections, Cinema-Television Library. Gilda (1946). “Biographical Feature.” In “Hayworth, Ford, MacReady, Calleia Biographies,” Columbia Studios Press Book Collection. The USC Special Collections, Cinema-Television Library. Blood and Sand (1941). “Bright Colors Fascinate Men Says Mamoulian.” In Fox Studios (MCMXLI) Press Book Collection, page 26. The USC Special Collections, Cinema-Television Library. Gilda (1946). “Hayworth, Ford Bring New Drama to State Screen.” In General Advance, Columbia Studios Press Book Collection. The USC Special Collections, Cinema-Television Library. Gilda (1946). “Film Backgrounds in Latin America Becoming Popular” and “Hayworth Scores As Spicy ‘Gilda’ In Dramatic Film (review).” In “Prepared Reviews, Theater Notices and Feature,” Columbia Studios Press Book Collection. The USC Special Collections, Cinema-Television Library. Gilda (1946). “Glamour Girls vs. Tanks, 5% Redheads, Rita Takes Punishment.” In “Hollywood Photographer Discusses His Subjects: Rudy Maté Finds Lensing Hayworth Easy But Tank in ‘Sahara’ Worried Him For Weeks,” Columbia Studios Press Book Collection. The USC Special Collections, Cinema-Television Library. Gilda (1946). “Gal GI’s Picked” from “Theater and Lobby Suggestions.” In Columbia Studios Press Book Collection. The USC Special Collections, Cinema-Television Library. Gilda (1946). “General Advance.” In “Romantic Drama Stars Hayworth in New Type Role,” Columbia Studios Press Book Collection. The USC Special Collections, Cinema-Television Library. Gilda (1946). “General Advance.” In “Gilda Publicity: Glamorous Rita Hayworth Appears as ‘Gilda.’” Columbia Studios Press Book Collection. The USC Special Collections, Cinema-Television Library. The Lady from Shanghai (1948). “Beauty Shops.” In “News Promotions/Campaign Ideas,” Columbia Studios Press Book Collection. 217 The USC Special Collections, Cinema-Television Library. The Lady from Shanghai (1948). “ Nations News Tickers Vibrate When Hayworth Bobs Hair.” In Columbia Studios Press Book Collection. The USC Special Collections, Cinema-Television Library. The Lady from Shanghai (1948). “Even Glamour Has Its Problems When Hollywood Goes Mexican.” In Columbia Studios Press Book Collection. The USC Special Collections, Cinema-Television Library. The Lady from Shanghai (1948). “Rita Hayworth Goes to Mexico and All Mexico Goes for Rita.” In Columbia Studios Press Book Collection.

Abstract (if available)

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Conceptually similar

PDF

Shadows of stardom: Latina actresses in the 1930's Hollywood produced Spanish language films

PDF

Dangerous beauty: representation and reception of women in the films of Evgenii Bauer, 1913-1917

PDF

Performance unleashed: multispecies stardom and companion animal media

PDF

Screens on the move: media convergence and mobile culture in Korea

PDF

Channeling Shirley MacLaine: stardom, travel, politics, and beyond

PDF

Color inside the lines: race and representation in the formula dance film

PDF

Certain tendencies in Canadian cinema: temporary insanity and the national tax-shelter masquerade

PDF

The body and its "thumbnails": the work of the image in mobile-imaging

PDF

Comic venus: women and comedy in American silent film

PDF

Video camera technology in the digital age: Industry standards and the culture of videography

PDF

MATCH CUT: the making of professional screenwriters and a (counter)storytelling movement in film school

PDF

Screenwriting double function of anonymity for female authors in Hollywood and critical issues of authorship in cinema: two screenplay case studies: Grace of my heart and Edward Scissorhands

Asset Metadata

Creator Ovalle, Priscilla Peña (author)

Core Title Shake your assets: dance and the performance of Latina sexuality in Hollywood film

School School of Cinema-Television

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Cinema-Television (Critical Studies)

Publication Date 11/14/2008

Defense Date 06/01/2006

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Body,Cinema,Dance,ethnic,film,Latina,nation,North America,OAI-PMH Harvest,performance,Race,representation,sexuality

Language English

Advisor Kinder, Marsha (committee chair), McPherson, Tara (committee member), Roman, David (committee member)

Creator Email povalle@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m131

Unique identifier UC1132934

Identifier etd-Ovalle-20061114 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-22264 (legacy record id),usctheses-m131 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Ovalle-20061114.pdf

Dmrecord 22264

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Ovalle, Priscilla Peña

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu