Andrea Palma (actress) - Career

Career

She closed the shop and remained with the theater company and traveled to the United States, where she stayed until the early 1930s, helped by a young and struggling Cecil Kellaway, having small roles in the films of her cousins Dolores del Río and Ramón Novarro and as hat and make-up consultant for Marlene Dietrich, when the German diva arrived in Hollywood. When she was called from Mexico and offered the part of Rosario, it was Dietrich's style that inspired her in creating her character. Palma was Dietrich's stunt double in Blonde Venus.

La Mujer del puerto (1934) became an instant success and Palma became a superstar, practically overnight. In the succeeding years, she was much in demand: her next movie was completely opposite to Rosario, playing the famous 17th century poet, playwright and nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz; she returned to Hollywood to make two "Latin films", took a four-year break doing theater and in 1943 she was directed by her brother Julio Bracho in the classic melodrama Distinto amanecer (1943). She played Julieta, a frustrated wife during the day and a prostitute during the night. She appeared in other movies, including a Tarzan vehicle, Tarzan and the Mermaids (1948) starring Johnny Weissmuller. She travelled to Spain to perform in a play and during rehearsals she met actor Enrique Díaz, whom she married. When she returned to Mexico, she was no longer considered a young leading lady and became specialized in character roles.

In the 1950s she was in two classic "pecadoras" productions and huge commercial successes starring Cuban superstar Ninón Sevilla and directed by Alberto Gout, playing a mean brothel owner in Aventurera (1950), a suffering wife in Sensualidad (1951), and worked with Luis Buñuel in Ensayo de un crimen (1955).

Although she worked in the Mexican film industry until the 1970s, Andrea Palma concentrated in television and theater since the late 1950s, including her weekly appearance as hostess of the popular series La novela semanal, based on literature classics, until her retirement in 1979 due to an illness. Her last role was with her niece and goddaughter Diana Bracho in the series Ángel Guerra (1979).

Read more about this topic:  Andrea Palma (actress)

Famous quotes containing the word career:

    Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.
    Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)

    Like the old soldier of the ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye.
    Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964)

    Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.
    Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)