Conchita Montenegro and the Spanish press: from national pride to nationalist melodrama

ABSTRACT

The Spanish press reported on Conchita Montenegro, a Spanish actress who moved to Hollywood in the early 1930s, with ambiguous and contradictory messages. On the one hand, her stint in Tinseltown was celebrated as a national triumph: a young Spanish woman had managed to seduce and conquer the Hollywood film industry. On the other hand, the fact that in Hollywood she played female archetypes at odds with the conservative morality of Catholic Spain was silenced. Decades later, after her death, the Spanish press has restored Conchita Montenegro’s fame, this time through a sensationalist, melodramatic story similar to the way Hollywood stars are promoted. Based on a comparative study between journalistic sources from both periods, this article demonstrates that the way Montenegro was treated as a film star in the press reflects the same nationalist fervour, even though the focus of her patriotic exemplariness in the 1930s gave way to a melodramatic vision of her Hollywood career more recently.

KEYWORDS:

• Conchita Montenegro
• Spanish star
• Nationalism
• Transnational stardom
• Celebrity image
• Press

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Sortilegio (1927), Reinhardt Blothner’s La Muñeca Rota (1928) and Eusebio Fernández Ardavín ‘sRosa de Madrid (1928).

2. Between 1930 and 1936, more than 100 Spanish-language films were shot in Hollywood. See Heinink and Dickson (1990), where the authors catalogue around 175 titles.

3. The five Spanish-language versions of English-language films were: Ramon Novarro’s Sevilla de mis Amores, a version of Charles Brabibn’s Call of Flesh (1930); Salvador de Alberich’s ¡De Frente, Marchen! (1930) filmed simultaneously with Doughboys, directed by Edward Sedgwick); Carlos F. Borcosque’s En Cada Puerto un Amor (1931), based on Sam Wood’s Way for a Sailor (1930); and two romantic comedies from 1933: Bert E. Sebell’s Marido y Mujer , a version of Frank Borzage’s Bad Girl (1931) and Carlos F. Borcosque’s Dos Noches (1933), a version of Reeves Eason’sn Revenge at Montecarlo (1933). She also starred in two remakes: Carlos F. Borcosque’s Su Última Noche (1931), a remake of John M. Stahl’s The Gay Deceiver (1926), and Lewis Seiler’s Hay que Casar al Príncipe (1931), a remake of Howard Hawks’s Paid to Love (1927). The three original Spanish-language productions in which she participated were: Frank Strayer’s La Melodía Prohibida (1933), John Reinhardt’s Granaderos del Amor (1934) and Lewis Seiler’s ¡Asegure a su Mujer! (1935).

4. The films shot in English were: Strangers May Kiss (1931), Never the Twain Shall Meet (1931), The Cisco Kid (1931), The Gay Caballero (1932), Laughing at Life (1933), Hell in the Heavens (1934) and Handy Andy (1935).

5. The 3 May 2018 issue of El País reported again on the star’s refusal to interact with the film world, even when she was older: ‘The 1994 San Sebastián film festival sought to pay tribute to this local actress, the first Spanish woman to conquer Hollywood, but there was no way’. In fact, in his book of interviews entitled Los que pasaron por Hollywood, Hernández Girbal (1992, p. 12) confessed that he wanted to contact Conchita Montenegro, but ‘despite expressing my interest with letters and phone calls, she didn’t seem to show the least interest in appearing in this book. Her response was deafening silence. From what I can deduce, she has voluntarily turned her back on her life as an artist and has no desire to discuss it’. In his later interview with the actor José Crespo, when he found out that Girbal got no response from Montenegro, Crespo said, ‘I’m not surprised. Even though we were cordial colleagues, she was always a bit strange and difficult to be with. I know that she lives in Madrid now, but she avoids having anything to do with her past as an actress and doesn’t want to see anyone from the profession. I remember that she got along swimmingly with Ramón Novarro, who was another oddball’(Hernández Girbal 1992, p. 123).

Additional information

Funding

This article forms part of the research project ‘Representations of Female Desire in Spanish Cinema during Francoism: Gestural Evolution of the Actress under the Constraints of Censorship’ (Spanish Government Ministry of Education, Industry and Competitiveness - REF: CSO2017–83083–P)

Notes on contributors

Núria Bou

Núria Bou is a professor of film history and director of the master’s programme in Contemporary Film and Audiovisual Studies in the Department of Communications at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. She is the author of La mirada en el temps (Ed. 62, 1996), Plano/contraplano (Biblioteca Nueva, 2002), and Diosas y tumbas: Mitos femeninos en el cine de Hollywood (Icaria, 2004), and co-author with Xavier Pérez of El tiempo del héroe: Épica y masculinidad en el cine de Hollywood (Paidós, 2000). She has contributed to anthologies like Políticas del deseo (Icaria, 2007), Las metamorfosis del deseo (UOC, 2010) and Josef von Sternberg: estilización y deseo (Shangrila, 2020), and to various journals (L’Atalante and Comunicación y Sociedad). Together with Xavier Pérez, she edited the monograph ‘The Star System in Europe: Star Studies Today’, for the journal Comparative Cinema (Vol V, no. 10, 2017) and the book El cuerpo erótico de la actriz bajo los fascismos: España, Italia y Alemania (1939–45) (Cátedra: 2018). She has been Principal Investigator 1 for the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness R&D project ‘Representations of Female Desire in Spanish Cinema during Francoism: Gestural Evolution of the Actress under the Constraints of Censorship’.

Xavier Pérez

Xavier Pérez is a professor of film history and coordinator of CINEMA (Center for Aesthetic Research on Audiovisual Media) in the Department of Communication at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. He is the author of El suspens cinematogràfic (Pòrtic, 1999), and co-author, with Núria Bou, of El tiempo del héroe: (Paidós, 2000), and, with Jordi Balló, of La semilla inmortal (Anagrama, 1997), Yo ya he estado aquí (Anagrama, 2005) and El mundo, un escenario (Anagrama, 2015). He has contributed to anthologies like La caja lista (Laertes, 2007), Escenas de cine: Guión y análisis (Arkadin, 1917) and Los motivos visuales en las series de televisión (Tirant lo Blanch, 2018), and to various journals (L’Atalante and Historia y comunicación social). Together with Núria Bou, he edited the monograph ‘The Star System in Europe: Star Studies Today’, for the journal Comparative Cinema (Vol V, no. 10, 2017), and the book El cuerpo erótico de la actriz bajo los fascismos: España, Italia y Alemania (1939–45) (Cátedra: 2018). He has been Principal Investigator 2 for the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness R&D project ‘Representations of Female Desire in Spanish Cinema during Francoism: Gestural Evolution of the Actress under the Constraints of Censorship’.