Conchita Montenegro
French postcard by P.I., no. 124. Photo: Star.
Conchita Montenegro (1911-2007) was a Spanish model, dancer, and stage and screen actress. She starred in several Spanish productions, but also in French, German and American films.
Born Concepción Andrés Picado, 11 September 1911 in San-Sebastian (Basque country), she left her home town at the age of ten, moving to Madrid, where she was educated in a convent. She first worked as a model for the painter Ignacio Zuloaga y Zabaleta, and learned classical and Spanish dance. In her adolescence, she went to Paris to follow dancing and acting lessons at the Opera school. At her return in Spain, she formed a dancing duo with her sister Juanita as “Las Dresnas de Montenegro”, to great acclaim in the capitals of Europe. Montenegro supposedly revolutionized Spanish dance. Her sensuality and beauty (brown eyes, wavy black hair, and an olive complexion) were soon discovered by the cinema world. She did her first Spanish film in 1927, La muñeca rota, directed by Reinhardt Blotner, followed by Rosa de Madrid (1927) by Eusebio Fernández Ardavín and Sortilegio (1927) by Agustín de Figueroa. In 1928 she starred in the French film La Femme et le Pantin by Jacques de Baroncelli, one of the many adaptations of Pierre Louÿs’classic novel on a Spanish femme fatale. In June 1930 Montenegro went to the US when MGM offered her a contract. Dubbing was not yet standard practice, so she was cast in several Spanish versions of MGM movies, destined for Spain and Latin-America: De frente, marchen! (or. Doughboys, 1930) by Salvador de Alberich and Edward Sedgwick and with Buster Keaton, Sevilla de mis amores (or. The Call of the Flesh, 1930) by and with Ramón Novarro, Su última noche (1931) by Carlos F. Borcosque and Chester M. Franklin and with Ernesto Vilches and Juan de Landa, En cada puerto un amor (or. Way for a Sailor, 1931) by Borcosque and Marcel Silver and with José Crespo and again De Landa. She quickly learned English and then played in English spoken films: Never The Twain Shall Meet (1931) by W.S. Van Dyke and starring Leslie Howard, and Strangers May Kiss (1931) by George Fitzmaurice and with Norma Shearer and Robert Montgomery. One anecdote from her Hollywood times goes that when during probing she refused to kiss Clark Gable, long-standing film expert Lionel Barrymore remarked: That little girl [she was 18] will give us much playtime.
By mid-1931, Conchita Montenegro had left MGM and signed with Fox, where she stayed until 1935. During her career at Fox, in August 1931 she was nearly killed in a train crash near Yuma, Arizona, while en route with Warner Baxter and Edmund Lowe to shoot The Cisco Kid (1931) in Tucson. At Fox, Montenegro acted in various Spanish versions of Hollywood films: Hay que casar al príncipe (1931) by Lewis Seiler, Marido y mujer (1932) by Bert E. Sebell, Dos noches (1933) by Carlos Borcosque, La melodía prohibida (1933) by Frank Strayer, Granaderos del amor (1934) by John Reinhardt and Miguel de Zarraga and with Brasilian actor Raoul Roulien, and ¡Asegure a su mujer! (1935) by Lewis Seiler (supervised by E. Jardiel Poncela) and with Roulien, Antonio Moreno and Mona Maris. Montenegro also acted in English spoken films by Fox: The Cisco Kid (1931) by Irving Cummings (which had won Warner Baxter an Academy Award in a previous silent version), The Gay Caballero (1932) by Alfred L. Werker and with George O'Brien and Victor McLaglen, Handy Andy (1934) by David Butler and with Will Rogers and Robert Taylor, and Hell in the Heavens (1934) by John Blystone and with Warner Baxter. She also acted in the Mascot Pictures production Laughing at Life (1933) by Ford Beebe and with Victor McLaglen and, at Fox again, in the French version of the film Caravan: Caravane (1934), both directed by Erik Charell and starring Charles Boyer and Annabella. Montenegro acquired the reputation of a social leader in the Spanish Hollywood film colony, leasing a large house and performing as a hostess at many gatherings. At the peak of her career, in May 1935, Montenegro’s contract was not extended by Fox, so she left for Europe, where she married Roulien in Paris in September 1935. The couple toured South America and produced a motion picture called Jangada (1936). The film dealt with the customs of primitive peoples in South America. From 1936 on, Montenegro performed in various European productions, such as the multilingual La vie parisienne/The Parisian Life (1936), shot in Paris by Robert Siodmak, and Lumières de Paris (Richard Pottier 1938) starring Tino Rossi. In 1939 Montegro went with Roulien to Argentine where he directed her in the Spanish version of the Brasilian film O Grito da Mocidade (directed by Roulien as well): El grito de la juventud (1939); soon after they divorced. In 1940 Montenegro went to France where she acted in L’or du Cristobal (1940) by Jean Stelli and Jacques Becker and with Charles Vanel and Albert Préjean, and to Italy where she played in various films: both versions of the multilingual L’uomo del romanzo/Yo soy mi rival (1940) by Luis Marquina and starring Amedeo Nazzari, La nascita di Salomé (Jean Choux 1940), Amore di ussaro (Luis Marquina 1940), Melodie eterne (Carmine Gallone 1940) with Gino Cervi as Mozart and Montenegro as Aloisa Weber, and Giuliano de’Medici (Ladislao Vajda 1941). The latter offended Mussolini, as it too clearly criticized a dictator, and was only permitted re-release after cuts and a change in ideology, while Vajda fled to Spain.
In 1942 Montenegro also went to Spain, after an absence of some 13 years, and returned a big film star, soon playing in Rojo y negro (Carlos Arévalo 1942) with Ismael Merlo, Boda en el infierno (Antonio Román 1942) with José Nieto, Aventura (Jerónimo Mihura 1942) with José Isbert, and Ídolos (Florián Rey 1943) with Juan Calvo. Her last movie was Lola Montes (Antonio Román 1944) with Luis Prendes. In 1944, Montenegro married the Spanish diplomat Ricardo Giménez Arnau, a senior member of the Falangist party and ambassador to the Holy See. She henceforth refused any interviews or honors, so in 1990 she declined the Medal for Artistic Merit by the Ministry of Culture. A widow since 1972, when she died in Madrid, she donated her body to medical science. Due to natural causes, Conchita de Montenegro died on April 26th, 2007, at the age of 95. According to a rare interview, Montenegro gave shortly before she died, British actor Leslie Howard – whom Montenegro dated in 1931 when playing in Never the Twain Shall Meet - used her to get close to Spanish dictator Franco, on the instigation of Winston Churchill. Montenegro used her husband's influence to secure a meeting between the British actor and the Spanish dictator. "Thanks to him, at least in theory, Spain was persuaded to stay out of the war."
Sources: Wikipedia (English, Spanish and French), and IMDb.
Conchita Montenegro
French postcard by P.I., no. 124. Photo: Star.
Conchita Montenegro (1911-2007) was a Spanish model, dancer, and stage and screen actress. She starred in several Spanish productions, but also in French, German and American films.
Born Concepción Andrés Picado, 11 September 1911 in San-Sebastian (Basque country), she left her home town at the age of ten, moving to Madrid, where she was educated in a convent. She first worked as a model for the painter Ignacio Zuloaga y Zabaleta, and learned classical and Spanish dance. In her adolescence, she went to Paris to follow dancing and acting lessons at the Opera school. At her return in Spain, she formed a dancing duo with her sister Juanita as “Las Dresnas de Montenegro”, to great acclaim in the capitals of Europe. Montenegro supposedly revolutionized Spanish dance. Her sensuality and beauty (brown eyes, wavy black hair, and an olive complexion) were soon discovered by the cinema world. She did her first Spanish film in 1927, La muñeca rota, directed by Reinhardt Blotner, followed by Rosa de Madrid (1927) by Eusebio Fernández Ardavín and Sortilegio (1927) by Agustín de Figueroa. In 1928 she starred in the French film La Femme et le Pantin by Jacques de Baroncelli, one of the many adaptations of Pierre Louÿs’classic novel on a Spanish femme fatale. In June 1930 Montenegro went to the US when MGM offered her a contract. Dubbing was not yet standard practice, so she was cast in several Spanish versions of MGM movies, destined for Spain and Latin-America: De frente, marchen! (or. Doughboys, 1930) by Salvador de Alberich and Edward Sedgwick and with Buster Keaton, Sevilla de mis amores (or. The Call of the Flesh, 1930) by and with Ramón Novarro, Su última noche (1931) by Carlos F. Borcosque and Chester M. Franklin and with Ernesto Vilches and Juan de Landa, En cada puerto un amor (or. Way for a Sailor, 1931) by Borcosque and Marcel Silver and with José Crespo and again De Landa. She quickly learned English and then played in English spoken films: Never The Twain Shall Meet (1931) by W.S. Van Dyke and starring Leslie Howard, and Strangers May Kiss (1931) by George Fitzmaurice and with Norma Shearer and Robert Montgomery. One anecdote from her Hollywood times goes that when during probing she refused to kiss Clark Gable, long-standing film expert Lionel Barrymore remarked: That little girl [she was 18] will give us much playtime.
By mid-1931, Conchita Montenegro had left MGM and signed with Fox, where she stayed until 1935. During her career at Fox, in August 1931 she was nearly killed in a train crash near Yuma, Arizona, while en route with Warner Baxter and Edmund Lowe to shoot The Cisco Kid (1931) in Tucson. At Fox, Montenegro acted in various Spanish versions of Hollywood films: Hay que casar al príncipe (1931) by Lewis Seiler, Marido y mujer (1932) by Bert E. Sebell, Dos noches (1933) by Carlos Borcosque, La melodía prohibida (1933) by Frank Strayer, Granaderos del amor (1934) by John Reinhardt and Miguel de Zarraga and with Brasilian actor Raoul Roulien, and ¡Asegure a su mujer! (1935) by Lewis Seiler (supervised by E. Jardiel Poncela) and with Roulien, Antonio Moreno and Mona Maris. Montenegro also acted in English spoken films by Fox: The Cisco Kid (1931) by Irving Cummings (which had won Warner Baxter an Academy Award in a previous silent version), The Gay Caballero (1932) by Alfred L. Werker and with George O'Brien and Victor McLaglen, Handy Andy (1934) by David Butler and with Will Rogers and Robert Taylor, and Hell in the Heavens (1934) by John Blystone and with Warner Baxter. She also acted in the Mascot Pictures production Laughing at Life (1933) by Ford Beebe and with Victor McLaglen and, at Fox again, in the French version of the film Caravan: Caravane (1934), both directed by Erik Charell and starring Charles Boyer and Annabella. Montenegro acquired the reputation of a social leader in the Spanish Hollywood film colony, leasing a large house and performing as a hostess at many gatherings. At the peak of her career, in May 1935, Montenegro’s contract was not extended by Fox, so she left for Europe, where she married Roulien in Paris in September 1935. The couple toured South America and produced a motion picture called Jangada (1936). The film dealt with the customs of primitive peoples in South America. From 1936 on, Montenegro performed in various European productions, such as the multilingual La vie parisienne/The Parisian Life (1936), shot in Paris by Robert Siodmak, and Lumières de Paris (Richard Pottier 1938) starring Tino Rossi. In 1939 Montegro went with Roulien to Argentine where he directed her in the Spanish version of the Brasilian film O Grito da Mocidade (directed by Roulien as well): El grito de la juventud (1939); soon after they divorced. In 1940 Montenegro went to France where she acted in L’or du Cristobal (1940) by Jean Stelli and Jacques Becker and with Charles Vanel and Albert Préjean, and to Italy where she played in various films: both versions of the multilingual L’uomo del romanzo/Yo soy mi rival (1940) by Luis Marquina and starring Amedeo Nazzari, La nascita di Salomé (Jean Choux 1940), Amore di ussaro (Luis Marquina 1940), Melodie eterne (Carmine Gallone 1940) with Gino Cervi as Mozart and Montenegro as Aloisa Weber, and Giuliano de’Medici (Ladislao Vajda 1941). The latter offended Mussolini, as it too clearly criticized a dictator, and was only permitted re-release after cuts and a change in ideology, while Vajda fled to Spain.
In 1942 Montenegro also went to Spain, after an absence of some 13 years, and returned a big film star, soon playing in Rojo y negro (Carlos Arévalo 1942) with Ismael Merlo, Boda en el infierno (Antonio Román 1942) with José Nieto, Aventura (Jerónimo Mihura 1942) with José Isbert, and Ídolos (Florián Rey 1943) with Juan Calvo. Her last movie was Lola Montes (Antonio Román 1944) with Luis Prendes. In 1944, Montenegro married the Spanish diplomat Ricardo Giménez Arnau, a senior member of the Falangist party and ambassador to the Holy See. She henceforth refused any interviews or honors, so in 1990 she declined the Medal for Artistic Merit by the Ministry of Culture. A widow since 1972, when she died in Madrid, she donated her body to medical science. Due to natural causes, Conchita de Montenegro died on April 26th, 2007, at the age of 95. According to a rare interview, Montenegro gave shortly before she died, British actor Leslie Howard – whom Montenegro dated in 1931 when playing in Never the Twain Shall Meet - used her to get close to Spanish dictator Franco, on the instigation of Winston Churchill. Montenegro used her husband's influence to secure a meeting between the British actor and the Spanish dictator. "Thanks to him, at least in theory, Spain was persuaded to stay out of the war."
Sources: Wikipedia (English, Spanish and French), and IMDb.