2023-05-21 21:20:09
In a place in La Mancha, whose name he always wanted to remember, he was born Maria Antonia Abad Fernandezbetter known with the artistic name of Sara Montielback in March 1928. Daughter of a farmer and a hairdresser at home, he knew poverty from the cradle. So much so, that her sister and she came to eat roots to satisfy their hunger. Sara seemed predestined to become a submissive and devoted housewife, but everything changed for her the day she was discovered by the director of the magazine. Triumph, Angel Ezcurra. After hearing her singing a saeta during Holy Week in Orihuela, the journalist decided to convince Sara’s parents to let her participate in a young talent contest convened by the film producer Cifesa in the Retiro park in Madrid.
“He represented Valencia with a song by his idolized Argentine Empire, The brunette of my coplapoints out Daniel María in the illustrated biography saritísima (Varietés Editions). “Despite the fact that she suffered a small mishap in her performance, because she fell as soon as she stepped on the stage, she beat the thirty contestants and won a scholarship of five hundred pesetas a month for a year. Thanks to this remuneration, he was able to settle in a pension in Madrid together with a caregiver provided by the Ezcurras. He enrolled in declamation classes at the conservatory and took the first steps to enter the world of cinema ”.
At just sixteen years old, Sara made her film debut with a small role in the film Ladislao Vajda I want you for me (1944). The following year he would meet his representative, Enrique Herreros, whose sense of smell was essential to start the conversion of that original María Alejandra into Sara Montiel. “Herreros intervened decisively in the young woman’s change of look,” says María. “Her image of her, between naive and mischievous, what in those days was called a ‘Topolino girl,’ gave the appearance of a more adult, with her blond hair and good air in her walk. But the young woman needed, like Rocinante, a loud, sonorous and significant name. Sara as her grandmother and Montiel as the neighboring fields of her native Criptana. The merger hit the bull’s-eye, created a beautiful, seductive and graceful name. A star had just been born.”
The jump to Mexico
La Manchega chained secondary characters and co-stars in the boyfriend left (1945), where he shared credits with Fernando Fernán Gómez, The Mysterious Traveler of the Clipper (1945) y for the grand prize (1946). However, she resisted the relevant roles and, following the advice of her first boyfriend, the intellectual michael mihurawho by the way was twenty-two years older than her, He agreed to try his luck on the other side of the pond. In MexicoMontiel began to act in theaters, formed an artistic couple with stars such as Pedro Infante and she shot a total of fourteen films, practically one a month, which made her a recognized star throughout the continent.
Sara’s closest circle began to fill with personalities from the Spanish exile and the Mexican intelligentsia. In her memories, the diva commented that Leon Philip He encouraged her to practice studying and reading. The poet fell in love with her, and he came to slap her, at least on one occasion, when he found out about her. relationship with the communist leader Juan Plaza. Apparently, this Spanish exile maintained a long romance with La Mancha and got her pregnant. Years later, the hairdresser José de la Rosa would give an interview to a magazine to comment that his friend Sara had told him that, when she was very young, she had a daughter by an important Mexican man: “The girl was born by a very long and complicated cesarean section. . When Sara woke up from the anesthesia, they told her that she had had a stillborn baby girl. Another version holds that, after her delivery, someone stole her daughter and gave her to a couple in Valencia to raise her.
A new book titled Sara Montiel. The woman and the star beyond the myth (Almuzara) offers more details about this Juan Plaza, who tried to control Sara’s life and career, something that pushed her to end up fleeing the house they shared in the Mexican state of Morelos. “At the end of 1955”, the author, the writer Israel Rolón-Barada, “one day very early in the morning, with her suitcases already packed and ready to start the trip to Madrid via Los Angeles in the company of her mother, Sarita said goodbye to her husband at her home in Cuernavaca, but not before having explained to him that they were only going on vacation for a few weeks. What Plaza did not know was that he was gone forever, leaving his home never to return. They had only bought one-way tickets. Totally angry, Plaza threatened to kill her and spent time chasing her. According to Enrique Herreros Jr., the guy came to show up one day at Guayaquilwhere Sara performed, carrying a pistol with which he intended to unleash several shots (but the representative of La Mancha dissuaded him from his intention).
Knowing that due to her communist exile status, her ex could not enter the United States, Sara Montiel settled in Hollywood, where he shot three feature films. with the first, Veracruz, directed by Robert Aldrichshared the bill with actors of the stature of Gary Cooper y Burt Lancaster. Thanks to another one of them. Serenadeshe met her first husband, the American director Anthony Mann. After the premiere of that film, Sara traveled to Spain solely and exclusively for the filming of the last coupleta feature film that, thanks to word of mouth, swept the Spanish box office and, incidentally, he discovered to the public a model of a singer that did not exist until then. “When Sara transforms the cooing into a whisper, she makes the lyrics really hint,” her biographer opined. Pedro Villora.
Control of your career
It was precisely at that time when the producer Max Arnoldfrom Columbia, offered the manchega a seven-year contract. But signing it meant binding himself for a long time to the will of a giant who would control his freedoms, will and career, so Sara rejected it. “Instead, she accepted the counter offer of Warner, a two-year contract in which he imposed a termination clause”, María writes in her book. “La Montiel was aware at all times that His future in the film industry was going to be marked by the reading that Hollywood made of his physique and his accent. She would be typecast in minor roles, she would only be a supporting Latina actress, and they would exploit her carnal and erotic side. They would not respect her decisions or listen to her suggestions. She would not have command of her career.”
The decision to sign with Warner made Sara the highest grossing and universal Spanish actress, which allowed him to return to Spanish cinema some time later to modify the way a film is put on its feet. Since then, Sara started producing her own film projects and imposed a series of conditions: from being the absolute protagonist of his feature films, to having the last word when selecting the director of the film, personally supervising aspects such as the list of songs on the soundtrack and costumes, and not returning to get up early to attend a filming.
Like any good icon of freedom worth its salt, the diva embodied groundbreaking behaviors and decisions in Spain at the time. “The censorship apparatus could not, despite her determined attempts, abolish the free and independent woman who, even with her sentimental and emotional nuances, represented Sara”, adds Maria. “No one could interpret Montiel’s characters like her and in fact no one interpreted them, because they differed, by far, from the submissive archetype of female characters in Spanish cinema of the time.”
After the discreet premiere in 1974 of Five pillows for one night, her last film, Sara became convinced that her cinema was no longer keeping up with the times. “I retired because of breakout movies”, he would tell later. “They would go into the kitchen in a beautiful evening dress to give them a ‘guff’ and then come out naked. I did not like that at all, it did not go with me ”. Luckily for her followers, her professional life did not end with her retirement from the cinema and, in fact, the trail of her stardom remained in force until the end of her days.
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