(Lloyd Bacon, US 1935, 84 min., 35mm)
Dolores del Río was one of the biggest musical stars of classic Hollywood and the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema. Born in Durango, Mexico, del Río was discovered by director Edwin Carewe in 1925, who brought her to Hollywood and turned her into a silent movie star. The following year, she starred in the second-highest grossing film of the year, What Price Glory?, and was recognized as a rising starlet by the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers, alongside Joan Crawford, Janet Gaynor, Mary Astor, and Fay Wray. The height of her silent film career was Ramona (1928), one of the first films to feature synchronized sound. Moving into the sound era, del Río appeared in musicals, comedies, and dramas, including In Caliente, an under-seen film which finds the actress playing a dancer seeking revenge on the magazine editor who once criticized her. Following the end of her career in Hollywood, she continued appearing in films in Mexico through the 1950s, establishing a career as great or greater than the one she had in Hollywood. In 1982 del Río was honored by the George Eastman Museum with the George Eastman Award, its highest accolade for achievement in the art of motion pictures, alongside Joan Bennett, Louise Brooks, Myrna Loy, Maureen O’Sullivan, Luise Rainer, and Sylvia Sidney that same year.