"Dolores del Rio challenged Hollywood's - and the public's - prevailing views on race and gender from the 1920s through the 1960s. Her roles, costumes, and makeup, along with the advertising, publicity, and reviews of her films, reveal the influence of her ethnicity and her construction as an exotic commodity: her sexual image ran counter to the dominant social standards for femininity and against miscegenation, but her exoticism - and the promotion of it - contributed to her renown as one of Hollywood's most enduring stars."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Dolores del Rio challenged Hollywood's - and the public's - prevailing views on race and gender from the 1920s through the 1960s. Her roles, costumes, and makeup, along with the advertising, publicity, and reviews of her films, reveal the influence of her ethnicity and her construction as an exotic commodity: her sexual image ran counter to the dominant social standards for femininity and against miscegenation, but her exoticism - and the promotion of it - contributed to her renown as one of Hollywood's most enduring stars.

Dolores del Río's enormously successful career in Hollywood, in Mexico, and internationally illuminates issues of race, ethnicity, and gender through the lenses of beauty and celebrity. She and her husband left Mexico in 1925, as both their well-to-do families suffered from the economic downturn that followed the Mexican Revolution. Far from being stigmatized as a woman of color, she was acknowledged as the epitome of beauty in the Hollywood of the 1920s and early 1930s. While she insisted upon her ethnicity, she was nevertheless coded white by the film industry and its fans, and she appeared for more than a decade as a romantic lead opposite white actors. Returning to Mexico in the early 1940s, she brought enthusiasm and prestige to the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, becoming one of the great divas of Mexican film. With struggle and perseverance, she overcame the influence of men in both countries who hoped to dominate her, ultimately controlling her own life professionally and personally.

Dance and the Hollywood Latina asks why every Latina star in Hollywood history began as a dancer or danced onscreen. Introducing the concepts of ""inbetween-ness"" and ""racial mobility"" to further illuminate how racialized sexuality and the dancing female body operate in film, this book focuses on the careers of Dolores Del Rio, Rita Hayworth, Carmen Miranda, Rita Moreno, and Jennifer Lopez and helps readers better understand how the United States grapples with race, gender, and sexuality through dancing bodies on screen

Dolores del Río's enormously successful career in Hollywood, in Mexico, and internationally illuminates issues of race, ethnicity, and gender through the lenses of beauty and celebrity. She and her husband left Mexico in 1925, as both their well-to-do families suffered from the economic downturn that followed the Mexican Revolution. Far from being stigmatized as a woman of color, she was acknowledged as the epitome of beauty in the Hollywood of the 1920s and early 1930s. While she insisted upon her ethnicity, she was nevertheless coded white by the film industry and its fans, and she appeared for more than a decade as a romantic lead opposite white actors. Returning to Mexico in the early 1940s, she brought enthusiasm and prestige to the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, becoming one of the great divas of Mexican film. With struggle and perseverance, she overcame the influence of men in both countries who hoped to dominate her, ultimately controlling her own life professionally and personally.