Katy Jurado(1924-2002)
- Actress
Katy Jurado was born María Cristina Estela Jurado García into a wealthy
family on January 16, 1924. Her early years
were spent amid luxury until her family's lands were confiscated by the
federal government for redistribution to the landless peasantry.
Despite the loss of property, the matriarch of the family, her
grandmother, continued to live by her aristocratic ideals. When movie
star Emilio Fernandez discovered Katy
at the age of 16 and wanted to cast her in one of his films, Jurado's
grandmother objected to her wish to become a movie actress. To get
around the ban, Katy slipped from the grasp of her family's control by
marrying actor
Víctor Velázquez.
Jurado eventually made her debut in
No matarás (1943) during the what has
been called "The Golden Age of Mexican Cinema". Blessed with stunning
beauty and an assertive personality, Jurado specialized in playing
determined women in a wide variety of films in Mexico and the United
States. Her looks were evocative of the indigenous peoples of Mexico,
and she used what she called her "distinguished and sensuous look" to
carve a niche for herself in Mexican cinema. Indian features were
unusual for a film star in Mexico--despite the success of Fernandez,
the fabled "El Indio"--and her ethnic look meant she typically was cast
as a dangerous seductress, a popular type in Mexican
movies. The Mexican media reported that an American movie director at
one of her first Hollywood auditions laughed at her derisively because
she spoke English so poorly, and an outraged Jurado promptly stormed
out of the audition room, cursing in Spanish. As it turned out, that
kind of brazen behavior was exactly the type of personality that the
director was looking for.
In addition to acting, Jurado worked as a movie columnist and radio
reporter to support her family. She also worked as a bullfight critic,
and it was at a bullfight that Jurado was spotted by
John Wayne and director
Budd Boetticher. Boetticher, who was
also a professional bullfighter, cast Jurado in his autobiographical
film
Bullfighter and the Lady (1951),
which he shot in Mexico. She was cast in her part despite having very
limited English-language skills and had to speak her lines
phonetically. Luis Buñuel cast her in his
Mexican melodrama The Brute (1953), and
then she made her big breakthrough in American films in the role of
Gary Cooper's former mistress,
saloon owner Helen Ramirez, in
High Noon (1952). The role necessitated
her moving to Hollywood. She received two Golden Globe nominations from
the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for that part, for Most
Promising Newcomer and Best Supporting Actress, winning the latter.
"She planted the Mexican flag in the U.S. film industry, and made her
country proud", said National Actors Association official Mauricio
Hernandez. Her "High Noon" performance historically proved to be an
important acting watershed for Latino women in American movies.
Jurado's portrayal undermined the Hollywood stereotype of the flaming,
passionate Mexican "spitfire." Previously, Mexican and Latino women in
Hollywood films were characterized by an unbridled sexuality, as
exemplified by such diverse actresses as
Lupe Velez,
Dolores Del Río (who came to loathe
Hollywood and returned to Mexico in the 1940s), and
Rita Hayworth, nee Margarita Cansino.
Although Jurado's character was forced to kow-tow to the stereotype in
"High Noon", delivering such lines as, "It takes more than big, broad
shoulders to make a man," the actress' great dignity in her role as a
moral arbiter among the competing factions of the marshal and his
fiancée, the townspeople and the gunmen out to kill the marshal showed
her Helen Ramirez to be in control and controlled by nothing, not even
her former love for the marshal. Her restrained performance, delivered
with a great deal of conviction, emphasized the shortcomings of the
rest of the other characters. Her moral integrity is the reason she,
like the marshal, must abandon the town.
With her superb performance, Jurado proved that Latino women could be
more than just sexpots in the American cinema. Importantly, working
against the tropes of a racist cinema, she used her talent to introduce
into the American cinema the model of the un-stereotyped Mexican woman
who is identifiably Mexican. One of the best examples of this can be
seen at the end of the middle of her career, when Jurado played sheriff
Slim Pickens' wife and partner in
Sam Peckinpah's elegiac
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973).
Determined and tough as nails, Jurado's character was clearly her
screen husband's equal, and she had a very moving scene with Pickens as
his character faced death. Jurado was blessed with extraordinary eyes,
which were both beautiful and expressive, their beauty and strength
never fading with age. Two years after "High Noon", Jurado received an
Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress for her role as
Spencer Tracy's Indian wife in
Edward Dmytryk's
Broken Lance (1954), making her the
first Mexican actress thus honored.
She refused to sign a contract with a major Hollywood studio in order
to be able to return to Mexico between her American roles to star in
Mexican films. She +remained in Los Angeles for 10 years, marrying
Ernest Borgnine, her co-star in
The Badlanders (1958), in 1959.
During their tempestuous relationship, Jurado and Borgnine separated
and reconciled before finally separating for good in 1961. The tabloids
reported that Borgnine had abused her, and their separation proved
rocky as well, as they fought over alimony. Their divorce became final
in 1964. Borgnine summed up his ex-wife as "beautiful, but a tiger", a
bon mot that described her on-screen persona as well (she had two
children with former husband Victor Velasquez, a daughter and a son,
who tragically was killed in an automobile accident in 1981).
Jurado played the wife of Marlon Brando's
nemesis Dad Longworth (Karl Malden) in
One-Eyed Jacks (1961), Brando's
sole directorial effort. In her role she also was the mother of a young
woman who was Brando's love interest, thus marking a career transition
point as she assumed the role of a mature woman. As Jurado aged, she
appeared in fewer films, but notable among them included
Arrowhead (1953) with
Charlton Heston,
Trapeze (1956) in support of
Burt Lancaster and
Man from Del Rio (1956) with her
fellow Mexican national
Anthony Quinn who, unlike Jurado,
had become an American citizen. She also appeared with Quinn in
_Barabbas (1962)_and
The Children of Sanchez (1978).
She appeared on the Western-themed American TV shows
Death Valley Days (1952),
The Rifleman (1958),
The Westerner (1960) and
The Virginian (1962). Her
career in the US began to wind down, and she was reduced to appearing
in "B" pictures like Smoky (1966) with
Fess Parker and the
Elvis Presley movie
Stay Away, Joe (1968). She
attempted to commit suicide in 1968, and then moved back home to Mexico
permanently, though she continued to appear in American films as a
character actress. Her last American film appearance was in
Stephen Frears'
The Hi-Lo Country (1998),
capping a half-century-long American movie career that continued due to
her talent and remarkable presence, long after her extraordinary good
looks had faded.
Aside from acting in films in the US and Europe, she continued to act
in Mexican films. Her most memorable role in Mexican movies was in
Nosotros los pobres (1948)
(aka "We the Poor") opposite superstar
Pedro Infante. Though in the
latter part of her career she appeared occasionally in American films
shot in Mexico (including an appearance with her former mentor, Emilio
Fernandez, in "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid" and
John Huston's
Under the Volcano (1984)), she
appeared mostly in Mexican movies in the last decades of her career,
becoming a prominent and highly respected character actress. She played
the leader of a religious cult in the Bunuel-like satire
Divine (1998).
Jurado won three Ariel awards, the Mexican equivalent of the Oscar, a
Best Supporting Actress award in 1954 for Bunuel's
The Brute (1953) a Best Actress Award in
1974 for
Fe, esperanza y caridad (1974)
and a Best Supporting Actress award in 1999 for "El evangelio de las
Maravillas". She also was awarded a Special Golden Ariel for Lifetime
Achievment in 1997. In the north, she was honored with a Golden Boot
Award by the Motion Picture & Television Fund in 1992 and has a star on
the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Jurado was an avid promoter of her home
state of Morelos as a location for filmmakers.
Towards the end of her life, she suffered from heart and lung ailments.
Katy Jurado died on July 5, 2002, at the age of 78 at her home in
Cuernavaca, Mexico. She was survived by her daughter.
family on January 16, 1924. Her early years
were spent amid luxury until her family's lands were confiscated by the
federal government for redistribution to the landless peasantry.
Despite the loss of property, the matriarch of the family, her
grandmother, continued to live by her aristocratic ideals. When movie
star Emilio Fernandez discovered Katy
at the age of 16 and wanted to cast her in one of his films, Jurado's
grandmother objected to her wish to become a movie actress. To get
around the ban, Katy slipped from the grasp of her family's control by
marrying actor
Víctor Velázquez.
Jurado eventually made her debut in
No matarás (1943) during the what has
been called "The Golden Age of Mexican Cinema". Blessed with stunning
beauty and an assertive personality, Jurado specialized in playing
determined women in a wide variety of films in Mexico and the United
States. Her looks were evocative of the indigenous peoples of Mexico,
and she used what she called her "distinguished and sensuous look" to
carve a niche for herself in Mexican cinema. Indian features were
unusual for a film star in Mexico--despite the success of Fernandez,
the fabled "El Indio"--and her ethnic look meant she typically was cast
as a dangerous seductress, a popular type in Mexican
movies. The Mexican media reported that an American movie director at
one of her first Hollywood auditions laughed at her derisively because
she spoke English so poorly, and an outraged Jurado promptly stormed
out of the audition room, cursing in Spanish. As it turned out, that
kind of brazen behavior was exactly the type of personality that the
director was looking for.
In addition to acting, Jurado worked as a movie columnist and radio
reporter to support her family. She also worked as a bullfight critic,
and it was at a bullfight that Jurado was spotted by
John Wayne and director
Budd Boetticher. Boetticher, who was
also a professional bullfighter, cast Jurado in his autobiographical
film
Bullfighter and the Lady (1951),
which he shot in Mexico. She was cast in her part despite having very
limited English-language skills and had to speak her lines
phonetically. Luis Buñuel cast her in his
Mexican melodrama The Brute (1953), and
then she made her big breakthrough in American films in the role of
Gary Cooper's former mistress,
saloon owner Helen Ramirez, in
High Noon (1952). The role necessitated
her moving to Hollywood. She received two Golden Globe nominations from
the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for that part, for Most
Promising Newcomer and Best Supporting Actress, winning the latter.
"She planted the Mexican flag in the U.S. film industry, and made her
country proud", said National Actors Association official Mauricio
Hernandez. Her "High Noon" performance historically proved to be an
important acting watershed for Latino women in American movies.
Jurado's portrayal undermined the Hollywood stereotype of the flaming,
passionate Mexican "spitfire." Previously, Mexican and Latino women in
Hollywood films were characterized by an unbridled sexuality, as
exemplified by such diverse actresses as
Lupe Velez,
Dolores Del Río (who came to loathe
Hollywood and returned to Mexico in the 1940s), and
Rita Hayworth, nee Margarita Cansino.
Although Jurado's character was forced to kow-tow to the stereotype in
"High Noon", delivering such lines as, "It takes more than big, broad
shoulders to make a man," the actress' great dignity in her role as a
moral arbiter among the competing factions of the marshal and his
fiancée, the townspeople and the gunmen out to kill the marshal showed
her Helen Ramirez to be in control and controlled by nothing, not even
her former love for the marshal. Her restrained performance, delivered
with a great deal of conviction, emphasized the shortcomings of the
rest of the other characters. Her moral integrity is the reason she,
like the marshal, must abandon the town.
With her superb performance, Jurado proved that Latino women could be
more than just sexpots in the American cinema. Importantly, working
against the tropes of a racist cinema, she used her talent to introduce
into the American cinema the model of the un-stereotyped Mexican woman
who is identifiably Mexican. One of the best examples of this can be
seen at the end of the middle of her career, when Jurado played sheriff
Slim Pickens' wife and partner in
Sam Peckinpah's elegiac
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973).
Determined and tough as nails, Jurado's character was clearly her
screen husband's equal, and she had a very moving scene with Pickens as
his character faced death. Jurado was blessed with extraordinary eyes,
which were both beautiful and expressive, their beauty and strength
never fading with age. Two years after "High Noon", Jurado received an
Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress for her role as
Spencer Tracy's Indian wife in
Edward Dmytryk's
Broken Lance (1954), making her the
first Mexican actress thus honored.
She refused to sign a contract with a major Hollywood studio in order
to be able to return to Mexico between her American roles to star in
Mexican films. She +remained in Los Angeles for 10 years, marrying
Ernest Borgnine, her co-star in
The Badlanders (1958), in 1959.
During their tempestuous relationship, Jurado and Borgnine separated
and reconciled before finally separating for good in 1961. The tabloids
reported that Borgnine had abused her, and their separation proved
rocky as well, as they fought over alimony. Their divorce became final
in 1964. Borgnine summed up his ex-wife as "beautiful, but a tiger", a
bon mot that described her on-screen persona as well (she had two
children with former husband Victor Velasquez, a daughter and a son,
who tragically was killed in an automobile accident in 1981).
Jurado played the wife of Marlon Brando's
nemesis Dad Longworth (Karl Malden) in
One-Eyed Jacks (1961), Brando's
sole directorial effort. In her role she also was the mother of a young
woman who was Brando's love interest, thus marking a career transition
point as she assumed the role of a mature woman. As Jurado aged, she
appeared in fewer films, but notable among them included
Arrowhead (1953) with
Charlton Heston,
Trapeze (1956) in support of
Burt Lancaster and
Man from Del Rio (1956) with her
fellow Mexican national
Anthony Quinn who, unlike Jurado,
had become an American citizen. She also appeared with Quinn in
_Barabbas (1962)_and
The Children of Sanchez (1978).
She appeared on the Western-themed American TV shows
Death Valley Days (1952),
The Rifleman (1958),
The Westerner (1960) and
The Virginian (1962). Her
career in the US began to wind down, and she was reduced to appearing
in "B" pictures like Smoky (1966) with
Fess Parker and the
Elvis Presley movie
Stay Away, Joe (1968). She
attempted to commit suicide in 1968, and then moved back home to Mexico
permanently, though she continued to appear in American films as a
character actress. Her last American film appearance was in
Stephen Frears'
The Hi-Lo Country (1998),
capping a half-century-long American movie career that continued due to
her talent and remarkable presence, long after her extraordinary good
looks had faded.
Aside from acting in films in the US and Europe, she continued to act
in Mexican films. Her most memorable role in Mexican movies was in
Nosotros los pobres (1948)
(aka "We the Poor") opposite superstar
Pedro Infante. Though in the
latter part of her career she appeared occasionally in American films
shot in Mexico (including an appearance with her former mentor, Emilio
Fernandez, in "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid" and
John Huston's
Under the Volcano (1984)), she
appeared mostly in Mexican movies in the last decades of her career,
becoming a prominent and highly respected character actress. She played
the leader of a religious cult in the Bunuel-like satire
Divine (1998).
Jurado won three Ariel awards, the Mexican equivalent of the Oscar, a
Best Supporting Actress award in 1954 for Bunuel's
The Brute (1953) a Best Actress Award in
1974 for
Fe, esperanza y caridad (1974)
and a Best Supporting Actress award in 1999 for "El evangelio de las
Maravillas". She also was awarded a Special Golden Ariel for Lifetime
Achievment in 1997. In the north, she was honored with a Golden Boot
Award by the Motion Picture & Television Fund in 1992 and has a star on
the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Jurado was an avid promoter of her home
state of Morelos as a location for filmmakers.
Towards the end of her life, she suffered from heart and lung ailments.
Katy Jurado died on July 5, 2002, at the age of 78 at her home in
Cuernavaca, Mexico. She was survived by her daughter.