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The intense and controversial life of María Félix can be explained barely through her films and her great personality and beauty, with characters that seem made to measure and that she interpreted in peasant melodramas, revolutionary themes, urban dramas, and adaptations of novels.
«María Félix was born twice: her parents begot her, and she later invented herself.» It is a phrase from the Mexican Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz that defines the essence of what is probably the most important actress in the history of Mexican cinema.
The diva and icon of the so-called Golden Age of the seventh art in Mexico was named María de los Ángeles Félix Güereña. She was born on this day 108 years ago, April 8, 1914, in Álamos -in the state of Sonora- and, as if she had planned it, she died on the same day 88 years later. Known by the nickname «La Doña» from her character in the film Doña Bárbara (1943), she is also known as María Bonita thanks to the song composed exclusively for her as a wedding gift by the composer Agustín Lara.
Her father was a descendant of the Yaqui Indians, and her mother was of Spanish descent. She had 15 siblings, of whom three died. As a child, she enjoyed hobbies typical of boys, away from traditional female games and conversations. María trained as a consummate horseman and climbed the trees, and above all, admired her brother Pablo. To such an extent, their parents separated them for fear that the relationship would go from the fraternal to the incestuous and sent him to a military academy. She never had a good relationship with her sisters, perhaps because of their physical difference, given they were all blonde by maternal inheritance and because of the contrast in their personalities.
She was the grandest representative of the silver screen in Mexico at an international level, participating in well-known films in different European countries. She was an unrepeatable icon of Mexican cinema. An impenetrable face, loaded with equal parts beauty and personality. Her beauty is so powerful and so intense that it hurts, said Jean Cocteau described her when he met her on a set in 1950. Someone as sure of herself as María Félix was never surprised when success came because she boasted of having been able to choose the moment; she knew how to say no to Hollywood and was never satisfied with the roles she played in nearly fifty films. Such was her disdain that she always argued to reject the call of American cinema that I was always offered roles as an Indian peasant, and I was not born to carry baskets.
The passage of time transformed the natural beauty of María Félix into a vision, and from very early on, her appearance began to attract attention wherever she went. She achieved the title of the beauty queen of the students at the University of Guadalajara. And despite her youth, at seventeen, she married Enrique Álvarez Alatorre, a salesman for the cosmetics firm Max Factor with whom she had her only son, Enrique Álvarez Felix, who was also an actor later. Love did not last long for María throughout her life, and she ended up divorcing Enrique. After their separation, she returned to Guadalajara with her family, becoming the subject of rumors due to her divorce status. Faced with this situation, she decided to move to Mexico City with her son and start a new life as a receptionist in a plastic surgeon’s office and living in a guest house. One day, the father of her son visited her in the Mexican capital and took him to Guadalajara, refusing to return it. Maria swore to him that one day she would be more influential than him and would take it away from him, something she achieved some years later with the help of her second husband.
The difference between the young and the overwhelming María Félix and the diva she later became was that the former was a little less than forcibly married so that she could emancipate herself. And the latter had multiple lovers and married three more times, with the fame of speaking in real life as the characters in her films did and becoming a kind of Femme Fatale to the public that followed her.
If I feel like it, I will. But when I want. And it will be through the main door.
Almost as soon as she arrived in Mexico City, the film director Fernando Palacios asked María in the middle of the street if she would like to make films. She responded bluntly, If I feel like it, I will. But when I want. And it will be through the big door. And, indeed, the main entrance did not take long to open, in 1942, she filmed El Peñón de las Animas alongside Jorge Negrete, even though success would come to her with Doña Barbara, a character who, from then on, would interpret in front of and out of the cameras: brave, rude, dominant, defiant and was perceived as female-male due to her movements and way of speaking. Based on the novel by Rómulo Gallegos, she played a proud, temperamental, and man-devouring woman. It was her third film and, thanks to it, María Félix earned the nickname La Doña and her fame soared.
With her movie stardom, that new Maria woke up, so sure of what she was doing and what she could achieve, and the succession of men in her life began. I chose them all. That is why he could leave them when he wanted. Fight for a man? There are so many! she used to joke frequently to demonstrate his security. She married three more times. Yet her most famous love affairs were those she had with Jorge Negrete and the one with composer Agustín Lara, who even penned a hymn for her.
Later, she won the Ariel Award for best actress for films such as Enamorada, Río Escondido, and Doña Diabla. A few years later, the Mexican Academy of Cinematographic Sciences and Arts (AMACC) recognized her career with a Gold Ariel. The kneeling goddess, Maclovia, The cockroach, Tizoc, Camelia, La Valentina, The empty star, Messalina, The ensign nun, The woman without a soul, French Cancan, and The naked passion were other of his most outstanding films. In total, she participated in 47 feature films between Mexico, Spain, Italy, and France but never succumbed to the call of Hollywood.
She moved away from film shoots in 1970, and from that moment on, she dedicated herself to living off her legend. She attended premieres, international film competitions, and going on television to talk about her memories while spending a few months of the year spending them at home from Paris, where she also had a stable of racehorses. She worked with the great directors of the time such as Emilio ‘El Indio’ Fernández, Ismael Rodríguez, Roberto Gavaldón, Julio Bracho, Emilio Gómez Muriel, as well as with foreigners such as Luis Buñuel, Jean Renoir, Luis César Amadori and Carmine Gallone, among others.
n 1992, her son Enrique published a book with the photographs of María Félix and a prologue by Octavio Paz. She wrote an autobiography, All My Wars, in 1993. In addition to her professional career, Maria was always in the news. Her third husband, Jorge Negrete, died of hepatitis 14 months after their marriage in 1952 and, upon returning to Mexico with his remains, Maria was criticized for wearing pants. Her fourth husband, a Swiss businessman, Alex Berger, whom she married in 1956, died in 1974. She wanted to have her second child with him, precisely because he did not ask, she explained but suffered an abortion. María Félix was a painting model for many famous artists like Jean Cocteau and Diego Rivera. One of her many lovers, who, perhaps as revenge, portrayed her in a transparent dress. She also inspired many writers, including Octavio Paz and Carlos Fuentes. Likewise, she wore clothes by the best designers and, in 1984, was nominated in France and Italy as one of the best-dressed women in the world. Fiction or reality, it is said that even King Farouk of Egypt would have offered her the crown of Nefertiti for a night of love.
Maria was a collector for porcelain, rugs, jewelry, silver, cashmere shawls, Chinese clothing, books, and antique furniture. On the morning of April 8, 2002, the singer Juan Gabriel, like Agustín Lara, had composed a hymn for her called María de las María, phoned her to congratulate her on her 88th birthday. La Doña has not woken up yet, said the butler. Sadly, La Doña was already dead; the same day she was born. As if she had planned it to enhance her legend.
Months later, when it became known that he had left all her property and money to her young assistant, Luis Martínez de Anda, and nothing to her siblings, they asked to exhume the body to verify that María had not been poison. This act was broadcast live on television, although the result confirmed that she died of heart failure. Her relatives then stopped making noise, and the heir began to auction the diva’s furniture, paintings, dresses and, jewelry, many of them bought by her followers.
The indomitable character of María Félix, her arrogance, and challenging gaze elevated her as a great diva of Mexican cinema, and those who knew María Félix always vouched for her kindness and sweetness and attributed her reputation to the roles she played in the cinema. No one can deny that the actress continually defied established norms and always avoided being pigeonholed in a cinema that constantly bordered on the stereotypes of the time. She was a woman ahead of her time, and she had the perfect comment when asked about politics. People still remember her for being opposed to machismo, her views on show business, fashion, her rivalry with Dolores del Río, her jewelry, and her men. Because deep down, María Félix continues to be news all over the world.
Remembrances of Enrique Castillo-Pesado and María Félix
When she married the French banker Alex Berger in 1956, he bought a luxurious apartment located between the Seine and the Arc de Triomphe, at 6 Place Winston Churchill, Neuilly Sur-Seine 92200. There, La Doña lived six months out of the year, and the other six months he lived in Polanco, Mexico. After several years, in the 70s, in one of my many encounters with María, when I got to her home, I was smoking a Te-Amo cigar from Veracruz, and after she kissed me on the cheek, she said: And that Bachicha that you smoke, let me try it. She liked it so much that he took the cigar from me and said Dear Ernrique, from today on you, will refill a box of these Panatela-format cigars, and they are the ones that I will smoke for my friends and Mexico. She also smoked others like the Davidoffs, but the Te-Amo she took affectionately.
Sometime later, in addition to accompanying her to see the races of her horse stable in Longchamp (Paris), we had dinner and ate several times at her house and mine. It was the time when she introduced her last boyfriend and Russian artist Antoine Tzapoff with whom I got on lovely here in Mexico and Cuernavaca. I consider that along with the paintings that Diego Rivera made of María, as well as other artists, Tzapoff’s were out of the ordinary. Impressive portraits in which Maria is wearing various outfits from her homeland.
On one occasion, I invited Elizabeth Pérez, a Venezuelan reporter who had been married to Arturo de Córdoba’s son, home for a meal. She asked Maria if is true that in Caracas was a play in which two transvestites played the roles of La Doña and her rival Dolores del Río, a Hollywood icon, who also had indigenous, and Spanish descent. María stood up from my table in Rincón del Bosque and shouted: Get out of here. You are shameless but in a more colorful way. Maria was right, and my friend fled in terror. Maria went to all my parties, and we never disagreed among us. Our friendship was bulletproof.
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