María Félix

[Hanne]

br vogue oct 06 scanned by me

images from: www.her.itesm.mx www.terra.com.mx www.redescolar.ilce.edu.mx www.etiquetanegra.com www.cinemexican.omty.itesm.mx

http://www.mariafelix.com.mx/ tribute site in spanish

 

[Hanne]

http://www.who2.com/mariafelix.html

Maria Felix
Actor
Name at birth: Maria de los Angeles Felix Guerena

Maria Felix was one of the biggest movie stars in Mexico, the strong and sexy leading lady in nearly fifty movies. She became a star in the 1940s and was known as "La Doña," after her character in Doña Bárbara (1943). Her iconic status in Mexico has been compared to that of Marilyn Monroe's in the United States, and her love life was as newsworthy as her film appearances. Her other films include Rio Escondido and Enamorada, both released in 1947, and Luis Buñuel's Fever Mounts at El Pao (1959). After a television series in 1970, Felix appeared in only one film, but she remained in the news, famous for her fashion sense and jet-setting image (she also owned racehorses). She died on her 88th birthday from what was called a heart attack, but her brother suggested that she had been poisoned. Her body was exhumed three weeks later, the family proclaimed she had died of natural causes and the matter was settled.

http://film.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/Exclusive/0,4029,681831,00.html#article_continue
Maria Felix
Mexico's iconic beauty on and off the screen
by Sheila Whitaker
Wednesday April 10, 2002
The Guardian

The actor Maria Felix, who has died aged 88, was widely agreed to be "the most beautiful face in the history of Mexican cinema". She became an icon during its golden age in the 1940s - a period of resurgent national pride - and the incarnation of the strong, sexual woman, who would, nevertheless, be tamed by machismo before the end of the movie.
Born in Alamos, one of 16 children of a wealthy family, she studied in Guadalajara, where she became the university carnival queen. After moving to Mexico City, she worked for a plastic surgeon who used her as a model to attract clients. She made her first film, El Penon De Las Animas (1942), alongside the famous actor and singer Jorge Negrete, whom she later married.
It was with her third film, Doña Barbara (1943), that Felix's star began to rise - according to one critic, "as both a respected actress and an over-determined icon" - although some would doubt her acting abilities. Doña Barbara tells the story of a Venezuelan woman, raped in her youth, who runs her ranch despotically while dressed in men's clothes (a characterisation Felix was to repeat in La Monja Alferez in 1944) and dabbles in witchcraft.
Felix grabbed the role with her full force, becoming the personification of Doña Barbara and, ironically, of Mexico. To the end of her life, she was referred to as Doña Barbara, and her subsequent roles built on the image. In 1943, she made La Mujer Sin Alma, the story of a woman who lies her way to the top in urban Mexico, and a string of films that followed, including the celebrated Rio Escondido (1947), played with the image.

Enamorada (1947) was a welcome relief from iconic melodramas. A delightful comedy, with a Taming Of The Shrew theme, it tells of a rebel leader (Pedro Armendariz) falling in love with the daughter of a powerful landowner (Felix). His overtures are ignored, and he suffers humiliating (but very funny) encounters - though, as with Shakespeare, in the end, the heroine is tamed and nationhood re-enforced. In one scene, the cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa focuses ever closer on Felix waking in bed, ending with a shot of just her eyes and nose - an iconic and beautiful image.

Felix made 18 films during the 1940s, and continued to work in Mexico until 1970, by which time she had completed 47 movies. She worked in Spain, Italy and France, with directors who included Jean Renoir (French Cancan, 1954) and Luis Buñuel (Los Ambiciosos, 1959), though most of her European work was disappointing.

She appeared once on screen with Dolores del Rio (La Cucaracha, 1958), and in a play with her by Carlos Fuentes, Orquideas A La Luz De La Luna (1982). She did a television series, La Constitución (1970), won three Ariel awards for best actress, and, in 1985, a lifetime achievement award and the Mexico City Prize. In 1996, she became the first Latin American woman to be made commandeur de l'ordre des arts et des lettres by the French government.
In 1992, Felix's son, Enrique, published a book of his photographs of his mother, with a prologue by Octavio Paz. She herself published an autobiography, Todas Mis Guerras, in 1993 and, after Enrique's death in 1996, a posthumous homage to him.

Apart from her professional career, Felix was often in the news. She was married four times, first to Enrique Alvarez (1931-38), with whom she had her son. On their divorce, Alvarez kidnapped the child, who was rescued by Felix and her second husband (1943-47), the singer-songwriter Agustin Lara. Her third husband, Jorge Negrete, died of hepatitis 14 months after their marriage in 1952, and, on her return to Mexico with his remains, she was criticised for wearing trousers. Her fourth husband, a Swiss businessman, Alex Berger, whom she married in 1956, died in 1974.

Felix was much painted by famous artists, including Jean Cocteau and Diego Rivera (one of her numerous ex-lovers), who, to her fury, portrayed her in a transparent dress. She also inspired many writers, including Paz and Carlos Fuentes.
She consorted with the rich and famous all her life, was dressed by top designers and, in 1984, was nominated in France and Italy as one of the world's best-dressed women. King Farouk of Egypt allegedly offered her Nefertiti's crown for one night of love.

Felix avoided potential opprobrium when a projected film, based on Zona Sagrada by Fuentes, dealing with an incestuous relationship between a film star and her son, failed to materialise; she and Enrique were to have appeared in the movie. There was talk that the plot was based on their relationship, a supposition never substantiated, although the two were emotionally very close.

Felix collected porcelain, carpets, jewellery, silver (including a silver bedhead designed by Rivera), cashmere shawls, Chinese costume, books and antique furniture. In 1990, an exhibition of paintings in Tijuana by her much younger lover, Antoine Tzapoff, included a portrait of her astride a rhinoceros. At the same time, there was a retrospective of her more nationalist films and a homage to her career.

Felix spent her later years moving between Paris, where she owned a racehorse stable, and Mexico City. She remained the subject of media interest, including a four-hour television programme. Paz wrote that she had invented herself; be that as it may, undoubtedly her life was dedicated to maintaining her legend and its myths, both on and off screen.
Maria de Los Angeles Felix Guerena, actor, collector and racehorse owner, born April 8 1914; died April 8 2002.

 

[Whitelinen]

Beautiful, thank you

 

[MulletProof]

maria bonita....
quite a character...so witty with interesting insights on just about any topic.

thanks for the thread, hanne!.

 

[ballroombeliever]

I love the old fashioned divas

 

[MulletProof]

she's the beauty icon at style.com today!

With Salma Hayek's ABC hit Ugly Betty poised to win a Golden Globe or two, and a host of Mexican directors including Children of Men's Alfonso Cuarón and Babel's Alejandro González Iñárritu in the spotlight, it's only fitting that the country's first female movie star, María Félix, is back on the pop culture radar. The actress's femme fatale locks, assertive brows, dark eyes, and tiny waist made her a national treasure from the forties on. They would seem to have had Hollywood written all over them, too. But despite making over 45 films (one with Luis Buñuel), "La Doña," as she was called after her 1943 role in Doña Bárbara, never became as famous north of the border. Blame it on her refusal to learn English.

An unrepentant diva, Félix had a penchant for collecting husbands (four, officially) and lovers (Diego Rivera, for one) that was only surpassed by her love of jewelry. The pièce de résistance of a collection Cartier released in her honor last year is an emerald-and-diamond-encrusted gold necklace modeled after one particularly famous commission. She is reported to have stalked into the Paris boutique with a baby crocodile in tow and asked the stunned jewelers to replicate the reptile in gems, stipulating, no less, that the piece be done to scale. Now, her flamboyant style and beauty—Egypt's King Farouk allegedly promised her Nefertiti's crown for one night together—have inspired a new book, María Félix La Doña, out next month from Assouline.

—Sarah Cristobal

 

[MulletProof]

more from style.com

on the set of Río Escondido, 1947

close-up in Río Escondido.

a painting of her entitled Muy Malo by Diego Rivera, circa 1949.

early 1950's..

 

[MulletProof]

more from style.com

Maria on the set of Doña Diabla...

on the set of La Corona Negra, circa 1951..

..on the set of Café Colón..

..with her son, Enrique Alvarez, in Mexico City, 1964.

Cover of the Assouline book, which will be released in February 2007.

..a diamond and emerald necklace that was custom-made for María Félix by Cartier in 1975.

 

[Miss Dalloway]

She was just stunning,i saw her house in Vogue and OMG its sooo over the top and insane.She had a crocodile in a marbel pool.

 

[Miss Dalloway]

Personal quotes:
"Me Empty? Nobody has seen inside of me."

"What can I do? I can't be ugly."

"Some friends told me that pearls make people cry. The only pearls that have made me cry are false pearls"

"Look, young lady, I have been very busy living my life and I've not had time to count it." (upon being asked her age by a journalist)
( )

"I cannot complain about men. I have had tons of them and they have treated me fabulously well. But sometimes I had to hurt them to keep them from subjugating me."
IMDB.

 

[Miss Dalloway]

Credit: http://gallery.future-i.com/celebs/pic:feMFELIX-1/

 

[Miss Dalloway]

Credit:Gallery.future!

 

[maghy7]

Maria Felix.....Best of the best, I have seen many of her movies, she is a legend to us in Latin America.

Thanks for the thread.

 

[Hanne]

Orchide.. where are you ? Have you seen the thread yet ?

 

[chic stranger]

Personal quotes:
"Me Empty? Nobody has seen inside of me."

"What can I do? I can't be ugly."

"Some friends told me that pearls make people cry. The only pearls that have made me cry are false pearls"

"Look, young lady, I have been very busy living my life and I've not had time to count it." (upon being asked her age by a journalist)
( )

"I cannot complain about men. I have had tons of them and they have treated me fabulously well. But sometimes I had to hurt them to keep them from subjugating me."
IMDB.

fantastic quotes!!!

 

[MulletProof]

brilliant.

 

[teleyes]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=red-I8ckZvo

that's my favorite video of her. Most of the photographs are rare, some of her youth.

 

[daniellat]

She was and still is an icon for any Latin women, she had such a strong personality and confidence, so different from what people think a latina is. No macho could handle La Doña!

 

[1karina1]

Fabulous picture scanned by me from the Sunday Times Style Magazine 15.04.07

 

[FashionBoy86]