Dolores Del Rio: Carmen Miranda's Role In Hollywood

Dolores del Rio was a significant Latina actress during era Hollywood films. She is perhaps Latin 's most celebrated actress to crossover to Hollywood who successfully represented Latin culture and identity to the masses. Her celebrity and iconic status helped spread awareness in differentiating between race and Mexican ethnicity in the U.S. Through her charm and beauty, she garnered a great deal of attention from the public eye, consequently many of her peers and colleagues saw her in the same light. Del Rio 's significance to Latinos in films is regarded as an essential steppingstone to her successful career as a major movie star. Joanne Hershfield argued that although del Rio was a movie star, she had no real "personal identity"; that is to say that she is …show more content…
The Motion Pictures of America compared her to a "princess out of an Aztec frieze with a panther 's grace, the plumage of a bird of paradise and the wiles of Eve and Lileth combined" (Roberts 10). Because of such acclamation proved her a useful tool used by the United States as a ploy to improve diplomacy during the Good Neighbor era in the 1930s. Unbeknownst to her, she and Fox Films "achieved the illusion of international, economic, and personal harmony" between the U.S. and South American nations (Roberts 5). Miranda 's use of music and dance in her films translated to a universal conduit for cultural exchange for public 's perception. Although, it was in the best interest of Hollywood to present the differences between cultures to be "superficial and irrelevant," it did not transpire well with the South American viewers. They did not appreciate nor respected Miranda 's portrayal of the Latinas in films. Ironically, the construction of Miranda 's roles led to her success, but remains tainted as an ill intent to devalue Latina