Heroes, Lovers, and Others: The Story of Latinos in Hollywood

Rating:
Summary: The Best Of Its Kind
Review: Rodriguez gets us thinking about the place of Latinos in US feature film from the very beginning to the present and in a sense, it's a book with a happy ending, because after decades of near-invisibility, Latinos and Latinas are becoming highly visible and indeed stars with huge followings. I mean, like it or not, Jennifer Lopez has millions of fans, as does Christina Aguillera. Intriguing are her portraits of Hollywood's Latin stars of days gone by, from the dashing Gilbert Roland to the gay superstar Ramon Novarro, and the answers to trivia questions like Olga San Juan. But she has some facts wrong, and it makes me wonder if even I, a non-Latino, can pick up some mistakes she has made, who knows maybe there are even more I don't know about! In her article on raquel Welch, first of all she deplores the fact that Jo Raquel Tejada was forced to change her name to Welch. She says that "Welch was another name in her family." Every fan of Raquel's in fact knows that "Welch" is the name of Raquel's first husband, and she didn't "steal" it or anything from some other member of her own family. Rodriguez also claims that Raquel made her screen debut in the call-girl melodrama A HOUSE IS NOT A HOME, when most historians credit her in appearing in the Elvis programmer ROUSTABOUT way before AHINAH. But, all in all you can't go wrong with Rodriguez (except when she goes wrong), and I love her description of Anthony Quinn as having the greatest gift of a screen actor, the ability to make audiences think they have known the character he is playing in any particular picture, that they have known him for a long time. It's a quirky observation, but a valid one, and a valuable one to boot.