Dolores del Río

Easily one of the most beautiful women of her era and one of the most gorgeous people ever to make it to the ranks of film stardom. Del Rio's career in the 1920s and 30s unfortunately suffered from too many exotic, two-dimensional roles designed with Hollywood's cliched ideas of ethnic minorities in mind. Her best-remembered film from this period is "Flying Down to Rio" (1933), which partnered Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers for the first time. One of her more interesting parts was her last American lead, in "Journey Into Fear" (1942), set up by and co-starring Del Rio's then paramour, Orson Welles. It took a return to the stage and screen in her native Mexico (where she won that country's equivalent of a Best Actress Oscar four times and was lauded as "the first lady of Mexican theater") and later Hollywood character parts (e.g., in John Ford's "The Fugitive" 1947 and his "Cheyenne Autumn" 1964) for her talent to be fully displayed.