Today's post on Carmen Miranda (1909-1955) goes out to another Carmen M, my friend Carmen Mofungo (Michele Carlo), one of the many performers influenced and inspired by the Brazilian star. (Michele will be appearing with me in Surf Vaudeville at Coney Island USA's Sideshows by the Seashore this coming April 27 -- don't miss it!) My only previous post on Carmen Miranda was my one on the 1947 film Copacabana with Groucho Marx. Michele says she has read that Groucho wasn't very nice to her on that shoot; that's something to explore, but I have no specifics to share today.
She was born Maria do Carmo Miranda da Cunha, and immigrated with her family to Brazil as an infant, having been born in Portugal. The name "Carmen" was bestowed on her in tribute to the Bizet Opera. As a young woman she had her own hat shop in Rio de Janeiro, but also sang at social events, in clubs, and on radio, in spite of her father's objections. Her recording career began in 1929, and she became known for popularizing the samba. In the '30s she was Brazil's biggest radio performer and a film star as well, starring in a series of movie musicals that drew on Carnival traditions. This is when she began wearing her famously flamboyant costumes, including the legendary fruit hats.
Her move to the U.S. came with 1939 Broadway show The Streets of Paris with Bobby Clark and the team of Abbott and Costello. This led to an appearance in the 1940 film Down Argentine Way with Betty Grable and Don Ameche. This was at the very moment when there was a kind of Latin craze happening in the U.S. It's an interesting moment. It seemed to be happening organically -- Latin music, with its exotic rhythms, was becoming popular on its own by way of bandleaders like Vincent Lopez and Xavier Cugat. (In related news, Cugat would later give us Charo). But there was also a specific initiative by the U.S. government to encourage Pan-American friendship at the same time, in order to pre-empt the countries of South and Central America and the Caribbean from making alliances with the Axis. Spain, after all was Fascist. There were Fascist movements in most of the nations of Latin America. So this is when you get Orson Welles making It's All True for RKO, and Walt Disney making The Three Cabarellos.
And of course a huge vogue for Carmen Miranda. In her first few films she was usually third billed behind an Anglo couple who were the stars: After Down Argentine Way there was That Night in Rio (1941) with Ameche and Alice Faye, Weekend in Havana (1941) with Faye and John Payne, Springtime in the Rockies (1942) with Grable and Payne, and The Gang's All Here (1943) with Faye and James Ellison. These fed the popularity of her singles, such as "Chica Chica Boom Chic" and "Tico Tico". She also returned to Broadway for Sons o' Fun (1941) with Olsen and Johnson.
Though ostensibly designed to create friendly feeling toward Latin culture, the producers of Miranda's screen vehicles were completely indifferent about distinctions among cultures. Miranda, a Portuguese speaking Brazilian was just as often cast as Spanish speaking Argentinians and Cubans. Further, while she was extraordinarily talented singer and dancer, her characters were broadly cartoonish, even more so than Lupe Velez's Mexican Spitfire. She was imitated and parodied by everybody: the Three Stooges, Bugs Bunny, Milton Berle, Jerry Lewis, Lucille Ball. Chiquita Banana based their animated mascot character on her. Her native country's initial pride gradually gave way to something like anger and embarrassment.
Still by 1944, probably her peak year, she was starring in movies, no longer a supporting player. In Greenwich Village (1944), her name now comes before Ameche's. In Something for the Boys (1944) she is the lead, followed by Michael O'Shea, Phil Silvers, and others.
By the following year? Things had already cooled off. Though still a major star of night clubs and records, she dropped back to supporting parts and featured artist spots in nightclub scenes in films. She tried a couple of films where she dialed back the caricature and played a more nuanced version of herself, but that didn't strike any ore. Her last few years seem very much about an association with comedians After Copacabana, she was in Scared Stiff (1953) with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, and did lots of TV variety work: The Ed Wynn Show, The Milton Berle Show, The Colgate Comedy Hour, The All Star Revue, and The Ed Sullivan Show.
Miranda died of a heart attack after taping an episode of The Jimmy Durante Show. Well, it was more than that. She performed again after the tv taping, and then partied with friends until 3am. She was only 45 at the time of her death, but if you've seen her performances then you'll know the sometimes jaw-dropping amount of energy she put out. Apparently, a regimen of uppers and downers went toward maintaining that energy as she grew older. She was also a habitual smoker and drinker. The strain had begun to tell. She'd been unwell for weeks prior to the Durante show, and was particularly unwell that night prior to the taping. Some people have just got to get up onstage -- even if kills them.
For more on the history of show business, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, and for more on classic comedy please check out Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube. And please stay tuned for my two upcoming and relevant tomes The Marx Brothers Miscellany and Electric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.
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