Carmen Sevilla, a beguiling actress, singer and dancer who turned one of many largest stars of mid-century Spanish cinema, then gained a wider viewers enjoying Mary Magdalene — reverse matinee idol Jeffrey Hunter as Jesus — within the 1961 Hollywood epic “King of Kings,” died June 27 at a hospital in Madrid. She was 92.
Her son, Augusto J. Algueró, introduced the dying in an announcement shared with Spain’s Europa Press information company. She had Alzheimer’s illness and was dwelling at a nursing dwelling in Madrid.
Ms. Sevilla was a glamorous queen of Nineteen Fifties and ’60s Spanish movie, drawing comparisons to actress Ava Gardner along with her sculptured options, flowing darkish hair and high-arching eyebrows. Admirers nicknamed her “la novia de España,” the bride or sweetheart of Spain, and her followers included Pope John XXIII, who despatched a congratulatory telegram when she married composer and conductor Augusto Algueró in 1961, at a marriage ceremony that reportedly attracted tens of hundreds of individuals to the plaza outdoors the cathedral in Zaragoza.
Working primarily in Europe and Mexico, Ms. Sevilla appeared in additional than 60 films, starring in musicals together with “Imperial Violets” (1952), with the Spanish tenor Luis Mariano, and dramas similar to “Vengeance” (1958), which was directed by Juan Antonio Bardem and obtained an Oscar nomination for finest foreign-language movie.
Early in her profession, she prided herself on enjoying chaste girls such because the title character in “Sister San Sulpicio” (1952), about an Andalusian nun who’s barred by her religion from marrying the person she loves (Jorge Mistral). Ms. Sevilla sought to keep up that decorous display persona in her personal life and largely steered away from drama and gossip, as Hollywood columnist Joe Hyams found in 1956.
Accompanying Ms. Sevilla to a movie set close to Madrid, he requested an area to elucidate the actress’s reputation. “In Spain,” he was instructed, “to be glamorous is to be with out scandal. Carmen is untouched by scandal. She can also be of the individuals. She is the proper lady.”
A lot of her movies, at the least, had been removed from good. “Don Juan” (1956), a interval comedy by which she appeared reverse the French comic Fernandel, was dismissed as bland and uninspired. “Spanish Affair” (1957), an English-language drama by which she romanced Broadway actor Richard Kiley, was additionally coolly obtained, though American critics had been by then praising Ms. Sevilla for her appearing.
“For generations Spain’s dramatic favorites have sprung from the individuals and have sought to retain the widespread contact. Miss Sevilla has this contact,” the New York Occasions declared in 1957, for an article on “film queens” world wide.
A couple of years later, she was solid in director Nicholas Ray’s “King of Kings,” a lavish widescreen spectacle filmed in Spain with hundreds of extras. The movie instructed the story of Jesus from the manger to the resurrection; Ms. Sevilla, as Mary Magdalene, found the empty tomb. She later had a supporting function in one other English-language epic, enjoying Octavia in Charlton Heston’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra” (1972). As soon as once more, she didn’t must journey outdoors Spain to make the movie, though it was so poorly obtained it was by no means given a large launch in america.
As a brand new era of Spanish filmmakers examined the boundaries of state censorship close to the tip of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, Ms. Sevilla started taking extra adventurous roles, together with in psychological thrillers similar to director Eloy de la Iglesia’s “The Glass Ceiling” (1971).
However for essentially the most half she discovered higher success in music, recording coplas, boleros and tangos, typically in collaboration with Algueró, her first husband. Close to the peak of her fame in 1965, she carried out one among her husband’s songs, “Estando contigo,” on “The Ed Sullivan Present,” making what was then a uncommon look for a Spanish entertainer on American tv.
Ms. Sevilla reinvented herself as soon as extra within the early Nineties, turning into an affable staple of Spanish tv. She introduced reveals for 3 main broadcasters, at instances serving to to ring within the New 12 months on-air, and continued to look recurrently till her retirement in 2010 at age 80, the yr after she was recognized with Alzheimer’s.
“The spouse of Spain managed to evolve into the nationwide grandmother, fascinating a number of generations, whereas lots of her contemporaries had been forgotten,” journalist Valeria Vegas wrote in a tribute for the Madrid newspaper El País. “For the historical past of Spanish common tradition,” Vegas added, “she is going to all the time be everlasting.”
María del Carmen García Galisteo was born in Seville, Spain, on Oct. 16, 1930. After the Spanish Civil Struggle led to 1939, Ms. Sevilla and her household moved to Madrid. By way of her father, a songwriter and composer who labored within the films, she met the actress and singer Estrellita Castro, who turned a mentor and helped launch her profession.
At 16, she made her movie debut with a small function in “Spanish Serenade” (1947), directed by Juan de Orduña. She landed her first starring function two years later, reverse the Mexican singing star Jorge Negrete in “Jalisco Sings in Seville,” and was later featured reverse Pedro Infante in “You Needed to Be a Gypsy” (1953) and because the indomitable title character in Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” (1956), with Alberto Closas and music by Algueró, whom she met on the set.
Her different movie credit included “Desert Warrior” (1957), with Ricardo Montalbán, and “The Balcony of the Moon” (1962), with Paquita Rico and the singer and movie star Lola Flores, one among her closest mates.
Ms. Sevilla’s marriage to Algueró, with whom she had her son, led to divorce in 1974. In 1985, she married Vicente Patuel, a businessman who owned film theaters. They settled on a farm close to Herrera del Duque, and raised sheep earlier than his dying in 2000.
Full data on survivors was not instantly accessible.
“We lived, we suffered, we laughed,” Ms. Sevilla mentioned in 2002, wanting again on the agricultural life she constructed for herself with Patuel. If it was a departure from her show-business profession, it was additionally, she mentioned, “one thing that was paradise for us.”
Reward this articleGift Article