An obliquely subversive descant

As today would have been the birthday of one of our fave camp icons, Senorita Sara Montiel, and since my tribute to the lovely Saritísima on the sad occasion of her death in 2013 appears to have gone completely unnoticed (or certainly, received no comments), I figured a little "recycling" was in order:

From an article by Anna Maria O'Donovan on the Iberosphere news site...

A woman of international stature [has] passed from the scene...Sara Montiel personified – particularly in her later chat-show-celebrity-magazine incarnation – the superficiality of pop culture, yet that very superficiality may have been the key not only to her commercial success but to her importance to Spanish society, particularly in the 1960s. Montiel articulated a kitsch but optimistic and o to the sombre music of official Spain.

The title of the memoir she published in 2000, To Live Is a Pleasure, sums up the commendably intrepid and upbeat philosophy of a woman born without many advantages in a country plagued by poverty, intolerance and violent class division. Sara and Sex, her second book, published at the age of 75, testifies to a refreshingly frank engagement with reality.

Montiel shot to fame first in Mexico where she made hugely popular films in the early 1950s, and then in Hollywood, acting opposite Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster, among others, before returning to Spain to shoot the runaway success, El Último Cuplé in 1957, which propelled her to domestic superstardom.

She remained resolutely mainstream even though her private life at the height of her fame was at odds with the official morality of the day. Some might dismiss this as a dismal and inevitable example of the hypocrisy that riddled a ferociously puritanical society. Others would argue, however, that Montiel’s conformity was more interestingly anarchic.

With a seductive raising of the eyebrows she alluded, confidently if conspiratorially, to that vast undercurrent of everyday experience that wasn’t supposed to exist.

An inspiration to us all, we at Dolores Delargo Towers still miss her!

Sara Montiel - Pobre cita yo

Sara Montiel - Fumando espero ["Smoking, I wait"]

And I make no excuses to play once again my favourite of hers (with Fangoria)! How camp?

Fangoria & Sara Montiel - Absolutamente

Sara Montiel (born María Antonia Alejandra Vicenta Isidora Abad Fernández, 10th March 1928 – 8th April 2013)