Mexico City, 1947
Seek, but You May Not Find
Naftalí Rodríguez, Lola’s agent since she’d made Las abandonadas, was trying to be as gentle as possible.
“The thing is,” he told her, “we just can’t continue making the kind of films you did with El Indio.” He lit a cigarette and slumped over his desk. “They were beautiful,” he went on. “Exquisite. All of them. I think that Bugambilia and Las abandonadas were your best work. But try to understand our position, Dolores. The Americans want to make movies in Mexico. During the war, the gringos were cooperative. They helped us develop our industry by supplying celluloid and technical assistance because they wanted us to make pro-Ally propaganda films. But now they’re trying to squash us. We can’t let it happen. The ávila Camacho administration tried to do what it could to help us by imposing minimum quotas on Mexican productions and buying theaters that would show only Mexican films. But it’s hard for us, Dolores.”
“I can’t go back to making those mindless musicals I made in Hollywood.”
“That’s what the public wants, and now that El Indio’s group has disbanded, we couldn’t make artsy films even if people wanted them. Armendáriz isn’t even in Mexico now.”
“Pedro allowed himself to be seduced by Mary Pickford, but he might find himself playing butlers and chauffeurs up there. At least he didn’t burn his bridges with Emilio. He can always come back.”
“Our studios can no longer afford to make the kind of extravaganzas that Emilio loves.”
“Would you be happy if we got together again—Emilio, Pedro, Gabriel, and me?”
“I don’t see how. You’ve all gone your separate ways.”
“John Ford, the American director, has a project. He wants us all in it. It’s a film based on Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory.”
“Who’s Graham Greene?”
“A British writer whose novels deal with faith struggles, moral issues...”
“That stuff doesn’t sell.”
“This will. It’s about a Catholic priest in some Latin American country where religion is forbidden. He doesn’t name the country. The priest is on the run from the government.”
“Everybody will know it’s Mexico. Even now, thirty years after the Revolution, priests have to sneak around in regular clothes without their collars. So who’s this priest?”
“He doesn’t have a name. He’s anonymous during the whole film.”
“Great. Any other bright ideas?”
“There’s this other guy, also on the run, who comes to town—a vicious thug they call El Gringo, and he’s got this beautiful Indian girlfriend.”
“That’s you.”
“That’s me. We decide to help the priest escape. We get him to a safe place, but then, a police mole convinces him to go back to the town because, he says, El Gringo is mortally ill.”
“And needs the priest to give him last rites. Viaticum.”
“Yes, exactly. Did you read the book?”
“And then the police arrest the priest and put him to death, right? I didn’t have to read the book. It’s obvious.”
“After he dies, the people feel tremendous grief.”
“And they wail and carry on, especially because before they shoot him, he forgives his informant, just like Jesus did. ‘Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.’ Luke 23:34. I went to Catholic schools. Didn’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Then everyone sees that God isn’t dead because the people believe in Him. I like it, Dolores. But I don’t know about an American film. Who plays the lead?”
“Henry Fonda.”
“Henry Fonda is Jesus Christ and the bad guys are all Mexicans? Typical. Who does Pedro play? The gringo?”
“He plays the police lieutenant. Ward Bond plays the gringo.”
“In English, right?”
“Yes, of course in English. Henry Fonda doesn’t know Spanish. But it’s not an American film, Naftalí. He’s going to make it in Mexico. Emilio is going to coproduce.”
“What studio?”
“Ford’s own studio, Argosy. RKO will distribute.”
“You know how this will look, Dolores? Like we’ve sold out to the gringos!”
Suddenly, Lola turned to me. “What do you think, Mara?”
“I think it’s a great idea,” I said to support her. I mean, what was I supposed to say?
I was in Mexico for a couple of months with Lupita and Lexie, staying with Lola at La Escondida. Lola had bought us tickets on Mexicana Airlines, and the girls were more excited about the airplane ride than about being back in Mexico.
Of course, I was squeamish about leaving Tía Emi alone in the house again. What if she burned it down with a cigarette? Or what if her lungs gave out? Who would rush her to the hospital?
“So what’s the worst thing that could happen?” growled Tía Emi. “I’d die, and by the time you got back, I’d already be breakfast for worms.”
In the end, Lolly and Gabi convinced me to go. They promised to watch over Tía Emi, and Don Gabriel said he would check in regularly. We left at the end of June, as soon as the school year was over.
“Why?” Naftalí asked now. “Why is it a great idea?” He was squinting at me from behind thick, frameless eyeglasses.
I wasn’t expected to answer, of course. My job was to accompany Lola to meetings, or wherever else she wanted, and to make sure her hair and wardrobe were in order. As for John Ford, in Lola’s mind, he was a giant, but all I knew about him was what everybody else in Hollywood knew. He’d made mostly Westerns, filmed on location in Monument Valley. He was known for his majestic long shots. Rugged men rode across vast plains, specks against breathtaking landscapes, “just as we are specks in God’s fathomless creation,” he once said in an interview. His heroes were loners, often played by Fonda, who was considered the embodiment of the tough, independent he-man. Ford was known to be a nasty director who goaded his actors to their limits and once even brought John Wayne to tears. But rumor also had it that he could be kind, that he often made secret donations to the needy and once even financed an operation for a desperately ill woman.
“Okay,” Naftalí said finally. “If that’s what you want.”
Ford would shoot The Fugitive in Mexico because he wanted to make it as authentic as possible, but he wouldn’t name the location because he didn’t want problems with the Mexican government. Of course, Mexicans would know it was about the state of Tabasco, where the brutal atheist governor, Tomás Garrido Canabal, had persecuted priests relentlessly, killing scores of them. Ford was already in Mexico making preparations, and Lola was going to meet with him the following day.
“I want you to come with me,” she said, when we got back to her house.
“No,” I said. “I promised to take the girls to Xochimilco for a picnic.”
She wasn’t pleased, but she didn’t say more.
To be honest, I hadn’t gone to Mexico just to babysit Lola’s new bouffant hairdo. I had other plans. However, it wasn’t going to be possible to carry them out with two young girls in tow. I had to leave them with someone, but I needed to be careful. I didn’t want anyone to know what I was up to. It occurred to me that Luz might be willing to watch them, but then Lola would ask questions. I didn’t know where to reach Felipa, and anyhow, by then, she was certainly working for another family.
But I couldn’t take the children with me. It might be dangerous. In fact, even going alone could prove dangerous if it was true, as Tía Emi always said, that someone was after me. I certainly didn’t want to leave my girls orphans, but, on the other hand, I’d lived in Mexico before, and no one had tried to kill me. Of course, it was easy to remain anonymous in the capital. In Durango, someone might be on the lookout for me.
The day Lola met with Ford, I did, in fact, treat the girls to a picnic in Xochimilco. I packed a basket, and we took a boat tour around the floating gardens and listened to a mariachi playing “Cielito lindo.” We visited the church of San Bernardino and saw the famous Niño Dios. By the time we got home, Lola was back.
She launched into her report the moment we walked through the door. “He wore a patch over one eye and dark glasses to protect his delicate vision. He was smoking a pipe. He has a long, oval face like a hard-boiled egg. His hair is a silver fawn color, and he wears it very short, military style. It looks like the bristles of a dirty scrub brush!”
She’ll be talking about him for hours, I thought. She was enthralled with Ford. He hardly smiled, she said. Instead, he clamped his teeth down on his pipe and growled, a low, droning growl like that of an annoyed lion. Lola loved his intensity, his no-nonsense determination. He was nothing like the prima donna directors she’d dealt with before.
“‘The damn studios!’ he roared. And then he said, ‘Excuse me, Miss del Río. I don’t allow my men to swear on set in the presence of ladies, and here I am swearing myself. It’s just that Hollywood...it all makes me so mad.’ He took a puff on his pipe. ‘Greed!’ he growled. ‘They’re all dominated by greed. All they think about is profits. You can’t make beautiful films anymore because the only thing that matters is money. That’s why I started Argosy. I wanted to control my own productions.’” Lola imitated his deep, raspy voice.
“I appreciate his dedication,” she told me, “and I’m anxious to get back to making films that are more than entertainment. We’re going to start rehearsals in a few weeks, querida, and I’ll need for you—”
“I’ll only be here until the end of August,” I interrupted, losing patience. “School starts right after Labor Day. I can’t keep the girls out of class. And by the way, Lola, I wonder if I could leave them with Luz for a few days next week. I have... I have something to do, and I can’t take them.”
“Oh?”
“I ran into an old friend, and we’d like to spend some time together. He has a place in Guanajuato...an old colonial house...” It was a lie, of course, but I knew the suggestion of romance would intrigue her.
“Anyone I know?”
“No.”
“Well, Gabe has been gone for four years now, Mara. It’s time for you to get on with your life. I’ll tell Luz.” She winked at me and went on talking about Ford.
A few days later, I kissed the children goodbye and caught the bus for Durango. I wore a plain black pleated skirt and a lightweight burgundy sweater—not the kind of thing you’d wear for a tryst, but Lola had gone out by the time I left the house, so I didn’t have to explain. To avoid attracting attention, I wore no jewelry, not even earrings. I carried only a small suitcase with fresh underwear and two clean blouses.
It was a long trip—about ten hours. The bus was a rolling junk heap glued together with masking tape and chewing gun. Half the windows were broken, and the seats were hard and narrow. The passengers were mostly campesinos on their way home from the markets in the city, some with leftover goods—ears of corn, avocados, tomatoes, even chickens, goats, and lambs. The odor of animal shit and cigarettes was overpowering, in spite of the shattered windows. We stopped a couple of times to pick up passengers, or so that we could use the stinking, overflowing toilets or buy food in some dilapidated cantina.
The jerky ride was made worse by my pogoing nerves. I hadn’t smoked since we’d moved back to Los Angeles, but I fished a cigarette out of one of the packs I’d bought specially for the trip and lit it. Of course I was edgy. For one thing, I didn’t even know who I was looking for. What was I going to do? Approach strangers and ask, “Do you know a woman who looks like me, except older?” For another, what if Tía Emi’s stories were true? What if someone recognized me and reached for a pistol? As the bus rolled into the station, I half expected to be met with a barrage of gunfire.
I climbed down and stretched my stiff limbs, then looked around at the place where I was born. Nothing about it was familiar. The flophouses around the bus station were downright fetid, but I walked along the road until I finally found a relatively clean inn. A breakfast of coffee and dry sweet rolls or tortillas was included in the price. I went to bed and fell asleep almost immediately.
In the morning, I took off on foot toward town. Everything seemed strange, almost otherworldly. I sensed eyes squinting at me from behind doorjambs and whispers wafting over crumbling walls. It’s just my overactive imagination, I kept telling myself. Suddenly, footsteps, heavy and uneven, approached from behind, and I caught my breath without slackening my pace. The irregular thwacks on the ground were coming closer. I picked up my stride, and he picked up his. It wasn’t my imagination. I could smell his breath—putrid and close. He was gaining on me. I felt as though I were suffocating. I expected a hand like a claw to clutch my shoulder at any moment, but then, he...no...it was a she...pushed past me, shoving me against the wall as she plowed ahead—a heavy, unwieldly farmwoman pulling a goat on a tether.
In a doorway, an old woman was shucking corn. I might as well start somewhere, I thought.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I am looking for a woman... I don’t know her name, but she’s the sister of Emilia Rojas-Moreno. She used to live here.”
My voice sounded alien to my own ears, and my question, absurd.
The woman looked at me blankly, and I realized she didn’t understand Spanish. I smiled and said, “Tlazohcamati,” “thank you,” one of the very few words I knew in Nahuatl.
In a little plaza, I came upon a group of five or six women who appeared to be about Tía Emi’s age. Brown, braided Indians with leathery skins. Earlobes deformed by heavy earrings. Yellowed blouses. Faded, woven shawls. Stinking cigarettes or pipes hanging from their mouths. Tía Emi would look like these women, I thought, if she’d stayed here. Like them, her hands were gristly and her complexion, coffee-colored, but she wore her graying hair in a bob, and she sewed pert little shirtwaists for herself. She wore cardigans, not homemade shawls, and shoes, not huaraches.
Tía Emi’s name was María Emilia Rojas-Moreno. Tía Emi had said that she and my mother had different fathers, but, I thought, perhaps they shared a maternal surname.
“I’m looking for a woman,” I began. “María Moreno. The sister of Emilia Rojas-Moreno.” The women jabbered in dialect a moment, then shrugged.
Toward evening the following day, I spied a group of men and women in a different tiny plaza adjacent to a church. One of them strummed a guitar, and another tapped a makeshift drum. They were singing some of the old Revolutionary ballads I’d heard as a child—“Adelita,” “Juana Gallo,” “Corrido a Pancho Villa,” “Miguela Ruiz.”
“My aunt worked on an estate around here. It burned down during the war,” I began when there was a lull in the singing.
“Campesinos set fire to it!” one of the men corrected me.
My heart leaped! These people knew about the estate!
“Bien hecho!” chimed in one of the women. “They had it coming!”
“You knew Don Adalberto and Doña Verónica, the owners?”
“No,” they replied, one after the other.
“Then how did you know that peones burned down the hacienda?”
“We burned down all those filthy, fucking estates that the terratenientes used to break the backs of the poor slobs who worked the land.”
The guitar hummed. The voices rose. “Si Adelita se fuera con otro...” “Don Pedro amaba a Miguela...”
They were all gawking at me. Of course they were. In those days, it wasn’t so common for a woman to roam through town unaccompanied. Don’t forget, women couldn’t even vote in Mexico until 1953.
If only I knew where the estate was located, I thought. Then I could visit the local church and look at the baptismal records.
“All those little parish churches were destroyed during the war,” the owner of the inn told me, when I explained my plan to her, “but you might try the cathedral.”
My third full day in Durango, I thumbed through the cathedral records. I figured that my mother was probably born around 1890...maybe a little earlier...but there were no entries in the books from between 1880 and 1930. I left disheartened.
I planned my return trip so that I would arrive back at La Escondida while Lola was out. I didn’t want to answer questions. The 6 a.m. bus would get in at about 4 p.m. By the time I caught a taxi and returned, Lola would be done with her siesta and back at the studio going over the script with Ford.
For once, everything worked out as anticipated. The house was quiet when the taxi dropped me off in front of Lola’s elegant wrought iron gate. I tiptoed in, bathed, and changed clothes. I played paper dolls with the girls—they’d brought two books of Katy Keene from the States—and gave them their supper. Then I went to bed.
I looked like a ghoul when I came in for breakfast—sunken eyes, droopy mouth, skin like skim milk. I’d been too upset to sleep.
“How was it?” asked Lola cheerily. “Mami’s got a boyfriend,” she whispered conspiratorially to Lexie and Lupita. “In Guanajuato.”
Lexie glared at me, mortified.
“No, I don’t. It...it’s not what you think, Lola.”
I should just tell her the truth, I thought. But I was ashamed. I was an orphan, an abandoned child, the bastard of some maid. How could I talk about these things to Lola, whose own mother was so adoring? It was too painful.
“What about Ford?” I asked. “What’s he like to work with?”
As I knew she would, she instantly forgot about Mr. Guanajuato and launched into an account of her day with Ford. He didn’t live up to his reputation as a hard-ass, she said. He treated her with respect, and El Indio, following his example, behaved himself. Best of all, she was once again making a serious film with Pedro and Gabriel.
A few days before the girls and I returned to the States, Lola walked into my room while I was packing. She was wearing a tight, deep green sweater of the type that makes church ladies hyperventilate.
“That top leaves nothing to the imagination,” I teased.
She laughed. I was folding Lexie’s skirts and shorts and placing them carefully in the suitcase, but I could feel Lola’s eyes on me.
“If you really had a boyfriend in Guanajuato, you’d have told me all about him, right, Mara? After all, we’re best friends...sisters...” She put her arm around me. “What’s going on?” she asked gently.
How could I not tell her?
“If you can find out the names of the estate owners,” she said, after she’d heard the whole story, “Mami might be able to help. She knew all the important families in Durango.”
“All I know is their first names, Adalberto and Verónica,” I said.
“Talk to Mami.”
Lola began folding Lexie’s shirts and placing them in the suitcase. She kissed me on the cheek. “Remember,” she murmured in my ear, “in the future, no keeping secrets from big sister!”
We arrived back in California a week before Labor Day. Lolly started her sophomore year of college, although she almost didn’t. She hadn’t been able to save up the thirty-nine dollars the university required for “incidentals.” She put every five-or ten-cent-tip she got at Marie’s in a big glass jar, but all the coins only added up to about eight dollars. Gabi gave her two dollars from her earnings as Madame Isabelle’s assistant, and I’d managed to put aside ten dollars as well, but it just wasn’t enough.
In the end, it was Tía Emi who saved the day. She’d lived with Madame Isabelle rent-free for years, and then she came to live with us. She made her own clothes, even her underwear, and I cut her hair. The only things she spent money on were taxes, shoes, cigarettes, and an occasional movie ticket for the Rialto cine en español. With no expenses, she’d managed to save up thousands of dollars, and instead of hiding it under the mattress, as you might expect of an uneducated woman raised on a hacienda in the middle of God knows where, she opened an interest-bearing account at Bank of America. Madame Isabelle had shown her how.
“Keep those centavos you put together working your little asses off,” she told Lolly and Gabi. “I’m going to write a check.”
And she did. It was the first check she ever wrote. (Well, actually, I wrote it, and she signed it. Tía Emi wasn’t so good at writing.)
“My niece is going to be a teacher,” she announced to anyone who would listen. “She’s going to stand up in front of a bunch of white kids, and they’ll have to pay attention and do whatever she says. Otherwise, she’ll beat the shit out of them.”
A few days after The Fugitive opened, Mrs. Carver brought a copy of Star World into the shop. I flipped through it on my break and came across this article by Carla Myer:
Dolores del Río Returns to the Silver Screen in Ford’s The Fugitive
Carla Myer
The Fugitive opened on November 3, and my feelings are mixed. With hardly any dialog, the film depends on star Henry Fonda’s superb acting skills, which, as wonderful as they are, cannot carry this grim tale of Revolutionary Mexico’s persecution of priests. Director John Ford is known for gorgeous imagery, but here, mood and cinematography overwhelm the story.
The Hollywood grapevine has it that Fonda himself doesn’t care much for The Fugitive, and I can see why. The story is plodding, the script meagre, and the symbolism heavy-handed. Fonda’s character, the last surviving priest in an unnamed country that is obviously Mexico, represents Jesus, and his nemesis, a criminal known as El Gringo (of course!), is the devil. I will not spoil the ending for those of my readers who want to brave 104 minutes of tedium, except to say that there are no surprises in this film.
On the other hand, it is a pleasure to once again be writing about Dolores del Río. (She used to write her name Del Rio.) It has been about five years since she starred in Orson Welles’s disastrous Journey into Fear, her last picture in English until now, and she has certainly developed as an actress since then. In The Fugitive, she plays an unnamed Indian woman who has a baby by a savage police lieutenant (Pedro Armendáriz). In one overwrought scene, he laughs viciously when he corners mother and infant in a church. A believer, del Río’s character has the priest baptize her baby and tries to help him get out of the country.
There are positive elements to report, to be sure. Richard Hageman has composed a score that captures the atmosphere of Mexico, although at times it seems a bit clichéd. Del Río’s acting, while sometimes strained, is admirable. Gabriel Figueroa uses the camera like a paintbrush, shooting del Río in his black-and-white pallet as though she were the Mona Lisa. Every angle shows off her ageless beauty. Although she must be over forty, kneeling in church with her infant daughter, she looks about twenty-six, thanks to Figueroa’s magic. (And perhaps to a plastic surgeon. A little bird told me she’s had some work done.) Gabriel Figueroa and Dolores del Río bring out the best in each other. He knows how to caress her impeccable, heart-shaped face with the lens, how to use light and shadow to bring out her sculpted cheekbones and her neat, vertical nose, and she, of course, knows just how to pose.
With its clumsy, transparent Catholic symbolism, The Fugitive may not attract non-Catholic moviegoers or make a lot of money for its producers. It is a shame that Dolores del Río chose such an awkward vehicle to make her comeback in the US.
I laughed at the bit about a “plastic surgeon.” Of course Lola had a few nips and tucks. Who in the movie business hasn’t? But did that vixen have to mention it?
I debated whether to send the review to Lola. Maybe she’d like to read that onscreen, she looked about twenty-six, I thought. But then, I reflected a moment longer. What about that comment about plastic surgery?
“No,” I said to myself. “She doesn’t need to see that.”