Mexico City, 1949
Columba
I first read about this in Photoplay en español. The American movie magazines didn’t give the incident much space, but KSPA, the Spanish-language radio station, aired an interview with actress Columba Domínguez, who called Lola “loca, chiflada, tirana,” and a “mujer horrible, cruel, y totalmente demente.” That got everyone’s attention. Much later, Lola told me her own version of the story:
After she’d finished filming The Fugitive, Lola left for Argentina to film Historia de una mala mujer... The Story of a Bad Woman, an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan. In Buenos Aires, she worked with the director Luis Saslavsky, a handsome and refined man just a year older than herself, who knew how to bring out the best in his actors without insulting or abusing them. Eva Perón was so delighted to have a famous Hollywood actress as a guest that she fawned over her like a princess.
Lola returned from Argentina elated. The Fugitive had been a disappointment, but the Saslavsky film had made her a Latin American—not just a Mexican—star. Mexico and Argentina were the two most important movie-producing countries on two continents, and Lola dominated both markets. She was constantly in demand, and now Emilio Fernández wanted her for a new project—one that would once again bring together the old team despite Naftalí’s prediction. Everything was perfect. What she hadn’t counted on was Columba.
How to describe Columba Domínguez? Huge brown eyes. Luscious black hair. Elongated oval face with high cheekbones. Full lips. The same fine features as Lola, but twenty-five years younger. Emilio repeatedly cast her as an Indian, even though she looked no more Indian than Lola. She’d won a few prizes, and her star was on the rise. By the time Emilio featured her in Pueblerina, he was sleeping with her.
His new film, La malquerida, The Unloved, was based on a play by the Spanish writer Jacinto Benavente, but Emilio set it in rural Mexico. In an exquisite act of cruelty, he chose Lola and Columba as the two female leads. Lola and Columba—yesterday’s lover and today’s. At first, Lola hardly thought about it. She no longer had feelings for Emilio, and besides, he had mostly behaved himself during The Fugitive. Lola was sure that by now, El Indio realized that she was not a woman to be bullied. She accepted his invitation without qualms.
“Here’s your costar,” snickered Fernández, handing her some photos.
Lola looked at the publicity shots and felt an unexpected pang. “It wasn’t jealousy,” she told me. “How could I be jealous? After all, I was the number one star.” Columba stared out from the page with a liquid gaze, her perfectly formed, elliptical face framed by a simple white kerchief. Columba looked identical to Lola a quarter of a century before.
Once filming started, Lola realized that she was in for a rough time. She’d been looking forward to the project, but now this slinky little minx had thrown a wrench into the works.
“He wouldn’t even let me call him ‘querido’ on set,” Lola told me, “but Columba planted kisses on his mouth every chance she got.”
Lola was to play Raymunda, an uptight widow recently remarried to the handsome Esteban, played by Pedro. Columba was her knockout daughter, Acacia, who wiggled her shapely ass whenever anyone was looking. Of course, Esteban falls for the younger woman.
“What a cruel way to tell me what I already know,” Lola sighed. “That I’m getting old.”
On the day she lost her temper, they’d been filming since early in the morning, and everyone was exhausted. Emilio egged the women on, deliberately building up tension.
“You’re still beautiful,” he whispered to Lola, just before the shoot began, “only Columba is more beautiful and so much younger. And she’s more—how shall I say it?—agile. You know, for the things men need.” Lola looked away and pretended not to hear.
Emilio turned toward Columba. “She has what you want,” he teased. “Now take it away from her! Lights! Camera! Action!”
Columba glowered at Lola as if she were prey. “You had to go and marry him!” she hissed, reciting her line with uncanny conviction. She shifted her weight forward as though ready to pounce. Emilio smiled broadly. He was getting exactly what he wanted out of the two women.
Columba glared at Lola with fury and loathing. She wasn’t acting. At Emilio’s signal, she arched her back with feline grace. Lola stood in front of her, partially turned away from the camera. “That’s no way to speak to a mother!” she screamed.
Columba’s face hardened. “You’re not acting like a mother! You’re quarreling with me over a man! He doesn’t love you anymore, Raymunda! The one he wants is me!”
“I felt as though she’d spat at me,” Lola told me later. “I grimaced. Columba wasn’t talking about Esteban, she was talking about Emilio.”
Lola’s temples began to throb. A dizzying rage almost threw her off-balance. Instinctively, she raised her hand and let it fall with such force that her wrist and fingers smarted. Columba let out a bloodcurdling scream that wasn’t rehearsed. She staggered backward, falling to the floor.
“Cut!” yelled Emilio. “That was perfect! A perfect slap! No need for another take!”
Columba held her cheek. It was swollen and bloody, and it was going to bruise.
“She did that on purpose!” Columba cried. “She cut me with her ring!”
“No...” stammered Lola. She looked down at her hand. She’d forgotten she was even wearing a ring. “No...” It was an old-fashioned diamond wedding band that her mother had given her. “I didn’t mean to,” she stammered. “Really, Columba.”
Emilio helped Columba to her feet and examined the cut on her cheek. “Go home, darling,” he murmured. “You have to rest.”
He turned to Lola with a sneer. “She’s really gotten to you, hasn’t she?”
“It was an accident, Emilio, really. I didn’t mean to...”
“Of course you did, but it doesn’t matter. That scene was flawless. The only thing is, it’s going to cost us time. Columba won’t be able to work again for at least another two days.”
“Well, you were back in Los Angeles, Mara, and I had to talk to someone,” Lola explained when I saw her again in Hollywood, “so I went to see Frida.
“I’m playing the mother of a grown woman in this film,” Lola told her friend. She thought Frida would understand. After all, Frida had put up with Diego’s escapades with younger women for years.
But instead, Frida just said: “So?”
“So! Emilio thinks I’m old!”
“That’s all you have to worry about?” snickered Frida. She took a swig of tequila. “I’m putrefying. My flesh is rotting off my bones.”
“We’re all dying,” retorted Lola.
“Well, what do you want? You’re old enough to be the mother of a grown woman.”
“But I just played the mother of a newborn in The Fugitive.”
“That was two years ago.”
Propped up on a chair in her studio, Frida reminded Lola of one of those skeleton puppets children play with on the Day of the Dead—the ones that stand upright when you hold the strings, but collapse into a pile of sticks when you slacken your grip. Frida’s hair hung loose and stringy on her shoulders. The colorful headdresses that usually adorned her braids lay in a basket on her dresser. Her ebony unibrow crept over her forehead like a caterpillar, dense and messy, with stray hairs like tiny feet extending in all directions. Her nose, a mass of miniscule spiderwebs, dripped incessantly. She must have caught the revulsion in Lola’s eyes.
“It’s as though I were already dead and being consumed by organisms,” she said.
Lola didn’t answer.
“Yes, I look like a slug,” she said matter-of-factly, lighting a cigarette. “I’m afraid Diego doesn’t love me anymore. Not the way I love him.”
Lola paused. “I’m sure in his own way...” she began tentatively. She was sorry she’d snapped at Frida.
Frida threw the lit cigarette on the floor. “In his own way!” she screamed. “He’s fucking María Félix! I’m sure you know all about it!”
“No,” said Lola calmly. “I don’t.”
“Liar! Everybody knows about it! It’s in all the papers!”
Lola focused on the painting on Frida’s easel. She’d seen self-portraits that captured Frida’s pain before—images of Frida in her Tehuana dresses, tears streaming down her cheeks, Diego’s likeness implanted squarely on her forehead to show that he was lodged in her mind. But this one was different. Frida looked wan and haggard. Her hair hung wild and unadorned around her face, stray strands encircling her throat as if to strangle her. No vegetation, no monkeys, no brightly colored blouses. No other figures but the cameo of Diego on her forehead. Only the red of Diego’s shirt, repeated in her dress and lips, offered any respite from the dominant grays and browns and washed-out greens. The wretchedness of Frida’s emotional state was evident in her somber face, unmade-up, naked, resigned.
“Philandering son of a bitch,” whispered Frida. She lit another cigarette.
“I’m sorry, Frida. Really, I didn’t know.”
Frida sat for a long while, staring into space. She appeared to be asleep, even though her eyes were open. Ashes were falling from her cigarette, but she made no effort to snuff it out.
“Sorry!” she screamed suddenly. “Sorry! Do you know what it means to be married to a man like Diego? He is a genius! A marvel! I don’t care who he fucks! Diego is too enormous a man—man isn’t the right word—Diego is too colossal a phenomenon for just one woman. He’s like a river that must overflow its banks! The banks don’t suffer because the river overflows. I don’t suffer because Diego fucks around! Even when he fucked my own sister, I didn’t care! Diego is a god! Do you understand? I am blessed to have such a husband! And husband isn’t the right word either, because husband implies he belongs to me and only me, but Diego is too vast...too vast...” Frida picked up the bottle of tequila and hurled it at the wall. Shard-filled liquid ran down the surface and over the floor. She was on drugs, thought Lola, just as Orson had been on drugs when he’d smashed a vase against the wall years ago.
“Tula!” howled Frida to the maid. “Come pick up this mess!” She had worn herself out. She slumped in her chair, forlorn. “If you want to look younger, you could always have plastic surgery,” Frida said dryly.
“If I have any more plastic surgery,” quipped Lola, “instead of to a regular doctor, I’ll have to go to a pediatrician!”
Frida smiled and blew her a kiss. “You’re still stunning, Lola. Play the beautiful, classy older woman, and don’t let them get to you.” She acted as though her outburst had never happened.
Just as Emilio had predicted, Columba had to take two days off. Or maybe, thought Lola, Emilio had shut things down to make her look bad. He wasn’t above wreaking havoc with everybody’s schedule to make some petty point.
It was just as well. Doña Antonia hadn’t been feeling well, and Lola wanted to stay home with her. She tucked her mother under the silky sheets and dainty hand-knitted coverlet she’d bought for her in France and brought up a broth that Luz had made.
“I didn’t mean to hit Columba that hard, Mami,” she told her mother. “Or maybe I did. She and Emilio flaunt their affair! They go out of their way to humiliate me. Emilio keeps reminding me that I’m getting old, and the truth is, it’s not easy for me to play Columba’s mother.”
Doña Antonia sank back into her pillow and closed her eyes. Then she took a shallow breath and recited her favorite passage from Ecclesiasts.
“To every thing, there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time for uprooting what has been planted...” Then she said: “I have a feeling you’re about to enter a new, exciting, and wonderful season of life, Gatita.”