Los Angeles, Mexico City, 1964–1968
Two Conversations
Lucille Carver settled back in the chair, and I fastened a towel around her neck.
“Do you like the way I did it last time? I mean, the color...we went even lighter.”
“I’m not sure. I’m not really convinced I want to go gray. Roy likes it light brown. What do you think?”
“Well, I’ve been making it lighter because you said you wanted to transition to your natural color, but if you’ve changed your mind, we can go darker today.”
“Yes, let’s go a smidgeon darker. Listen, did you see that new film with Sal Mineo?”
“Actually, I did see it. Cheyenne Autumn. The one about the Cheyenne Indians. Dolores del Río is in it. You always loved her films.”
“No, she isn’t.”
“She plays a nameless character identified as ‘the Spanish woman.’”
“Oh, I can’t believe she’d take such a tiny role! I didn’t even recognize her. Could you put in some highlights? It’ll make the color look more natural.”
“Of course, Mrs. Carver. She’s still very beautiful, you know.”
“I didn’t even notice her.”
So that’s how it is, I thought. Bit parts. Anonymous characters that no one remembers. She hadn’t had a good role since Flaming Star, about four years back.
“You know, Mrs. Carver,” I ventured. “I actually know Dolores del Río. I’ve known her for years.”
I expected her to say something like, You! That’s impossible! I don’t believe it! Instead, she said, “Really? How fascinating! I’m surprised you never mentioned it.” She was silent for a while. “You know,” she murmured, “you ought to write down your recollections. In a couple of years, no one will remember her.”
Around the same time, Lola was having a different conversation with Lew—one she later described to me in detail.
They were driving through the city’s sprawling slums toward the elegant Zona Rosa. A beggar woman on the corner stretched out her hand. “Por favor, señorita. Para la niña. Please, miss, for the child.” She nodded toward a scrawny little girl clinging to her skirts.
“Stop the car, Lew.”
“You can’t give money to every beggar in Mexico, Lola. Forty percent of the population lives below the poverty line.”
“Look at that child, Lew. She has beautiful features—wide brown eyes, such a pert little nose, but she’s going to waste away if nobody helps. She should be in school.”
“You think the ten pesos you’re going to give her mother will make a difference?”
“Para la niña,” said Lola, handing some coins to the woman. She watched her own hand reach through the window and winced at the sight of her fingers—her mother’s fingers—swollen and warped at the joints, but adorned with beautiful rings. The beggar stuffed the money into her apron pocket.
“Dios la bendiga, God bless you,” she murmured, and then moved on to the next car.
Along the wall of a building, six or eight women were camped out on faded blankets that had once been blue or yellow or magenta. They’d come to the city from rural villages looking for work, only to wind up on the street begging for coins or selling chewing gum to motorists. Children dozed or played. One ragged woman pulled herself up, straightened her skirt, and dragged a half-sleeping child toward the curb. She stood there, holding a basket out toward passing cars. Toothless and twisted, she somehow exuded serenity. Someone flipped a coin into her basket. “Dios le bendiga,” she lisped. Some of the older children darted among the cars wiping windows, hoping for a “payment.”
“I know it’s not enough, Lew,” said Lola, sighing. “When I left Hollywood, I thought, now I’m going to do something important. I’m going to make socially relevant films that will help shepherd in a new Mexico. And we do live in a new Mexico. I keep reading that Mexico has the most robust economy in Latin America. But look around you. The streets are full of emaciated beggars with gaunt children who are not learning how to read. Fifty years after the Revolution, life is better for a lot of people, but what about folks like that woman and her little daughter? I thought I could make a difference, but I haven’t. I feel useless, Lew.”
Lew took her hand. “You’ve made films that have inspired a nation, Lola.”
“That’s not what’s needed now. Anyway, what do Mexican audiences want today? Horror films by El Santo or art films by Buñuel.”
They drove through dark alleys, past dilapidated buildings with no running water, electricity, or heat. The tawdry areas my mother must have known. They drove to the outskirts of the city, where shantytowns lined the landscape. Children played soccer, using a can for a ball, in front of tents held together with cord and vulnerable to the rain and wind.
Lola had realized after Flaming Star that she was approaching the end of her career. I was growing old, too, but I had my girls, my grandchildren, and, since I’d identified my mother, a sense of my place in the world. But in spite of her fame and eternally smooth skin, Lola felt...ephemeral. Her health was deteriorating. Arthritis made it impossible for her to stand for long periods and bronchial problems were affecting her voice. She’d just played the allegory of Death in Alejandro Casona’s play, La dama del alba, The Lady of the Dawn, and it made her acutely aware of her own mortality. And then, there was the suicide of her old friend and costar Pedro Armendáriz. He’d contracted cancer of the hips and smuggled a gun into UCLA Medical Center, where he was being treated. When the doctor told him his cancer was terminal, he used it.
“If I’m ever going to do something useful,” said Lola, “I’d better do it now!”
“You’re overreacting,” scolded Lew. “Other people’s misery is not your fault.”
“Half the country is starving.” She pointed to a fancy new hotel under construction. “Those men over there, the workers putting up that monument to opulence, they earn about a ten pesos a day, five dollars. How are they going to feed their families?”
She knew she couldn’t solve all of Mexico’s social dilemmas, but maybe she could find some way to offer a concrete solution to real problems that existed close to home. She was getting ready to star in Casa de mujeres, a new film by Julián Soler about prostitutes who adopt an abandoned baby. Maybe it would be her last major role, she thought, but even so, she was excited about the project because the foundling as an adult was going to be played by Enrique álvarez Félix, María’s son. The script gave her an idea. “Maybe María will help me,” she said.
Instead of relaxing during her off-screen moments, Lola roamed through the costume shop, the makeup supply, the stockroom, the prop room, the janitors’ quarters. Everywhere women were working—exhausted-looking women with sad, pasty, lackluster foreheads and frail bodies, dowdy women with worried looks.
“Do you have children?” she asked each of them.
“Sí, señorita, tres.”
“Sí, señorita, cinco.”
“Who takes care of them while you work?”
She started visiting film studios, television studios, theaters. Everywhere, she saw women sewing, preparing food, nailing, building, painting, sweeping, mopping, and dusting. Most of them worked sixteen-hour shifts, almost always until late at night or even until the wee hours of the morning. Everywhere, she asked the same question: “Do you have children?”
“Sí, señorita, un bebé de seis meses.”
“Who takes care of her while you work?” The women’s answers shocked her. Most had come from rural areas. In the metropolis, they found themselves alone, without the support systems they had grown up with—the mothers, aunts, and sisters who could help out in a pinch, the church communities that provided a meal and a cot, or at least, a pile of hay. Alone in the city and grateful to have work, they just made do.
“My oldest is nine, señorita. She takes care of the little ones.”
“Doesn’t she go to school?”
“She can’t, señorita. She has to help at home.”
Sometimes they left their babies and toddlers in guarderías, babysitting centers, or, literally, “keeping centers,” where the children were simply “kept”—left alone for hours at a time with little supervision or stimulation. Sometimes one adult was responsible for twenty tots or more. At night, the children went to “sleeping centers,” often on the studio or theater premises—rows or stacks of wooden boxes where the children had to sleep without making a sound lest they disrupt the show or awaken the others. Catacombs for live babies, thought Lola. Babies stacked up in boxes like shoes in a shoe store.
“Real day care centers are what we need for these women and children,” Lola told me over the phone.
She met with the women of ANDA, the National Association of Actors, to plan a fundraiser for her project.
“A monster marathon on television,” suggested María Félix.
“We’ll call it the planilla Rosa Mexicano, ‘the women’s platform,’ and put it to the entire membership,” proposed Lola. “I’m sure they’ll go along with María’s idea.”
Lola began reading books by Maria Montessori. She was getting excited.
“I wish I could help her,” said Lolly when I told her about it. “I know about early childhood education.”
“You can encourage her,” I said. “You can suggest readings, give her ideas.”
“I knew there was something God wanted me to do,” Lola explained to me over the phone. “It was this! I’m finally using my knowledge of the movie business and my contacts to help people in a tangible way. You should see the look in those women’s eyes when I tell them about my plans for their children. These new day care centers won’t be called guarderías. We’re not going to guardar anybody there. We’re going to educate the children, give them opportunities for creative play, develop their minds and their souls. We’re going to hire specially trained teachers. It’s going to be beautiful!”
“I want to go to Mexico this summer and work with Aunt Lola,” Lolly insisted. “I’ll take the kids.”
“And what about John?”
“I’d only go for three weeks, but at least I could help her get started...and I could show the children the country of my foremothers...my mother and my grandmother, the Aztec warrior queen!”
The girls were already constructing their own “legend of Miguela Ruiz,” and that was fine with me!
Lolly didn’t get to Mexico that year. She was expecting again and couldn’t travel, but she sent Lola a couple of books by Jean Piaget and a list of children’s books in Spanish that she thought might be useful.
On October 29, two days prior to All Hallows’ Eve, and three before All Saints’ Day, Lola was busy putting together baskets of sugar skulls and skeletons to take to the studio seamstresses for their children. She was also organizing a campaign to raise more money for day care centers. The monster marathon had been a success, but the grandiose project Lola envisioned would require more funds—for space, materials, teachers, and training. She was sure the money would be forthcoming, though. So many in the industry were supportive and promised to help. At last, she thought, she was making a real contribution. Everything was going so well. She was excited!
But then, as they say, every silver lining has a cloud. Things can’t remain perfect forever…or even for more than a day or two. It seems that while Lola was preparing her Halloween baskets for the seamstresses’ children, her cousin Ramón was preparing a different kind of party.
I heard about it on the radio two days later and called Lola right away. I didn’t want her to hear about it from some stranger, but she’d already spoken to Ramón’s brother Eduardo. He’d told her that when Freddie Weber, Ramón’s assistant, returned to work, he found the house in shambles and Ramón lying naked on the bed, a brown electric cord tied around his ankles. The letter N, or maybe Z, was carved on his neck. Freddie called the police right away. There were no suspects, but someone had written the word Larry four times on a notepad by the living room phone.
“Eduardo thinks it was a botched robbery attempt,” said Lola, “although nothing was taken. Apparently, they were looking for cash.”
We were both sobbing. “How could someone do this to another human being,” she hiccupped, “let alone a gentle soul like Ramón?” She caught her breath. “The burial will be at St. Anne Melkite Cathedral.”
“Of course I’ll go,” I said. I was devastated. I loved Ramón. Not the way I loved Gabe, of course, but Ramón had been my first crush. I’d become enamored of him decades ago, when I heard him play the guitar at Don Francisco’s house. As an adult, I’d learned his secret, and I’d kept it. That had created a bond between us.
In the following days and weeks, the details unfolded in the newspapers and on the radio. It seems that the night before Halloween, Ramón invited two men, two male prostitutes, to his house. He did things like that sometimes. He actually told me about it. He was lonely and, well, it wasn’t easy for a man like Ramón to find companionship.
They were brothers, Paul and Tom Ferguson. Paul was twenty-two, and Tom was seventeen. According to Paul’s testimony, they called Ramón and told him that they’d gotten his number from a mutual friend, Larry Ortega, who had procured partners for him before. Ramón trusted Ortega, Paul said. Ortega knew his tastes and was cautious and discriminating. They were sure Ramón would invite them over if he thought Ortega had sent them.
They arrived around five o’clock. Ramón had set out a platter of sandwiches and a selection of drinks—Scotch, tequila, gin, vodka, and bourbon—on a silver tray on the bar. He’d obviously started imbibing before they arrived, according to Paul. They ate and drank and fooled around awhile. Ramón showed them pictures of himself as Ben-Hur and played the piano. Then they went into the bedroom, and were just getting started when Paul decided they had to be paid in advance.
Ramón was taken aback, but he went to his desk to write a check. Only Paul and Tom wanted cash. Paul said he was sure Ramón was hiding at least five hundred dollars in the house, and he threatened to tear the place apart to find it.
Ramón kept insisting that Larry Ortega knew how he did business. “Larry knows my checks are good,” he kept saying. But Larry Ortega hadn’t sent them at all. They’d gotten Ramón’s name from some hustler they’d met at a party, a man who told them to say that Larry had sent them so that Ramón wouldn’t be suspicious. Paul became furious. He and Tom started punching Ramón. Then Paul socked him in the gut so hard that he slumped over onto the ground.
When they realized that Ramón was dead, they decided to make the crime look like a robbery. They lifted his naked body onto the bed, stuck a condom between his fingers, and left signs around the house that would implicate Larry Ortega.
I don’t remember where the police picked them up, but I do know that their case didn’t go to trial until 1969, nearly nine months after the arrest. Tom bragged in prison about killing Ramón, and although he was only seventeen when the murder took place, he was tried as an adult. The jury gave both brothers life in prison, although the sentence was commuted. Both were later rearrested for violent crimes, including rape.
I never quite got over Ramón’s death. Gabe’s was devastating, of course, but those were the war years. We expected tragedy at every turn. And Tía Emi’s? Well, Tía Emi was old, and she smoked like a chimney. But Ramón well, I’d seen how bullies sometimes tormented men like Ramón, but still, I never thought anything like this could ever happen, and neither did Lola.
After he died, she and I reminisced for hours over the phone. (It must have cost her a fortune, she was the one who placed the calls.) We remembered how he played the guitar while Lola danced at Don Francisco’s, how he’d sneak off to the Jesuit retreat house when things got rough, how he’d make fun of the Hollywood snobs and flee from their boring parties, how he broke the rules and suffered the consequences. Most of all, I remembered how kind he’d been to me. He’d always treated me as a friend.
In a way, I think Ramón’s passing affected me more than it did Lola, although, of course, I can’t be sure. But she had Lew, her glamorous career, her day care centers, and her admirers. My life was simpler. I had my girls and my grandchildren but, aside from Lola and Ramón, few friends.
Ramón held a special place in my heart. He taught me about love—about the infinite varieties of love—and about friendship. I knew how torn he was between his faith and his desires. I knew how he suffered, and I’d kept his secret as I’d promised, never suspecting that a horrible tragedy would someday thrust it into the limelight.
I hope to God he has found peace. Every night I say a prayer for him.
El Señor todopoderoso tenga misericordia de nosotros, perdone nuestros pecados y nos lleve a la vida eterna. Amén.