Miss del Río required ample research, but fortunately, several useful biographies of Dolores del Río and her friends exist. David Ramón’s Dolores del Río trilogy—Un cuento de hadas, Volver al origen, and Consagración de una diva provided important details about del Río’s upbringing, marriages, and career, as did Linda B. Hall’s Dolores del Río: Beauty in Light and Shade. Dolores del Río, by Jesse Russell and Ronald Cohn, gave me an overview of del Río’s life. Joanne Hershfield’s The Invention of Dolores del Río, which analyzes del Río’s rise to stardom through the lens of race and gender, was a valuable resource for the descriptions of discrimination in early Hollywood. In More Fabulous Faces, Larry Carr shows how del Río evolved as a beauty and fashion icon, essential information for my development of the protagonist.
Two biographies of Marlene Dietrich—Marlene, by Charlotte Chandler, and Marlene Dietrich: The Life, by Maria Riva—afforded me with information about one of del Río’s close friends, while Beyond Paradise: The Life of Ramon Novarro, by André Soares, contributed specifics about the life and struggles of her cousin.
Other invaluable sources for my re-creation of early Hollywood were American Silent Film, by William K. Everson; After the Silents, by Michael Slowik; Latino/a Stars in U.S. Eyes, by Mary Beltrán; and several books from the Images of America Series: Early Hollywood, by Marc Wanamaker and Robert W. Nudelman; Hollywoodland, by Mary Mallory and Hollywood Heritage, Inc.; and Beverly Hills 1930-2005, by Marc Wanamaker. I also consulted several studies of the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema and of filmmaking in Latin America, notably The Classical Mexican Cinema: The Poetics of the Exceptional Golden Age Films, by Charles Ramírez Berg, and Latin American Cinema: A Comparative History, by Paul A. Schroeder Rodríguez.