Sara Montiel
María Antonia Abad Fernández MML (10 March 1928 – 8 April 2013), known professionally as Sara Montiel, also Sarita Montiel, was a Spanish-Mexican actress and singer.[1][2][3] She began her career in the 1940s and became the most internationally popular and highest paid star of Spanish cinema in the 1960s. She appeared in nearly fifty films and recorded around 500 songs in five different languages.[4]
In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Abad and the second or maternal family name is Fernández.
Sara Montiel
10 March 1928
8 April 2013 (aged 85)
- Spanish
- Mexican (since 1951)
- María Alejandra
- Sarita Montiel
- Actress
- Singer
1943–2013
-
José Vicente Ramírez Olalla(m. 1964; div. 1970)
-
José Tous Barberán(m. 1979; died 1992)
-
Antonio Hernández(m. 2002; div. 2005)
- Thais Tous Abad
- José Zeus Tous Abad
Montiel was born in Campo de Criptana in the region of La Mancha in 1928.[5] She began her acting career in Spain starring in films such as Don Quixote (1947) and Madness for Love (1948). She moved to Mexico where she starred in films such as Women's Prison (1951) and Red Fury (1951). She then moved to the United States and worked in three Hollywood English-language films Vera Cruz (1954), Serenade (1956) and Run of the Arrow (1957). She returned to Spain to star in the musical films The Last Torch Song (1957) and The Violet Seller (1958). These two films netted the highest gross revenues ever recorded internationally for films made in the Spanish-speaking movie industry during the 1950s/60s and made her immensely popular.[5][6][7][8] She then established herself also as a singer thanks to the songs she performed in her films and combined filming new musical films, recording songs and performing live.
Throughout her career, Montiel's personal life was the subject of constant media attention in the Spanish-speaking world. She was married four times and adopted two children.
Montiel, whose complete name was María Antonia Alejandra Vicenta Elpidia Isidora Abad Fernández, was born in 1928 in Campo de Criptana (Ciudad Real), Spain.[5] She entered films after winning a talent contest at age fifteen.[11][29] In her first movie, she was credited as "María Alejandra" a shortened version of her real name. For her next film, she changed her name to Sara, after her grandmother, and Montiel after the Montiel fields in La Mancha region of her birth. It was in Mexico where she first learned how to read and write, taught by the poet León Felipe, and in 1951 she acquired Mexican dual nationality.[11] She was married four times,[30][11] and was ex-communicated by the Catholic Church in Spain for the civil-wedding ceremony of her first marriage:[11]
In 2000, Montiel published her autobiography Memories: To Live Is a Pleasure, an instant best seller with ten editions to date. A sequel Sara and Sex followed in 2003. In these books, she revealed other relationships in her past, including one-night stands with writer Ernest Hemingway[11] as well as actor James Dean.[32] She also claimed a long-term affair in the 1940s with playwright Miguel Mihura[11] and mentioned that science wizard Severo Ochoa, a Nobel Prize winner, was the true love of her life.[11][33]
In her later years, she became an iconic figure to the gay community, and noted "Cuando voy a actuar a alguna ciudad de EE UU allí están todos los gays de la ciudad" (Whenever I perform in any city in the US, all the gays from that city show up).[21] Montiel died in 2013 at her home in Madrid at the age of eighty-five from congestive heart failure,[34][29] and was buried in the San Justo Cemetery in Madrid.[9]
Legacy[edit]
Museum[edit]
The Sara Montiel Museum, opened in 1991, is a museum in Campo de Criptana dedicated to her. It is housed in a sixteenth century windmill and displays photographs, wardrobe and personal belongings of the actress as well as posters of her films. In May 2021 it reopened after undergoing a restoration and modernization.[43]
In popular culture[edit]
Correos, the Spanish postal service, issued in 2014 a sheet of stamps in tribute to three recently deceased famous Spanish cinema artists: Sara Montiel, Alfredo Landa and Manolo Escobar. The stamp that pays tribute to Montiel depicts her in a scene from The Violet Seller.[44]
She was portrayed in the Pedro Almodóvar film Bad Education (2004) by a male actor in drag (Gael García Bernal) as the cross-dressing character Zahara, and a film clip from one of her movies was used, as well.[2]