Katy Jurado (1924 – 2002), born María Cristina Estela Marcela Jurado García in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico, was an actress who had a successful film career both in Mexico and in Hollywood. She made seventy-one films during her career. She became the first Latin American actress nominated for an Academy Award, as Best Supporting Actress for her work in 1954's Broken Lance, and was the first to win a Golden Globe. Like many Latino actors, she was typecast to play ethnic roles in American films. By contrast, she had a greater variety of roles in Mexican films; sometimes she also sang and danced.
One of three children, she had a privileged childhood. Both her maternal and paternal families were wealthy, six generations earlier, they had owned much of the land that became the U.S. state of Texas. Both families lost much of their wealth during the Mexican revolution. Family's lands were confiscated by the federal government for redistribution to the landless peasantry. However, she still lived well. Her father was a cattle baron and orange farmer, and her mother was a well-known opera singer who gave up the stage to marry and raise a family. Her cousin, Emilio Portes Gil, was president of Mexico beginning in 1928. Despite the loss of property, the matriarch of the family, her grandmother, continued to live by her aristocratic ideals.
She moved with her family to Mexico City in 1927 and studied journalism. Discovered by Director Emilio Fernández when she was sixteen, she went against family wishes and began pursuing a career in acting. To get around her family's objections, she slipped from the grasp of her family's control by marrying the Mexican actor and writer Víctor Velázquez against her parents' wishes. Together, they had a son and a daughter, Victor Hugo and Sandra. The marriage ended in divorce in 1943, and the children remained with her family in Mexico when she traveled to the United States to work.
She began acting in Mexican films starting in 1943, with the movie No matarás (Thou Shalt Not Kill), and went on to appear in sixteen more films over the next seven years during the Golden Age of Mexican cinema. Her very particular features were the key of her notable success. Blessed with a stunning beauty and an assertive personality, she specialized in playing determined women in a wide variety of films. Her looks, evocative of the indigenous peoples of Mexico, allowed her to carve a niche for herself in the Mexican cinema. However she typically was cast as a dangerous seductress/man-eater, a popular type in Mexican movies.
During her early years in the Mexican cinema she appeared with stars like Carmen Montejo, María Elena Marqués, David Silva and others. In 1943, she had her first success with her third film La vida inútil de Pito Pérez, for which she received an Ariel, the Mexican equivalent of the Oscar. In 1948, her performance in Nosotros los pobres, opposite the well-known Mexican actor Pedro Infante, brought her fame. She worked with Infante once again in El seminarista (1949). In 1951, she starred in Cárcel de mujeres, with the Spanish star Sara Montiel. Her popularity with audiences also landed her a radio show in Mexico.
In addition to acting, she worked as a movie columnist, radio reporter and bullfight critic to support her family. She was on assignment when Director Budd Boetticher and actor John Wayne spotted her at a bullfight. Neither knew at the time that she was an actress. However, Boetticher, who was also a professional bullfighter, cast her in his 1951 film Bullfighter and the Lady, opposite Gilbert Roland as the wife of an aging matador. At that time, she had very limited English language skills. She memorized and delivered her lines phonetically. Despite this handicap, her strong performance brought her to the attention of Hollywood producer Stanley Kramer. Kramer cast her in the classic Western High Noon, starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly. She quickly learned to speak English for the role, studying and taking classes two hours a day for two months, delivering a powerful performance as the saloon owner Helen Ramírez, former love of reluctant hero Will Kane, in one of the most memorable films of the era. She earned a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress and gained widespread notice in the American movie industry. Only two other Mexican actresses have been nominated for Golden Globes (and Oscars) since then: Salma Hayek in 2002 for Frida and Adriana Barraza for Babel.
Already established herself as an actress in Mexico in the 1940s when she came to Hollywood, she became a regular in Western films of the 1950s and 1960s. She worked with many Hollywood legends, including Gary Cooper in High Noon, Spencer Tracy in Broken Lance, and Marlon Brando in One-Eyed Jacks, and such respected directors as Fred Zinneman (High Noon), Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid) and John Huston (Under the Volcano).
In 1954 she replaced Dolores del Río in the film Broken Lance for which she received an Academy Award nomination, playing Spencer Tracy's Comanche wife and the mother of Robert Wagner.
Despite her notable Hollywood success in the early 1950s, she continued with some performances in Mexico. In 1953 she starred in the Luis Buñuel's box-office success El bruto, for which she received an Ariel Award. The same year she starred in Arrowhead with Charlton Heston and Jack Palance, playing a Comanche. In a 1955 interview with Louella Parsons, shecommented on the mostly American indigenous roles she was given: " I don't mind dramatic roles. I love to act, any character at all. But just once I would like to be my Mexican self in an American motion picture."
On the set of The Badlanders (1958), she met her costar Ernest Borgnine, who became her second husband on December 31, 1959. The couple founded the movie production company SANVIO CORP. With her husband's support, she starred in Dino de Laurentis Italian productions like Barabbas and I braganti italiani. However her tumultuous marriage with Borgnine ended in divorce in 1963. He called her "beautiful, but a tiger."
In 1958 she starred in Broadway in the Tennessee Williams play The Red Devil Battery Sign, with Anthony Quinn and Claire Bloom. She had a torrid affair with the actor Marlon Brando. Brando, who was involved at the time with Movita Castañeda and was having a parallel relationship with Rita Moreno, was smitten with Katy Jurado after seeing her in High Noon. He told Joseph L. Mankiewicz that he was attracted to "her enigmatic eyes, black as hell, pointing at you like fiery arrows." She recalled years later in an interview that "Marlon called me one night for a date, and I accepted. I knew all about Movita. I knew he had a thing for Rita Moreno. Hell, it was just a date. I didn't plan to marry him." However, their first date became the beginning of an extended affair that lasted many years and peaked at the time they worked together on One-Eyed Jacks (1960), a film directed by Brando. "Marlon asked me to marry many times, but for me my children were first," she said. She also maintained a close friendship with stars like Anthony Quinn, Burt Lancaster, Sam Peckinpah, Frank Sinatra, Dolores del Río, John Wayne and many others. Early in her career in Hollywood, she had an affair with John Wayne; she later claimed that he wanted to marry her.
As her career in the U.S. began to wind down, she was reduced to appearing in the movies Smoky (1966) with Fess Parker and Stay Away, Joe (1968), playing the half-Apache mother of Elvis Presley. In 1966 she reprised her role from High Noon (1952) in a TV pilot called "The Clock Strikes Noon Again" which co-starred Peter Fonda as the son of Will Kane. In 1968, she became depressed and attempted suicide by ingesting sleeping pills. She had left a suicide note for her family and was discovered in time to save her life. After her suicide attempt, she moved back to Mexico permanently, though she continued to appear in American films as a character actress. She revived both her personal and professional lives and, in 1972, married again, on a private island she owned off the coast of southern Mexico.
She again appeared on television and in films during the 1970s. Tragedy stuck when her son died in an automobile accident in 1981 at the age of 35. In the following years she worked on television both in The United States and in Mexico. She did guest appearances on "Playhouse 90" and "The Rifleman." She also co-starred in the short-lived television series "a.k.a. Pablo" in 1984, a situation comedy series for ABC, with Paul Rodríguez.
In 1984, she acted in the Mexican-American production Under the Volcano, directed by John Huston. In 1985, she was named film promotion commissioner for the Mexican state of Morelos. In that position, she issued filming permits, found locations for movies, and arranged accommodations for film crews. The position provided her with the opportunity to arrange and develop national and international motion pictures in her beloved Mexico. Her last American film appearance was in Stephen Frears's Western The Hi-Lo Country, capping a half-century-long American movie career. In 1992 she was honored with the Golden Boot Award for her notable contribution to the western movies. In 1998, she completed a timely Spanish-language film for director Arturo Ripstein called El evangelio de las maravillas about a millennium sect. She won the best supporting Actress silver Ariel for this role. In 2002, she appeared in her last movie Un secreto de Esperanza.
Towards the end of her life, she suffered from heart and lung ailments. She died of kidney failure and pulmonary disease on July 5, 2002, at the age of 78 at her home in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico. She was buried in Cuernavaca, at the Panteón de la Páz cemetery. She was survived by her daughter.
With Pina Pellicer and Karl Malden in One-Eyed Jacks (1960, directed by Marlon Brando)
Trailer of High Noon (1952)
With Pedro Infante in Nosotros los pobres (1947)
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