Conchita Montenegro — She Thought She Had Failed (1931) 🇺🇸
They say that a true artist is never pleased with his own work And that’s how Conchita feels
by Dorothy Spensley
Yes, there have been other — many other — beautiful Spanish girls who have come to Hollywood. I’ll even admit that there have been other beautiful Spanish girls in Hollywood who were witty, charming, graceful, provocative and all the other nice things that Conchita is. But the unusual thing about Conchita is that for a long time, in spite of applause and compliments and contracts — she thought she was a failure.
She hasn’t played in a great many English-speaking films — yet. She was imported from Europe to make Spanish versions of American pictures. Then, when most foreign importations were being dispatched home, Conchita was taken from the Spanish versions and given English-speaking parts. You saw her, no doubt, in Strangers May Kiss. She was the little dancer who twirled and swayed so alluringly at that big party which some nobleman or other was giving for Norma Shearer down on the Riviera. Conchita’s next role after that — which was really only a bit, after all — was leading lady opposite Leslie Howard in “Never the Twain Shall Meet.” She still thought she was a failure. Now she has a new contract with Fox and you’ll be seeing her in The Cisco Kid with Edmund Lowe and Warner Baxter, and “Disorderly Conduct” with Lowe and Victor McLaglen. They talk of big things for her — particularly since they selected her for one of their three Debutante Stars of Tomorrow, which is an honor indeed.
I remember Conchita sitting talking to me in her apartment, which overlooks the Wilshire golf course, fully convinced that her motion picture career was at an end, that as an actress she was a total failure. She was sure that on the screen she moved like an animated doll, that her figure was too wide, her face too broad, her accents too impossible.
She and her sister, Gusta, were ready to pack their wardrobe trunks and hurry back to Madrid. Like as not the trunks were halfway packed, so decided was Conchita that her first appearance in an American film was a failure. She was quite sincere in her attitude, too.
At the studio, the story was different. Officials and directors were talking of the excellent trouping of the little Madrilena. Fellow actors — compliment indeed — were talking of the delicacy and grace with which she handled love scenes that might have been brazen in another’s hands. They were saying other pleasant things about her appearance in Never the Twain Shall Meet.
At home Conchita, in a jade green sports dress, sat on the edge of the henna upholstered chair and talked rapidly of her blasted career.
“Oh, I am ter-reeble! Don’ tell me otherwise. Those costume, so full from the bosom —” small, excitable hands swept down from hers, “— and such heavy cloth. Eet stand straight out and I look so-oo —” measuring an enormous distance with her hands “— beeg.
“No, I do not theenk I will be an actress now. All my life I ‘ave wanted to be that. I ‘ave gone to the cinema in Europe to see Greta Garbo, and I ‘ave wanted to be a great actress like ‘er, but now it is impos-seeble. My face is so broad. My movements are so steeff. I wear beeg boots and laugh and laugh and laugh. I sit on the wooden chest in one scene and make my mouth so —” forcing a moue “— and my head is like this —” craning it to an impossible angle “— and then I laugh and keeck my feet. Oh, I theenk I am too awful!
“I lost feefteen pounds making thees picture. For three days I am seeck in bed, with no voice. I cannot say a word, only make a croaking noise in my throat. They send the eferma — nurse, I mean — and she paints my throat — it is laryngitis, and I stay in bed, tossing and turning, theenking of my part. It is ter-reeble. Then I get up and go to the studio and I am so theen. I see the film that I have been in and I theenk ‘Oh, it is so awful.’ I know I will not be an actress, and yet I want to be. I want to do something dramatic.
“I theenk I go back to Spain in two months. Gusta is ver-ry lonesome. My mawther ‘as moved to Paris and my sister Juanita is weeth ‘er.”
Slim, slight, jetty haired, is Conchita, and queen of all she commands. That is, largely, her life and her emotions. At eighteen she has conquered Hollywood and nine-tenths of its eligible males.
It is said that genius is never satisfied. That what it creates is never perfect. That the ultimate is never reached. Conchita is probably not a genius. Van Dyke [W. S. Van Dyke], her director in Never the Twain Shall Meet, said she worked under a terrific handicap in that picture. She was forced to struggle with English syntax when she should have been thinking about the emotional demands of the part. In spite of these difficulties, she triumphed. She worked hard. She probably is not a genius, but she has that inspirational thing that makes Raquel Meller and La Argentina, her countrywomen, remembered. Conchita, too, is a dancer. She has, also, that restlessness, that craving, that inward desire that burns like a flame and is unquenchable, to do things. To do them better. And when she has done them better, they are not good enough.
That is why children like Conchita are rare to Hollywood. There is too much smugness, too much contentment with what has been accomplished in the usual Hollywood youngster, and too little quest for the unattainable.
I know when I am ba-ad. I remember when Juanita and I first start to dance, in Madrid. I am fourteen, and am going to the convent of Las Damas Negras. Juanita is older, by perhaps three years. She is much more beautiful as I —” brown eyes very large and serious. “We ‘urry and order dancing costumes from Paris, because we ‘ave nevair danced in publeec before and this man at the Teatro Roma — he is a friend of our family — asks us to. We dance a little theeng called Murmullo de Alhambra — to you it would be sometheeng like Murmurs of the Alhambra — and we were ver-ry ba-ad.
“No. It is true. You say, maybe it is because now I theenk we were ba-ad, but that is not so. We knew nothing about dancing. We go out and make motions. Nevairtheless, instead of dancing three days as we ‘ad been asked, we dance feefteen days. They like us, because we are so leetle. I look like a leetle ba-bee. It is just last year that I grow as beeg as I am now.”
(That’s five feet three inches, with one hundred and ten corresponding pounds.)
“We are not pleased with ourselves, as I say, and we go to the Academy and learn about dancing. In a year we ‘ave learned much. We go to Paris and are for one month at the Olympia Theater, and at the Empire. Then we theenk we would like to see London and ah agent gets us an engagement at the Savoy ‘Otel. About that time the season opened in Berlin and we danced at the Wintergarten, there.”
At home the Iturriaga de las Robles Madariagas, her Basque-Castillian family, requested her, their youngest, christened Concepcion, to refrain from using the family name on theater marquees. They asked their beloved chatita (Little Flat Nose) to think of them at home, their pride, their honor, their feelings. Concepcion, thinking, became Conchita, which means “little shell,” and the sisters danced away with the name of Dresna de Montenegro Andalusia.
In Paris Conchita made one film. Then she went, presumably, to Biarritz where one could swim, slip into a sweater and skirt, daub carmine on the lips, sip a cocktail and dance. Conchita was that way. Impetuous. Dancing with Juanita at the Chateau de Madrid in Paris, later, Conchita received her Hollywood offer. Mrs. Hunt Stromberg, a supervisor’s wife, saw her. Shortly, she was working in the Spanish version of “Way For a Sailor” with José Crespo at the Culver City lot, and was heroine of another cinema Cinderella tale.
When she wasn’t working she was turning down invitations from local Don Juans. And accepting a few. Charles Chaplin, Ramon Novarro, Valentine Parera, José Crespo, William Bakewell, the younger Rubio — son of Mexico’s president — are among the legion who admired the Spanish youngster who had never powdered her pale skin until she came to Hollywood. She used only lip-stick, señors. They like the reckless way she tumbles cream out of the side of the pitcher and into her spoon to form a rich, thick layer atop the coffee. They like her enthusiasm for flying, and the way she tangoes. But all of this adulation means very little to Conchita. Determined that she is a failure, she wants to go home.
Perhaps the Fox officials of the company, with whom she has her new contract, can dissuade her. At the moment she is busy with daily, and lengthy, English lessons. No matter how “ba-ad” she thinks she is, she has spotted one weakness and is determined to correct it. That’s the stuff from which success is made.
—
(Above) Conchita Montenegro with Warner Baxter in The Cisco Kid, her first picture for Fox. Although Conchita herself cries,”I am too awful!” directors are full of praise for the little Spanish girl.
(Left) A portrait of Conchita taken at the time she and her sister Juanita were touring Europe as a dancing team. Conchita was fourteen — Juanita seventeen. Their success was instantaneous. But Conchita discounts it.
—
(Above) With Leslie Howard in “Never the Twain Shall Meet.” Conchita worked under a terrible strain when she was making this picture. And she was convinced that her acting in this film was “ver-ry ba-ad.”
(Right) Conchita as she is today! “Slim, slight, jetty haired, and queen of all she commands.” But that despairing sense of failure still pops up. To Conchita, her own best efforts are never quite good enough.
—
—
—
Collection: Modern Screen Magazine, December 1931