Vera Cruz & Sarita Montiel

I rented Vera Cruz (1954) from Netflix precisely because I knew my favorite Spanish chanteuse and actress, Sarita Montiel, had a role in it alongside Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster. I liked the movie surprisingly well - the color is good, it was filmed entirely in Mexico with gorgeous scenery, Gary Cooper looks great, and Burt is pretty funny with his very toothy grin. And Sarita...Sarita is breathtaking and I knew again why I've always liked her so much.


The first LP I ever bought, while I was an under-graduate at Georgetown University in the early '60s, was on a whim at a record store while I was out wandering in Washington, DC, one day, I forget why. But there she was, breathtaking for the first time, on the cover of the soundtrack for her latest movie, La Reina del Chantecler. I had to buy the album for the cover alone, who cares what the music was like. But the music was alternately bouncy, funny, soulful, and sexy, and I've loved her music every since. My roommate, Keith McKeown, was from San Francisco and of course his fave was Edith Piaf. We had an ongoing debate about who was better, Sarita or Edie. And Sarita even sings in French on Reina del Chantecler. A couple of years later when I spent my junior year at the University of Madrid, I finally got to see the movie. I must say I was underwhelmed, but my captivation with her and her music was undiminished. I still have the album (somewhere) but nothing to play it on and it took me quite a bit of Googling to find an image of the original album. Recently I bought several of her albums on CD, including La Violetera, La Bella Lola, El Ultimo Cuple, and the 2-CD set Todas las Noches a las Once.

But I digress. Vera Cruz holds up rather well after 55 years. I give it a B+ - B for the movie and + because Sara is in it. The movie still above shows Gary Cooper, Sarita, Denise Darcel (who plays the shifty countess), and Burt Lancaster obviously having a good time. There was pretty good chemistry between Cooper and La Sara, and she really played up the part of the Mexican chili pepper. I was fascinated to learn that Sara was born in Campo de Criptana, "un lugar de la Mancha" where Don Quijote fought the famous battle with the windmills.


The photo at left shows Sarita in her heyday. She is still around and going strong at 81. I'm not sure when the picture below was taken, but you get the idea...