| Rosaura Revueltas | |
| Birth Date: | August 6, 1910 |
| Birth Place: | Lerdo, Durango, Mexico |
| Death Place: | Cuernavaca, Mexico |
| Occupation: | Actor |
| Yearsactive: | 1946–1977 |
Rosaura Revueltas Sánchez (August 6, 1910 – April 30, 1996) was a Mexican actress of screen and stage, and a dancer, author and teacher.
Rosaura Revueltas was born in Lerdo, Durango, Mexico to the famously artistic Revueltas family and had three brothers who all were artists: Silvestre Revueltas who was a composer, Jose Revueltas a writer and Fermín Revueltas a painter.[1]
Like her brothers, she chose a profession in the arts. She studied acting and ballet in Mexico City and had a successful film career in Mexico before she worked on her trademark film Salt of the Earth in the United States. For the period that Revueltas was actively working in film, her career was primarily based on creating progressive representations of women. Before she worked on the 1954 film Salt of the Earth, Revueltas worked on the 1951 Muchachas de Uniforme, the Mexican remake of the 1931 German film Mädchen in Uniform. The film was one of the first visual documentations of a lesbian romance. Revueltas' decisions to act in politically progressive films sometimes led to her being targeted by politicians and Catholic Church officials. After the release of Muchachas de Uniforme, the Catholic Church encouraged a boycott of the film.[2] After Rosaura Revueltas’ involvement in this film she immigrated to the U.S and continued her revolutionary work in Salt of the Earth, released in 1954. [3]
Revueltas' first film was La Deconocida de Arras (1946). In 1951 she played Rosa Suárez, viuda de Ortiz (the widow of Ortiz) in the film Islas Marías, starring Pedro Infante.
In 1953's Sombrero, Revueltas played Tía Magdalena. The movie for which she is best-known is Herbert J. Biberman's Salt of the Earth (1954). The movie was based on the 1951 Empire Zinc strike in Grant County, New Mexico. She played the role of Esperanza Quintero, the wife of a mine worker. In this film, Esperanza's husband and fellow miners decide to go on strike, and in turn, their wives do the same in order to support their spouses and gain rights of their own.[4]
Revueltas was not Biberman's first choice for the role of Esperanza. Originally his wife Gale Sondergaard was cast, but Biberman thought the role should be portrayed by a Spanish-speaking actress. Revueltas was one of the few established actors in that film; most of the other roles, including that of her husband Ramon, were played by actual miners, some of whom had taken part in the real-life strikes. Juan Chacón, who played Ramon Quintero, was the president of an actual local miners' union.
Herbert J. Biberman was part of the Hollywood Ten, and the successful film career of his wife Gale Sondergaard ended. Michael Wilson, the film writer, and Paul Jarrico, the producer, were also blacklisted. Revueltas suffered the wrath of the Red Scare. During the filming of Salt of the Earth, Revueltas was arrested by immigration officials on an alleged passport violation and was forced to return to Mexico. After this exile, she was labeled a Communist. The rest of Salt of the Earth had to be filmed using a double for Revueltas. She never worked on an American film again. Revueltas once said that "[s]ince [the INS] had no evidence to present of my 'subversive' character, I can only conclude that I was 'dangerous' because I had been playing a role that gave status and dignity to the character of a Mexican-American woman."
Bosley Crowther of the New York Times called it "a big, broad-brimmed, squashy sort of picture, as massive as the garment for which it is named...Salt of the Earth is, in substance, simply a strong pro-labor film with a particularly sympathetic interest in the Mexican-Americans with whom it deals. True, it frankly implies that the mine operators have taken advantage of the Mexican-born or descended laborers, have forced a "speed up" in their mining techniques and given them less respectable homes than provided the so-called 'Anglo' laborers. It slaps at brutal police tactics in dealing with strikers and it gets in some rough, sarcastic digs at the attitude of 'the bosses' and the working of the Taft–Hartley Law."[5]
Salt of the Earth was the only movie to be blacklisted during the "Communist Scare" of the 1950s (a.k.a. McCarthyism). It was selected for the National Film Registry in 1992, 38 years after its original release. In 1956, at the Académie du cinéma de Paris, Revueltas received the Best Actress award for her performance.
Revueltas moved to East Germany in 1957 and lived there until 1960. While in East Germany, Revueltas worked with the Berliner Ensemble--the company of the late playwright Bertolt Brecht--and in Cuba. In her later years, she served as a judge in film festivals including the 36th Berlin International Film Festival in 1986.[6] Revueltas returned to Mexico in 1960, where she began taking acting classes and also began to write plays. It was not until 1976 that Revueltas made another film. Her first film since she was blacklisted was Mina, viento de libertad (Mina, Wind of Freedom). In the same year, she played Tía Licha in Lo Mejor de Teresa (The Best of Teresa). Her final film was made in 1977, titled Balun Canan. She also taught yoga in Mexico. In 1979, she published the book Los Revueltas: Biografía de una familia (The Revueltas: Biography of a Family).
She died on April 20, 1996, six months after having been diagnosed with lung cancer, in Cuernavaca, Mexico, at age 85. She had one child, a son, Arturo Bodenstedt.
Rosaura Revueltas was awarded the Best Actress Award for her performance in Salt of the Earth by the Académie du cinéma de Paris in 1956.
In 2000, the film One of the Hollywood Ten was made, written and directed by Karl Francis. The film focuses on Herbert Biberman's having been blacklisted. It also includes a segment on the film Salt of the Earth, in which Revueltas was portrayed by actress Ángela Molina.
El cuarto mandamiento (1948)
Un día de vida (1951)Islas Marías (1951)
El Cuarto Cerrado (1952)El rebozo de Soledad (1952)
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