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"I am too old to die young, and too young to grow up," Marty Feldman told a reporter -- a week before he died.

This beloved comedian, who poked fun at himself, as well as others, was born Martin Alan Feldman on July 8, 1934, in London, England. His parents were of Ukrainian Jewish heritage (from Kiev). He was the son of Cecilia (née Crook) and Myer Feldman, a gown manufacturer. Marty spent his childhood in the poverty-stricken London East End and left school at the age of 15, hoping for a career as a jazz trumpeter (his appearance in a Variety show earned him the title "the worst trumpeter in the world"). He had just started his comedy career, as a writer for BBC radio programs and TV shows in the late 1950s, when he married Lauretta Sullivan in January 1959 (they would stay married until his death in 1982). There's a saying: "Your face is your fortune"; Marty had received a double-whammy. His nose was mangled in his youthful years in a boxing match; his walleyed orbs were the result of both a hyperactive thyroid and a botched operation after a car accident before his 30th birthday, in 1963. American audiences first saw Marty in Dean Martin Presents the Golddiggers (1968), where he did comedy skits with Susie Ewing and the Golddiggers. He appeared in a number of movies, his most-remembered role being that of Igor (pronounced Eye-Gor) in Young Frankenstein (1974). Besides acting, he made his directorial debut in The Last Remake of Beau Geste (1977). Beloved and popular, it seemed Marty was to enjoy a long career in the entertainment field. However, he died of a massive heart attack, caused by shellfish food poisoning, while filming Yellowbeard (1983) in Mexico City, on December 2, 1982... he was only 48.

The father of cinematic Surrealism and one of the most original directors in the history of the film medium, Luis Buñuel was given a strict Jesuit education (which sowed the seeds of his obsession with both religion and subversive behavior), and subsequently moved to Madrid to study at the university there, where his close friends included Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca.

After moving to Paris, Buñuel did a variety of film-related odd jobs in Paris, including working as an assistant to director Jean Epstein. With financial assistance from his mother and creative assistance from Dalí, he made his first film, the 17-minute Un chien andalou (1929), in 1929, and immediately catapulted himself into film history thanks to its shocking imagery (much of which - like the sliced eyeball at the beginning - still packs a punch even today). It made a deep impression on the Surrealist Group, who welcomed Buñuel into their ranks.

The following year, sponsored by wealthy art patrons, he made his first feature, the scabrous witty and violent L'âge d'or (1930), which mercilessly attacked the church and the middle classes, themes that would preoccupy Buñuel for the rest of his career. That career, though, seemed almost over by the mid-1930s, as he found work increasingly hard to come by and after the Spanish Civil War he emigrated to the US where he worked for the Museum of Modern Art and as a film dubber for Warner Bros.

Moving to Mexico in the late 1940s, he teamed up with producer Óscar Dancigers and after a couple of unmemorable efforts shot back to international attention with the lacerating study of Mexican street urchins in The Young and the Damned (1950), winning him the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival.

But despite this new-found acclaim, Buñuel spent much of the next decade working on a variety of ultra-low-budget films, few of which made much impact outside Spanish-speaking countries (though many of them are well worth seeking out). But in 1961, General Franco, anxious to be seen to be supporting Spanish culture invited Buñuel back to his native country - and Bunuel promptly bit the hand that fed him by making Viridiana (1961), which was banned in Spain on the grounds of blasphemy, though it won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

This inaugurated Buñuel's last great period when, in collaboration with producer Serge Silberman and writer Jean-Claude Carrière he made seven extraordinary late masterpieces, starting with Diary of a Chambermaid (1964). Although far glossier and more expensive, and often featuring major stars such as Jeanne Moreau and Catherine Deneuve, the films showed that even in old age Buñuel had lost none of his youthful vigour.

After saying that every one of his films from Belle de Jour (1967) onwards would be his last, he finally kept his promise with That Obscure Object of Desire (1977), after which he wrote a memorable (if factually dubious) autobiography, in which he said he'd be happy to burn all the prints of all his films

• a classic Surrealist gesture if ever there was one.

Silvia Pinal began her career in theater and became a leading lady in her first movie roles, in the late 1940s. Always a smart urban girl, she belongs to the second and most versatile generation of Mexican movie stars of the Golden Era, together with Pedro Infante, Marga López and Silvia Derbez, among others. Her great acting abilities were displayed in her most memorable roles, directed by Luis Buñuel: Viridiana (1961), The Exterminating Angel (1962) and Simon of the Desert (1965). Famous for her many marriages, Pinal's career has been in a way influenced by her husbands, although she deserves all the credit for being a star. She acted on stage when she was married to stage director Rafael Banquells; second husband Gustavo Alatriste produced Buñuel films for her; she sang and starred on TV shows when she was married to pop singer Enrique Guzmán; she even won a political election when she was married to Gov. Tulio Hernández. In between, she became a TV producer with a successful show: Mujer, casos de la vida real (1985). Besides, she owns two theaters (Teatro Silvia "Mame" and "Hello Dolly!" among them). Pinal's legacy to Mexican show business is great. Her family includes three daughters: Silvia Pasquel (actress), Viridiana Alatriste (actress, deceased) and Alejandra Guzmán (pop singer); her son Enrique Guzmán Jr. (musician) and granddaughter Stephanie Salas (pop singer).

Cantinflas, born Mario Moreno as the son of a Mexican postal employee, was a prolific and productive Mexican comedian/producer/writer/singer who also knew a fair bit about agriculture and medicine. He was married to Valentina Ivanova from 1936 until her death. He appeared in more than 55 films, including (as Passepartout) Around the World in 80 Days (1956).

Major Latin-American author of novels and short stories, a central figure in the so-called magical realism movement in Latin American literature. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982. Studied law and journalism in Bogotá and Cartagena. He began his career as a journalist in 1948, was a foreign correspondent in Europe during the late 1950s, Cuba and N.Y. early 1960s, and a screenwriter, journalist and publicist in Mexico City during the 1960s. During the 1980s he moved to Mexico when restrictions where imposed on his continued traveling due to his left-view political views.

Doubtlessly the most famous Mexican movie star, María Félix created a larger-than-life character: herself. La Doña, as the star was known after the character of her 1943 movie Doña Bárbara, starred in 47 movies, most of them forgettable except for her presence in them. More a star than an actress, she constructed an image of a tough woman, a sort of one-liner she-male that went beyond the traditional role of Latin American women. Her marriage to Agustín Lara the most popular Latin composer from the 30s to the 60s, was a great event itself. Her fame went beyond Mexico to Latin America, Spain, France and Italy. She always refused to learn English, so she never acted in any English language movie. That's the main reason why her fame was related almost exclusively to Latin countries. After her last film, she was linked to a number of film projects, but never came back to the screen. Her last performance was on a Mexican historic soap opera, in 1970.

Emilio "El Indio" Fernandez Romo is the most famous person in the history of Mexican movies. For an era he symbolized Mexico due to his violent machismo, rooted in the Revolution of 1910-17, and because of his staunch commitment to Mexican cultural nationalism. Born to a Mexican (Mestizo) father and a Native American Kickapoo mother, Emilio was himself the "mestizaje" (mestizo) that his films would later glorify.

The teenaged Fernandez abandoned his studies to serve as an officer in the Huertista rebellion, which broke out on 12/4/1923, led by Gen. Adolfo de la Huerta. On July 20th of that year, Pancho Villa had been ambushed and murdered; one theory was that the killing was done by agents of Mexican President Álvaro Obregón. Obregon, when he served as a general during the revolution, had defeated Villa in four successive battles collectively known as the Battle of Celaya, which was the largest military confrontation in Latin-American history before the 1982 Falklands War.

Under the Constitution of 1917 that Obregon himself helped write, Mexican presidents could not succeed themselves (Obregon would later have the constitution amended so he could serve a second, non-consecutive term; after winning the presidential election of 1928, he was assassinated before his inauguration). Obregon had won the presidency in 1920 after inciting a successful military revolt against President Venustiano Carranza, who had planned on naming Ignacio Bonillas as his successor instead of Obregon, who believed that he deserved it. The revolt began when the governor of the state of Sonora, Gen. Huerta, broke with President Carranza and declared the secession of Sonora. This was a signal for the beginning of the successful uprising against Carranza, led by Obregon and supported by Gen. Plutarco Elías Calles. After Carranza was killed in an ambush, Huerta served as provisional president of Mexico from 6/1/1920 to 12/1/1920, until elections could be held. When Obregon won the federal election, Huerta became Minister of Finance in the new government.

Huerta considered himself the natural successor to President Obregon, just as Obregon had considered himself Carranza's natural successor. The murdered Villa was seen as an ally of Huerta, who had publicly announced his candidacy for the presidency. Obregon, however, planned to remain in power by handpicking his successor, a tradition that lasted throughout 20th-century Mexican politics. When he named his anti-clerical Minister of the Interior, the former Gen. Calles, as his heir, Huerta rose up in a rebellion that eventually affected half of the Mexican army. Like Huerta a native of Sonora and a former general in the Mexican army, Calles had preceded him as governor and military ruler of their home state from 1915-16. Huerta thought his service and loyalty to Obregon should have brought him the presidency, but Mexican presidents, not allowed to succeed themselves and limited (mostly) to one term, tried to extend their power by naming political puppets as successors (Calles would outdo Obregon by controlling the Mexican presidency outright or through puppets from 1924-34).

The rebellion was a serious threat to Obregon, but he was able to quash it by using loyal army units, battalions of workers and farmers and intervention by the US. By the time the revolt ended in March 1924, 54 generals and 7,000 soldiers were gone, either killed in battle, executed, exiled or dismissed. Obregon banished Huerta to exile in the US (where he lived in Los Angeles, supporting himself as a music teacher). This was the cauldron of violence and nationalism in which the young Fernandez came into his manhood. He received a 20-year prison sentence for his participation in the rebellion on the losing side. Escaping prison by following Huerta into exile in Los Angeles, Fernandez absorbed the rudiments of filmmaking as a bit player and extra working in Hollywood in the 1920s and early 1930s. With the election of Lázaro Cárdenas as president in 1934, the Huertista rebels were granted an amnesty (Huerta himself was recalled from exile by Cardenas in 1935 and served in several posts, including Inspector General of Foreign Consulates and Director General of Civil Pensions). Fernandez returned to Mexico in 1934 and began working in the Mexican movie industry as a screenwriter and actor. His Indian looks, which gave him his nickname "El Indio," also brought him his first lead role, playing an Indian in Janitzio (1935). Due to his imposing physical presence and Indian countenance, El Indio was cast as bandits, charros (cowboys) and revolutionaries.

The Cardenas government of 1934-40 established the framework in which the "Golden Age of Mexican Cinema" could be realized. The political system that dominated Mexico for over half a century was consolidated during his regime. The government incorporated trade unions, campesino (peasant) organizations and middle-class professionals and office workers into the ruling Party of the Mexican Revolution (later the Party of the Institutional Revolution, or PRI). Cardenas oversaw the redistribution of millions of acres of land to peasants and the expansion of collective bargaining rights and wage increases to workers.

Cardenas and all subsequent PRM/PRI presidents (all presidents of Mexico in the 20th century beginning with Calles were PRM/PRI members; Vicente Fox was the first from outside the party in three-quarters of a century) maintained political control of Mexico by granting favors and concessions to their constituencies inside the corporatist party structure in exchange for worker and campesino organizations delivering votes and suppressing discontent among their constituencies. The PRM/PRI itself created an organizational structure for the government that allowed citizens access to the political realm, in the sense that they could interface with government agencies. Once inside the government machine, seeking redress, favors, etc., the non-connected citizen was led through a maze of layers of bureaucracy that never permitted a satisfactory result. Citizens caught in the maze were eventually frustrated and discouraged, but the ingenious if disingenuous system worked as it gave them input--just no guaranteed output. By frustrating them within an institutional structure, the PRM/PRI governments--both federal and state--took the fight out of them. The PRM/PRI sought to control frustration that had led to violence in the past, particularly among the generals who had the power to destabilize the society and economy. That government structure thus served as a homeostatic device for the people's frustration, relieving it and never allowing it to build up again into a revolutionary situation.

Cardenas' most notable achievement arguably was the nationalization of Mexico's oil industry. After unsuccessfully trying to negotiate better terms with Mexican Eagle--the holding company owned by Royal Dutch/Shell and Standard Oil of New Jersey--Cardenas nationalized Mexico's petroleum reserves and expropriated the equipment of the foreign oil companies on 3/18/38. A spontaneous six-hour parade broke out in Mexico City to celebrate the event. Unlike Fidel Castro's nationalization of foreign assets in Cuba, Shell and SONJ were compensated for their expropriated assets. Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) and the Mexican model became a beacon for other oil-producing nations seeking to gain control over their own energy resources from foreign companies. Cardenas was the only PRM/PRI president who did not enrich himself while in office. After retiring as Minister of Defense in 1945--the post he took after relinquishing the presidency--he assumed a modest lifestyle. He spent the last years of his life supervising irrigation projects and promoting education and free medical care for the poor. This was the man who set the tone of the modern Mexico that arose from the revolution and civil wars of the 1920s, who cleared the ground for the economic boom of the 1940s in which the "Golden Age of Mexican Cinema" reached its apogee. Classic Mexican cinema has mostly been ignored in the US due to the language barrier and a colonialist mindset suffused with racism. When Mexican cinema has been addressed by those north of the border, the primary focus fell on the brilliant cinematography of Gabriel Figueroa, who shot films for John Ford and John Huston, or on former Hollywood star Dolores Del Río. Fernandez's reputation was so great that he was even appreciated in the US in his lifetime, but his notoriety as a sort of wildman of the Mexican movie industry and his appearance as an actor in Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969) overshadowed his greatness as a director. While Mexico has often served as a locale for American films--the genres of sweet (white) young things imperiled by swarthy Mexican bandits and of Americans in revolutionary Mexico, to say nothing of Zorro and The Cisco Kid--have been part of the Yankee cinema since the East Coast-based film companies began relocating to southern California in the early 1910s. Gringo Warner Baxter won the second Oscar ever awarded for Best Actor playing The Cisco Kid in a role originally intended for Raoul Walsh, of all people. Mexico has been the site of such blockbuster films as Viva Villa! (1934), Juarez (1939), Viva Zapata! (1952), Vera Cruz (1954), The Professionals (1966) and "The Wild Bunch," but except for La caza del oro (1972), a Johnny-Come-Lately to the genre, they seldom featured Mexican actors in anything other than bit parts, if at all, with the exception of Anthony Quinn, one of the few Mexican-Americans to achieve superstar status. Mexican performers taken up by Hollywood --such as Ramon Novarro, Rita Hayworth, John Gavin and Raquel Welch--were, like half-Mexican baseball great Ted Williams (born in San Diego), de-ethnicized in a sort of cultural ethnic cleansing. Salma Hayek, who is of mixed Mexican and Lebanese parentage, is arguably the first Mexican since Lupe Velez and Dolores del Rio to cross over as a Hollywood superstar and remain identifiably Mexican (even at the dawn of a new millennium, she was urged by her Hollywood agents to play up her Arabic ethnicity, even with anti-Arab feeling rife in Hollywood and the US at large--their "reasoning" was that no one would go see a Mexican in movies since their cleaning ladies were Mexican),

Until the 1990s, with Like Water for Chocolate (1992) ("Like Water for Chocolate"), Mexican films themselves seldom strayed in the Yankee consciousness, except for the rare one like The Pearl (1947), based on a novel by Californian John Steinbeck and a prize-winner at the Venice Film Festival. "La Perla" was directed by Fernandez, the greatest director to come out of Mexico's golden age of cinema. The first Mexican feature was released in 1906, though production often was eclipsed by political and economic conditions. There were documentaries made about the Mexican Revolution in the 1910s, but very few films were made in the 1920s. Sergei Eisenstein's trip to Mexico in the early 1930s to make Que Viva Mexico (1979), which remained unfinished due to his problems with his American backer, Upton Sinclair, injected a new enthusiasm into the Mexican movie industry.

While most American film historians place the Golden Age firmly in the 1940s--some specifically assigning it to the period 1943-46 and others extending it until the mid-'50s--the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema properly stretches back to 1936, peaks in the mid-'40s (when the Mexican cinema receives international recognition; two of Fernandez's films won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival and were nominated for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festivals) and terminates in the mid-'50s, with the end of Fernandez's 25-film collaboration with cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa. Figueroa, the Mexican movie industry's first great director, inaugurated the Golden Age in 1936 with two hits, Out on the Big Ranch (1936) ("Out at Big Ranch") and Let's Go with Pancho Villa (1936) ("Let's Go with Pancho Villa"). Both were "political message" movies addressing the social and cultural issues lying at the heart of Mexican Revolution. "Vamonos con Pancho Villa" has the distinction of being the first feature produced at the Mexican government-subsidized studio Cinematografica Latino Americana S.A., while "Allá en el Rancho Grande" made Tito Guízar a star. Guizar eventually became the Mexican movie industry's first superstar by playing in the "comedias rancheras" (ranch comedies) genre that was the most popular type of film in Mexico in the 1930s. A hit with audiences throughout Latin America, "comedias rancheras" were set in an idyllic, pre-revolutionary Mexico. The vaudevillian Mario Moreno, who became a Latin-American superstar under the name Cantinflas, made his short-subject debut in 1936 and would soon become the Latin-American film industry's leading comedian when he made his feature-film debut in You're Missing the Point (1940) ("There is the Detail"). The Cantinflas character is rooted in the image of the "pelado," or poor white trash, and his character deflates respectable society through his sharp repartee. Peace--i.e., a lack of overt domestic political turmoil--laid the groundwork for the development of a truly popular indigenous cinema in the 1930s and '40s. The comedias rancheras and Cantinflas comedies helped make the Mexican cinema commercially viable. With Hollywood distracted by turning out propaganda and military training films during World War II, there was an opening in Latin America that the Mexican industry filled. Without competition from Hollywood, the Mexican movie industry dominated Latin-American cinemas for most of the decade. Movie production tripled in the 1940s compared to the previous decade. The Mexican film industry underwent a consolidation and developed a star system, some of whom crossed over to achieve international recognition. The peak of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema came in the 1940s, spurred by rapid industrialization and a resulting affluence--although inequitably distributed--caused by trade with the US, as World War II boosted American demand for Mexican raw materials. The Mexican movie industry became the world's largest producer of Spanish-language films, helped by the fact that the other large producers, Argentina and Spain, were headed by fascist governments. Though the Mexican government was conservative and repressive in the 1940s, it encouraged the production of nationalist films that helped articulate a Mexican identity. During the 1940s Mexican movie stars and directors became popular icons, and some even became public figures with effective political influence. Among the movie stars blossoming during the decade were Dolores del Rio, Pedro Infante, Jorge Negrete, Joaquín Pardavé and María Félix, while Fernandez and Figueroa became globally known. Luis Buñuel moved to Mexico and would direct some of the country's major movies in the following decade.

Mexican movies typically were genre pictures, melodramas, romances, musicals, comedies and horror, which addressed all aspects of Mexican society, from love stories about the "lumpen proletariat" to dramas about the Indians. Mexican movies are a mirror of Mexican society, including history (19th-century dictator Porfirio Díaz and his court, The Revolution and Villa and Emiliano Zapata), obsessions (both familial and erotic) and mythology (Indian and big-city culture). Mexican cinema did this using the classic genres of the the melodrama, the comedy (in its romantic, musical and ranchera versions, and slapstick and farce) and even the horror film. With its proximity to Hollywood, and the fact that many leading lights of the Mexican cinema were familiar with Hollywood production values, the indigenous movie industry set a high standard for itself, as it had to measure up to Hollywood product.

Fernandez made his motion picture debut as an actor in Chano Urueta's El destino (1928), but his early work in movies was in American westerns churned out by Monogram director John P. McCarthy, including the Bob Steele programmers The Oklahoma Cyclone (1930), The Land of Missing Men (1930), Headin' North (1930), The Sunrise Trail (1931) and the Tim McCoy "hoss opera" The Western Code (1932). After a supporting role in Enrico Caruso Jr.'s La buenaventura (1934), he made his return to Mexican pictures in 1934, starring in Heart of a Bandit (1934) and director Fernando de Fuentes' Cruz Diablo (1934).

Fernandez's first film as a director was La isla de la pasión (1942), in 1941, which he also wrote and in which he played a bit part. The movie starred Pedro Armendáriz, who Fernandez would cast in many of his films. Another favorite collaborator was his wife Columba Domínguez. El Indio rapidly gained a reputation as Mexico's premier director making populist dramas. His Maria Candelaria (1944) put Mexican film on the map when it won the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1946. It has been variously praised as "the highest triumph of Mexican plastic arts on celluloid" and as "a titanic promise for strictly patriotic [Mexican] cinema." French film critic Georges Sadoul, in his 1954 book "Histoire General du Cinema," praised the film for its "authentic" portrayal of rural Mexican life and for addressing race relations.

The film remains controversial in Mexico due to El Indio's aesthetic choices, which emphasized the exotic and primitive, and his representation of Mexican Indians, which some critics believed was inauthentic or "touristy." The nationalistic Fernandez wanted to articulate an idea of what it meant to be Mexican that was uniquely Mexican, and not influenced by Hollywood, whose films he felt were Americanizing Mexican cinema audiences. Terming his films "autos sacramentales [passion plays] of mexicanidad," Fernandez wanted to create a Mexican cinema that Mexicanized Mexicans. The film stars Dolores del Rio, the Hollywood movie star who had returned to Mexico after becoming disillusioned with the American movie industry, as the daughter of a prostitute trying to survive just before the Revolution. Set in the floating gardens of Xochimilco in Mexico City, del Rio's character is shunned by the locals, who are indigenous people. Her great desire is to marry her lover, played by Pedro Armendariz, but their romance proves to be star-crossed. Fernandez's direction was flawless, and Figueroa's black-and-white cinematography was masterful. The collaborators created one of the classics of not just Mexican movies but of world cinema. When El Indio and Figueroa were making "Maria Candelaria," they were part of a movement in which Mexican filmmakers were consciously attempting to create an indigenous art cinema that could compete with Hollywood product while simultaneously articulating a vision of Mexicans that was rooted in the "indigenismo" and "mestizophilia" of Mexican intellectuals. José Vasconcelos, the Minister of Education during the Obregon administration, was particularly influential due to his concepts of "mexicanos en potencia" and the cosmic race. In Vasconcelos' philosophy, the "barbarous" Indian was redeemed by a modernization program based on education, and by the assimilation of the Indians with the Caucausian Europeans into "la raza" of mestizos ("mestizaje"). Gabriel Figueroa was conscious of the fact that he and Fernandez, a creative team that became known as "Epoca de Oro," invented an idea of rural Mexico that did not actually exist. Figueroa established himself as the leader in imagining a new, post-revolutionary Mexican consciousness, through the vehicle of the visual image. A "painter in light," Figueroa learned his craft from Gregg Toland and Eduard Tisse, Eisenstein's cinematographer. Figueroa is credited with creating the classic Mexican film aesthetic in collaboration with El Indio and other film directors. In over 200 movies, he developed the classic imagery and aesthetic of Mexican cinema, which also influenced and was influenced by contemporary Mexican artists. Figueroa pioneered an indigenous visual vernacular that affected the muralist movement, and he has been referred to as the fourth of the most important Mexican muralist after Orozco, Diego Rivera and David Siqueiros. Siqueiros himself called Figueroa's cinematography "murals that travel."

In their 25 films together between 1942-58, El Indio and Figueroa created the idea of "mexicanidad" cinema while elevating the mestizaje (mixed-race) identity, as well as the status of the pre-Columbian culture. The epic visual style they developed was indebted to Eisenstein's unfinished "Que viva Mexico." Their style fetishized the Mexican landscape through beautiful, carefully composed, stationary long shots. For two decades Mexican art cinema was identified with the films resulting from the Fernandez-Figueroa collaboration. Their films not only affected Mexican audiences' collective identity, but they affected how their audiences, both domestic and global, viewed Mexico and its history.

The climax of "Maria Candelaria" was an homage to Carlos Navarro's classic "indigenista" film Janitzio (1935). The movie is evocative of the anti-clerical struggles engendered by the Revolution. The secularization of the Mexican state was begun with the 1910 Revolution, continued with the 1917 Constitution, and reached a violent apotheosis in the Cristero Rebellion of 1926-29, when the President tried to crack down on the Roman Catholic church. However, the anti-clericalism of the revolutionaries had to co-exist with the cult of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the symbol that has proved the most powerful and enduring in creating a Mexican national consciousness. Our Lady has served as a symbol for political struggles from the 19th-century wars of independence to the Cristero wars. On one level, "Maria Candelaria" is a paean to the cult of the Virgin Mary, a phenomenon present in much of classical Mexican cinema, which likely is one of the reasons the films Fernandez and Figueroa and others of the 1940s and 1950s proved so popular all over Latin America.

In 1946 Fernandez filmed an adaptation of John Steinbeck's novella "The Pearl," in Spanish- and English-language versions. Shot by Figueroa and starring El Indio's favorite actor, Pedro Armendariz, "La perla" won El Indio a nomination for Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, further solidifying his notoriety as a director and publicizing the Mexican movie industry. The film also won him the Golden Ariel for Best Picture at the 1948 Ariel Awards (the Mexican equivalent of the Oscars), and Fernandez, Figueroa, Armendariz and Juan García won Silver Ariels for Best Direction, Cinematography, Actor and Supporting Actor, respectively. Figueroa won a Golden Globe for Best Cinematography in 1949 from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

In 1948 Salón México (1949) was released, written and directed by Fernandez with cinematography by Figueroa. An urban melodrama, the film was groundbreaking in that it helped usher in a new genre, the "cabaretera" (cabaret) film, racier and just as commercial as the familiar genre of rancheras, which was then fading in popularity. The movie recreates the atmosphere of the famous Mexico City dance hall and won Marga López an Ariel Award for her role as the taxi dancer Mercedes. The movie featured a sensual soundtrack performed by the Afro-Cuban music group Son Clave de Oro. By the end of the 1940s Emilio Fernandez was the most famous and prestigious director in all of Latin America. He would continue his reign as Mexico's premier director into the mid-'50s, when his powers began to decline and Spanish amigra Luis Buñuel took over the title. As the most famous directors and biggest stars aged or died, Mexican cinema began to decline commercially, and the Golden Age of Mexican cinema came to an end (ironically, Bunuel's Mexican oeuvre strengthened as the national cinema went into decline and L'age d'or went into eclipse).

Although Fernandez and Figueroa last worked together in El puño del amo (1958), which starred El Indio's half-brother Jaime Fernández, the collaboration was essentially over by the mid-'50s when they made La rosa blanca (1954) and La Tierra del Fuego se apaga (1955). Their last great film together was La rebelión de los colgados (1954) (based on B. Traven's "Rebellion of the Hanged," it's English-language title), which starred Pedro Armendariz and Emiolio's half-brother Jaime Fernández, both of whom were nominated for Silver Ariel awards as Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, respectively. Jaime Fernandez won the Ariel, as did Amanda del Llano for Best Supporting Actress, Gloria Schoemann for editing and José B. Carles for sound. Antonio Díaz Conde was nominated for a Silver Ariel for Best Score. As his collaboration with Fernandez waned, Figueroa's professional relationship with Bunuel waxed. Figueroa first served as director of photography on Bunuel's classic The Young and the Damned (1950), which won 11 Ariels in 1951, including the Golden Ariel as Best Picture in 1951 and awards for Best Cinematography for Figueroa and Best Director and Original Story for Bunuel. Their other films together were Nazarin (1959) ("This Strange Passion"; winner of the International Prize at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival), Fever Mounts at El Pao (1959); The Young One (1960), (which won a Special Mention at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival); The Exterminating Angel (1962), ("The Exterminating Angel"); and Simon of the Desert (1965) ("Simon of the Desert"). Of the Golden Age output, "New York Times" movie critic A.O. Scott said, "There is a frankness in these films that would never have passed muster with the Hays Office." The Golden Age had peaked in the 1940s, bolstered by the economic boom caused by the World War II alliance with the US, government support for the industry via state-funded studios, the maturation of a star system, and the rationalization of distribution and exhibition. Aside from Bunuel's pictures, the post-Golden Age era saw indigenous cinema suffer through the 1960s, as the industry became more dependent on formulaic pictures and such popular genres as the "Santo the Wrestler" series. During the 1960s and 1970s many low-grade horror and action movies were produced with professional wrestler Santo and Hugo Stiglitz being the biggest stars. However, the moribund 1960s led to a revival of government support for the industry in the 1970s, which established the base for a revival of Mexican art cinema in the 1980s and 1990s. El Indio continued directing films until 1979, but when his collaboration with Figueroa ended in 1958, his reputation suffered as the artistry of his pictures declined. He began acting more, though he directed a picture every few years. Gradually, the notoriety of his life began overtaking his reputation as a filmmaker. El Indio lived out the fantasy of perhaps every director when he shot a critic, who had dissed one of his movies, in the testicles. A violent man, he shot and killed a farm laborer, which he claimed was in self-defense. Convicted of manslaughter in 1976, he served six months of a 4-1/2-year sentence. By the 1960s Fernandez's off-screen reputation as a violent man led to his typecasting as brutal villains in many Mexican and American films. As an actor, Fernandez appeared with his brother, singer/actor Fernando Fernández, in John Ford's The Fugitive (1947), on which he also served as associate producer. Other American films he appeared in were John Huston's The Unforgiven (1960) (on which he also served as second unit director) and The Night of the Iguana (1964), the John Wayne pictures The War Wagon (1967) and Chisum (1970) (on which he also served as second unit director), Sidney J. Furie's The Appaloosa (1966) in support of Marlon Brando, and Burt Kennedy's Return of the Seven (1966). After assaying the role of renegade Mexican Gen. Mapache in the classic "The Wild Bunch", Fernandez appeared in two other Peckinpah films, as Paco in Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973) and as El Jefe, who gives the order to Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974). He was reunited with John Huston in Under the Volcano (1984) and appeared in Roman Polanski's Pirates (1986).

El Indio's last two films as a writer-director were México Norte (1979) and Erótica (1979), in which he also starred. In all, El Indio directed 43 pictures from 1942-79. He was the credited screenwriter on 40 pictures, starting with Beautiful Sky (1936) in 1936. He also served as second-unit director, both credited and uncredited, on such American pictures shot in Mexico as The Magnificent Seven (1960), in which he was attached to the American crew by the Mexican government to ensure that the depictions of Mexicans were not racist or demeaning. Fernandez died in Mexico City on 8/6/86.

Government sponsorship of the industry and the creation of state-supported film helped create the phenomenon known as the "Nuevo Cine Mexicano" ("New Mexican Cinema") that catapulted Mexican movies into prominence on the global market in the 1990s. Amores Perros (2000), Y tu mamá también (2001) and The Crime of Padre Amaro (2002) are just three of the most recent Mexican films that have featured prominently in American art cinemas. The spirit of El Indio lives on!

In 2002 "La Perla" was named to the National Film Preservation Board's National Film Registry, which is maintained by the US Library of Congress. Fernandez and his collaborator Gabriel Figueroa were honored on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of El Indio's birth at the inaugural Puerto Vallarta Film Festival of the Americas held in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, in November 2004.

Born in interwar Prague as Miroslava Stanclová, her father died and she was adopted by a Jewish doctor, the psychoanalyst Dr. Oskar Leo Stern (1900-1972) who married her mother, Miroslava (née Becka; 1898-1945). Dr. and Mrs. Stern had a son, Ivo (1931-2011), the actress's half-brother. The family was, at one point, interned in a concentration camp after they fled their native Czechoslovakia in 1939. They sought refuge in various Scandinavian countries before emigrating to Mexico in 1941.

After winning a beauty contest in Mexico City, young Miroslava spent some time in Los Angeles studying acting. Due to her European features and accent, she rarely found roles other than mysterious women or foreign beauties. She was eventually offered a role in what would become her last and most remembered film: Luis Buñuel's The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955).

Soon after the film wrapped, she committed suicide reportedly because the man she loved married another woman. In a macabre coincidence, the premiere of The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955), in which a mannequin in her likeness is incinerated, was released during her own cremation in a Mexican graveyard. Her short, tragic life inspired a short story in 1990, and a film, Miroslava (1993).

Isela Vega was born in Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico on November 5, 1939. The young beauty was named Princess of the 1957 Carnaval in Hermosillo, and parlayed that into work as a model. She also had some success as a singer before turning to acting. (Her composition "Bennie's Song" was used in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), which features her singing.)

She made her film debut in the Pedro Armendáriz movie Verano violento (1960). From her beginning in small roles in Mexican films in the early 1960s, her career grew and Isela became very popular as a sex symbol in the late 1960s. (She would appear nude in a multi-page feature in Playboy Magazine's July 1974 issue.) In addition to her Mexican films, TV shows, and stage appearances, she also worked in a number of foreign films, most famously in Sam Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), for which she received a Best Actress Ariel Award nomination in 1975. (Previously, Vega had been nominated for a Best Actress Ariel for her turn in Las reglas del juego (1971) in 1972.) She had made her United States film debut the year previously in The Deadly Trackers (1973) (the U.S.-Mexico horror cheapie Fear Chamber (1968) doesn't really count) and continued to appear occasionally in small parts in American films and TV until the late 1990s.

In addition to her work as an actress, Vega produced, wrote and directed Lovers of the Lord of the Night (1986), and has written and produced other films. She has a son whose father is Alberto Vázquez, and a daughter (Shaula, an actress) whose father is Jorge Luke.

Edith Gonzalez was born in Mexico in 1964, as part of a well-off middle-class family. From an early age, Edith showed a passion for acting. She was discovered at the age of 5 when her mother took her to see a popular Sunday show. The producer of a show was looking for a blond girl with blue eyes and saw her sitting in the crowd. Her first role was playing Cossette in "Los Miserables" at age 5. She was offered the role of the quintessential spoiled daughter in the Mexican telenovela Los ricos también lloran at the age of 15 which made her a known figure in Mexico and made people start to recognize her in the streets.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, she kept busy taking part in numerous telenovelas, most notably Bianca Vidal and Rosa Salvaje, and a few movies filmed in Mexico City. In 1993, when she got the offer to play Monica in the seminal Corazon salvaje, a role she meant to decline, but accepted after much convincing from her brother. The series was seen across the world to much acclaim and became an instant classic.

After she finished filming Corazon salvaje, she became a bit selective of the roles she was offered, having appeared in a small number of TV series and films. Unfortunately, none of the follow up soaps or telenovelas she did after Corazon Salvaje were as successful. Her 1995 drama La Sombra Del Otro was one of the most undervalued telenovelas. Although the story and her performance are acclaimed by those who watched the novela, it did not receive the acceptance that was expected because it wasn't the traditional soft storyline. In 1997, Edith acted in La Jaula de Oro with Saul Lisazo, which again didn't have the rating it much deserved. The same year she became the lead in the successful musical "Aventurera", a live production lead by Carmen Salinas, where she interpreted a woman forced to prostitute herself after her mother abandons her at a young age. The musical is now in it's 13th year and has had many actresses in the lead role of Elena Tejero following Edith's exit, but Edith is considered by the public and the producer of the show as the best "Aventurera", and the one who sells the most. In 1999 she co-starred with Fernando Colunga in Nunca te Olvidare which was successful.

Afterwards, Edith took a break from acting, first by traveling to Paris, France to practice ballet and learn French, then from there to Los Angeles, California, USA to shoot a cosmetic ad campaign as well as learn English.

In 2001, Edith returned to Mexico to resume her acting career by taking part in the series Salomé in which she interpreted a cabaret dancer who falls in love with a wealthy married man and ends up pregnant with his child.

She attempted to get into American cinema, but had little success. Her only English-language film role was in 2003 where she played a Miami police detective alongside Eva Longoria Parker in the direct-to-video action thriller Señorita Justice which was filmed in Miami, Florida.

In 2004, Edith temporarily quit acting because of her pregnancy and choice to raise her infant daughter. From 2005 to 2007 she served as a judge in the successful dancing competition Bailando por un Sueno 1 and 2, Reyes de la pista, and Bailando por la boda de mi suenos. She also starred in two telenovelas. The first being Mundo de Fieras in which she interpreted the main villain, Jocelyn, who suffered from schizophrenia and was bipolar. Along with Mundo de Fieras she also starred once again in Aventurera, gaining the same popularity she had the first time (she starred in it from 2005-2008). The second soap opera was Palabra de Mujer (alongside Yadihra Carrillo, Ludwika Paleta, and Lydia Avila), in this she played TV producer Vanessa Noriega.

In 2008, Edith moved to Colombia where she starred in the production of Dona Barbara for Telemundo. The telenovela was based on the famous book, Dona Barbara, written by Venezuelan author Romulo Gallegos. It talks about the fight against barbarism, represented by Dona Barbara (Gonzalez), and civilization, represented by Santos Luzardo (character interpreted by Christian Meier). The soap opera broke records becoming Telemundo's most internationally sold soap opera ever.

In 2010, she returned to Mexico and co-starred in the juvenile telenovela Camaleones, starring Belinda and Alfonso Herrera. She later starred in the play Buenas Noches, Mama (Mexican version of Night Mother, written by Marsha Norman) alongside Rosa Maria Bianchi. The play was originally programmed to run for 10 weeks, but due to its success was extended and ended on June 4. In July she announced that she was engaged to economist Lorenzo Lazo, and that they were expecting a child. Unfortunately, with five months of gestation and a week before their wedding she lost the baby (later revealed that it was to be a girl). A month later they happily got married.

In October that same year, she surprised the public and the media when she announced that she had moved to the TV Azteca network (competitor of the largest television network in Mexico, Televisa, for which she worked more than 30 years). She signed a three year contract for 5 million dollars. She is also the new Hispanic figure for the Got Milk campaign, she posed with the famous milk mustache along with her 6 year old daughter, Constanza.

Ramón Valdés was a Mexican actor of film and television best known for his portrayal of Don Ramón in the popular sitcom El Chavo. Prior to becoming a television star, Valdés was an extra in many films.

Valdés participated in more than 50 Mexican films, specializing in hyperactive underdog characters. He is likely best-remembered for playing Don Ramón in the hit television show El Chavo. Valdés also appeared on Chespirito's other hit show, El Chapulín Colorado, usually as Chapulín's antagonist, the famous Tripaseca ("Dry Gut"). In some episodes, he portrayed a character named Super Sam, an English-speaking, money-thirsty superhero dressed as Superman, clearly mocking Uncle Sam and the relatively wealthy situation of United States, when compared to average Latin American countries, as well as criticizing the American colonialism. Valdés also played El Peterete, the original partner of El Chómpiras in early versions of the Los Caquitos sketches.

Both El Chavo and El Chapulín became major international hits across Latin America, Spain, the United States and other non-Spanish speaking countries, giving their entire cast international fame.

On 9 August 1988, Valdés died at age 63 after a battle with stomach cancer.

Alfonso Zayas was born on 30 June 1941 in Tulancingo, Hidalgo, Mexico. He was an actor and producer, known for Trasplante a la Mexicana (1990), El sexo me divierte (1988) and La presidenta municipal (1975). He died on 8 July 2021 in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico.

Claudio Brook was born on 28 August 1927 in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico. He was an actor, known for The Exterminating Angel (1962), Licence to Kill (1989) and Simon of the Desert (1965). He was married to Mercedes Pascual, Alicia Bonet and Eugenia Avendaño. He died on 18 October 1995 in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico.

Irán Eory was born on 21 October 1937 in Teheran, Iran. She was an actress, known for The Blancheville Monster (1963), Humble Maria (1995) and The Mischievous Dreamer (1991). She was married to Carlos Monden. She died on 10 March 2002 in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico.

Veronica Toussaint was born on 15 March 1976 in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico. She was an actress and producer, known for Polar Bear (2017), Amor xtremo (2006) and Trece miedos (2007). She died on 16 May 2024 in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico.

René Cardona Jr. was born on 11 May 1939 in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico. He was a director and writer, known for Under Siege (1980), Treasure of the Amazon (1985) and Tintorera: Killer Shark (1977). He died on 5 February 2003 in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico.

Born in Mexico City on 18 August 1944, Helena Rojo had an extensive career in theater, film and television acting, in both domestic and international productions (notably collaborating with Werner Herzog in "Aguirre, the Wrath of God", as well as Arturo Ripstein in "Fox Trot").

She began her career in the 1960s as a model whilst studying drama, and, in 1968, made her cinematic debut in "El Club de los Suicidas" ("The Suicide Club"), followed in the same year with "Los Amigos" ("Friends"). In 1974, she made her first television appearance as Isaura in the telenovela "Extraño en su Pueblo" ("Stranger in Your Town"). Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, she worked with such renowned and prolific directors in Mexico as Jorge Fons, Rafael Corkidi, Marcela Fernández Violante, and Alberto Bojórquez.

The role that garnered her the most national acclaim was that of Luciana Duval in "El Privilegio de Amar" ("The Privilege of Love"), as well as Juliana in "Abrazame Muy Fuerte" ("Big Hug"), for which she also won a TV y Novelas award for Best Supporting Role. She appeared prominently in "Ramona", a 1999 telenovela. In 2006, she appeared in "Vidas de Fuego", a show-within-a-show featured on the US comedy/drama series "Ugly Betty", portraying Patricia Rivera.

Ninon Sevilla was a Mexican showgirl born in Cuba and raised by an aunt in the populous Centro Habana sector, Ninón Sevilla was graced with feline features, wonderful legs and exceptional vitality. She successfully danced her way through Havana night clubs and cabarets, and arrived in Mexico in 1946, where she made her film debut. Although she had already imposed her eccentric attires and hairdos, it was her association with filmmaker Alberto Gout that determined the creation of her erotic film persona. She rapidly became the icon of the rumbera, an archetype of the Mexican film musicals, a "bad girl" who is dignified by dancing. Ninón became an erotic myth and a superstar, working with the best talent in the film industry (Emilio Fernández, Pedro Armendáriz, Gabriel Figueroa, Agustín Lara, José Revuelta), in the biggest sound stages at Churubusco, choreographing her own complicated numbers, and her fame reached non-Spanish speaking markets, as Brazil and France. She was also among the first to introduce traces of the santería rites in her dances, and to acknowledge the presence of African elements in the Caribbean cultures in her films' stories. With the decline of Mexican cinema in the 50s, Ninón Sevilla retired, but she made a successful comeback in 1980, with "Noche de carnaval", winning the top Mexican award for an actress for the first time in her career.

Amparo Garrido was born on 17 October 1929 in Mexico, D.F., Mexico. She was an actress, known for Marisol (1996), Don't Mess with an Angel (2008) and Crazy in Love (2000). She was married to Ismael Larumbe. She died on 9 January 2025 in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico.

Jorge Luke was born in Mexico City. His career started with a movie called "There's always a first time" where he was a day player but soon after he caught the eyes of Mexican Directors and Producers and had an uninterrupted acting career as a leading man in film and television for over three decades. He worked in Hollywood and his breakthrough role was Kenitai in Ulzana's Raid with Burt Lancaster, he also co-starred in Clear and Present Danger with Harrison Ford, La Chevre with Franco Nero and played Col. Julio Figueroa in Oliver Stone's film El Salvador. He was married to actress Isela Vega with whom he had one daughter, Shaula Obscura Vega. Their marriage was short-lived and he never married again. He raised his only daughter as a single father and never stopped working. He also starred in the musical comedy West Side Story as Bernardo and in "So spoke Zarathustra" Directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky. His last feature film was "Erase una vez en Durango".

Mauricio Garcés was born on 16 December 1926 in Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mexico. He was an actor, known for Don Juan 67 (1967), El renegado blanco (1960) and The Brainiac (1962). He died on 27 February 1989 in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico.

Libertad Lamarque was born November 24, 1908 in Rosario, Argentina, the youngest of ten children of Gaudencio Lamarque, an Uruguayan tinsmith who was worked as a contortionist in her youth, and Josefa Bouza, a Spanish immigrant. Since her childhood, Libertad Lamarque demonstrated a great talent for the performance and also for the song. Her debut as actress was at 7 years old and at 12 she was pro. In 1922 the family Lamarque emigrated to Buenos Aires and she began to work in the theater. At 18, she recorded her first LP of tangos (popular music of Argentina), obtaining an immediate success and she married with Emilio Romero (the father of Mirtha, her only daughter), then she played the silent movie "Adios, Argentina" (1930) and "Tango" (1933), which was, by the way, the first sound movie filmed in Argentina, and during the next 65 years all her works were starring with her name. In 1945 Libertad Lamarque was already known as an excellent dramatic actress and singer of tangos, boleros and folkloric songs of Latin America and she was received the nickname of "La Novia de América" (The Bride of the Americas) and also she even stood out as writer (she wrote the script of "Ayúdame a vivir"). However, not everything was happiness: her first husband died after their divorce and she lived an unpleasant incident with the (in this time) actress Eva Duarte (known after as Eva Perón, the famous Argentinean First Lady know nowadays simply as Evita) while they filmed "La cabalgata del circo." So, Libertad Lamarque (like other Argentinean artists of the time), suffered a non-official veto to her movies and while she was in tour for Latin America, she and her second (and last) husband, Alfredo Malerba settled in Mexico and there continued her very successful career, although in 1960 she returned to Argentina to make a movie. During her very extensive career, Libertad Lamarque filmed 65 movies (21 in Argentina, 43 in Mexico and 1 in Spain) and 6 soap operas, recorded more than 800 songs and many musicals and made many theatrical pieces; however, she says: "I am very lazy". When she is not acting or in shows, Lamarque lives between Miami, Florida (where she resides since 1996 with her personal assistant, Irene López) and Buenos Aires, Argentina where she visits her family (daughter, son-in-law, 5 grandsons and 10 great-grandchildren). Libertad Lamarque assures that doesn't have intentions of retiring of the show business: "I will continue working while I have a good pulse to makeup myself" she said.

Manuel Ojeda was born on 4 November 1940 in La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico. He was an actor, known for Romancing the Stone (1984), Alborada (2005) and El vuelo del águila (1994). He died on 11 August 2022 in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico.

Germán Valdés was born on 19 September 1915 in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico. He was an actor and producer, known for Three and a Half Musketeers (1957), Chanoc en las garras de las fieras (1970) and Chanoc contra el tigre y el vampiro (1972). He was married to Rosalía Julián, Micaela Vargas and Magdalena Martínez. He died on 29 June 1973 in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico.

Christian Bach was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina where she graduated with a degree in law, but later decided on a career as an actress. She moved to Mexico City in the end of the 1970's and the golden-haired, blue-eyed statuesque actress quickly found work on both stage and screen, she got the Mexican nacionality. Considered one of the most beautiful actresses in the Mexican cinema, she is also one of the busiest as she combines acting, producing and motherhood. She has been married to well-known actor, director and producer Humberto Zurita since 1986 and has two sons, Sebastian and Emiliano. She and her husband have their own production company and have produced both television mini-series (novelas) and stage plays. Her most recent venture was playing the female lead in the Kiss of the Spider Woman on stage.