Damas de la Pantalla: The Women of Mexico's Época de Oro

"What kind of woman has a right to a happy ending?” – Amira Ortiz, Female Prototypes in Golden Age Mexican Cinema, 2023

In the book Beauties of Mexican Cinema (2001), writer Rogelio Agrasánchez proclaims “the history of Mexican cinema is intimately linked with the cult of its female stars,” and it is truly las mujeres of Mexico’s Golden Age of cinema—Dolores del Río, María Félix, Estela Inda, María Elena Marqués, Leticia Palma, and Ninón Sevilla, among others—who define the collective memory of this two-decade period in the country’s film history. Thanks to the establishment of the Banco Cinematográfico and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy, Mexico saw sustained resources for cinema projects from 1935 to 1955, and these popular films massively benefitted from the birth of a national star system, the growth of radio, and an uptick in the publication of movie magazines. The accessibility of these femmes fatales, rumberas, indígenas, doñas, and reinas alike created widespread, collective identification with these stars. This series pays homage to just a handful of the most influential damas de la pantalla (ladies of the screen) of Mexico’s Época de oro.