To conclude the week-long look at Latin Americans in Hollywood, I selected an actor/director whose life was not only one long adventure but whose work contributed to two major film industries. Every time I think I lead an active, interesting life, I read about the adventures of someone like Emilio Fernandez, and then I realize I should ramp things up a notch.

            Who can forget the scene in The Wild Bunch when General Mapache maliciously slits the throat of Angel, the most handsome and idealistic of the Wild Bunch gang?  The General is supposed to crush the rebel forces of Pancho Villa, but he is more interested in pillage and plunder to satisfy his own urges. He drinks voraciously, exploits peasant women for his pleasure, and kills on a whim — a memorable figure in a seminal film. Few recognize that the lusty, predatory Mapache was played by an incredibly important figure in the Mexican film industry — actor/director Emilio Fernandez. Fernandez not only spear-headed the Golden Age of Mexican cinema by directing a powerful series of films during the early 1940s but he had actually participated in the tail end of his country’s revolutionary period in the early 1920s. In other words, Fernandez lived long and large, with his life and career spanning the real history of the revolution to a fictionalized version of it.       

            Born near Del Hondo, Coahuila, Mexico, in 1904, Fernandez was the son of a Spanish-Mexican father and Indian mother. His Indian heritage earned him the lifelong nickname El Indio. Fernandez grew up during the turbulent Mexican Revolution, which began in 1910 with the political overthrow of President Porfirio Diaz and lasted through one ill-fated presidency after another until the election of the reform-minded Alvaro Obregon in 1920. However, sporadic clashes and upheavals continued throughout the 1920s, including the De la Huerta rebellion of 1923-1924. Young Emilio Fernandez supported De la Huerta in his attempt to overthrow Obregon for presidency. He was an officer in De la Huerta’s army and a staunch nationalist. But when the rebellion failed, he and the other De la Huerta supporters were forced into political exile. Supposedly, Fernandez faced a 20-year prison term if he stayed. 

            De la Huerta moved to Los Angeles where he became a music teacher, and Fernandez followed him. The young revolutionary did odd jobs around Hollywood where he hung around the studios, working as an extra and watching the production of movies. In a 1986 interview, Fernandez claimed that De la Huerta had urged him to learn how to make movies so he could return home and contribute to a Mexican cinema featuring Mexican actors in Mexican stories. So, he had reason to keep his eyes and ears open around the studios. In 1928, he was able to observe part of the editing of Sergei Eisenstein’s ill-fated American venture Que Viva Mexico!, a film that would prove inspirational to many future Mexican filmmakers.

EL INDIO AS A YOUNG ACTOR IN MEXICO

            In 1934, Lazaro Cardenas became Mexico’s president and the Huerista rebels were granted amnesty. Fernandez returned home and began working in movies as a screenwriter and actor. With his Indian features, El Indio was often cast as bandits, charros (cowboys), or revolutionaries.

            Fernandez returned home at a time when the Mexican cinema was at a turning point. During the silent era, when the country was preoccupied with revolution and counter-revolution, what little indigenous filmmaking there was tended to be focused on depicting or re-creating historical events in a naturalistic style. As the silent era progressed, Hollywood films infiltrated and then dominated the Mexican theaters. In 1931, Hollywood matinee idol Antonio Moreno, who had been born in Spain, moved to Mexico to direct Santa, the first sync sound feature in the country. Moreno spent much of the 1930s directing in Mexico before returning to Hollywood as a character actor. His career would serve as a model for Fernandez’s.

            In the sound era in Mexico, greater attention was paid to the “magic” of cinema and movies moved further away from realistic styles, though a few films with revolutionary subject matter still captured the hearts of the Mexican audience, including the classic El Compadre Mendoza (1934) by Fernando de Fuentes.

            When Cardenas became president, he put into play policies that eventually led to an economic boom for his country, which set the stage for the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema. At the same time, Fernandez was developing screenplays that he wanted to direct that would fulfill De la Huerta’s wish for a nationalistic cinema that focused on Mexican imagery, stories, and peoples. In 1941-1942, El Indio directed his first feature, La Isla de la Pasion. The film starred Pedro Armendariz, a Mexican actor who also crossed and recrossed the border to appear in both Mexican and Hollywood films, including those by John Ford (Fort Apache; Three Godfathers). La Isla de la Pasion told the story of the military garrison on Clipperton Island that was abandoned during the Revolution after fighting escalated, and the ever-changing succession of presidents resulted in the neglect of the men, women, and children on Clipperton. The people were left to their own devices with tragic results. The film was not only well received by Mexican reviewers and audiences, it also gained international acclaim.

DOLORES DEL RIO IN THE TITLE ROLE OF MARIA CANDELARIA

            The film launched an extremely successful career for Fernandez, who directed a string of beautifully crafted Mexican features during the 1940s, including Soy Puro Mexicano (1942), Flor Silvestre (1943), Rio Escondido (1948), and his masterpiece, Maria Candelaria (1944). The films fulfilled Fernandez’s intent on creating a cinema that followed his nationalist ideas, which the Mexican people embraced during the 1940s. His films also drew international attention to the artistry of Mexican films and the important ideas behind the revolution, such as the inclusion of all the peoples of Mexico as part of the country’s identity. Maria Candelaria, which won the Grand Prize at the Cannes International Film Festival, was Fernandez’s ode to Mexico’s Indian culture — and his mother’s culture. The story follows María Candelaria, a Mexican Indian who struggles with the burdens of her mother’s past as a prostitute and her debt at the local store, which is managed by the sadistic and racist Don Damian. Because she is ostracized by her Indian community, Maria is not allowed to sell the flowers she grows in Xochimilco, She and her loyal fiancee, Lorenzo Rafael, must sell in a nearby town, where a painter asks Maria to model for him. A series of tragedies befall the couple, forcing María to accept the painter’s offer, a move that seals her fate.

            The Fernandez film most known in America is mostly likely La Perla, or The Pearl (1947), which was based on John Steinbeck’s novella. According to the many stories and tall tales that swirl around El Indio’s life, Steinbeck met Fernandez while on vacation in 1941, and the pair became fast friends. Steinbeck related a Mexican folk story to Fernandez, which he had heard from the locals. Called “The Pearl,” the story was about the trouble caused when a diver discovers a huge pearl at the bottom of the sea. Fernandez suggested to Steinbeck that he write the story as a book that could possibly be turned into a movie. Steinbeck then wrote The Pearl as a novella, and Fernandez worked with Steinbeck to turn the story into a movie. Whether this series of encounters and events is 100% true is not as important as the beauty of the final film, which won awards and accolades all over the world.

LA PERLA (THE PEARL)

            Like many great directors, Fernandez had a stock company of actors and crew members that he liked to work with. Pedro Armendariz appeared in over a dozen of the director’s films, including the leads in La Perla and Maria Candelaria. Fernandez conceived and produced Maria Candelaria for the beautiful Dolores Del Rio, another actress who appeared in films on both sides of the border. Legend has it that Fernandez  composed the story for the film on 13 restaurant napkins and then sent them to Del Rio to entice her to play the role, the first of six for Fernandez.

            Fernandez’s most important collaborator, however, was not an actor but a cinematographer named Gabriel Figueroa. The visual style that Figueroa and Fernandez developed in their string of 25 films during the 1940s and early 1950s defined the style of Mexican cinema during its Golden Age. It also influenced the Mexican films of Luis Bunuel and the westerns of several Hollywood directors and cinematographers from the 1950s and 1960s. Figueroa had begun working behind the camera as far back as 1932 when he actually assisted on Eisenstein’s Que Viva Mexico! In 1935, while working for a Mexican studio, he was sent to Hollywood to learn more about his craft. There he studied under Gregg Toland, Hollywood’s greatest cinematographer and still unmatched for innovating and advancing the classic Hollywood style without fundamentally altering it. Figueroa returned to Mexico in 1936, where he worked as cinematographer on over 100 films.

GABRIEL FIGUEROA

            The style created by Figueroa and Fernandez was one of epic grandeur, often utilizing carefully composed, stationary long shots of the Mexican landscape. Influenced by Que Viva Mexico! all those years before, Figueroa built on Eisenstein’s depiction of landscape, glorifying it. Muralist David Siqueiros called Figueroa’s cinematography “murals that travel.” The art of Mexican cinema was identified with the style of Figueroa and Fernandez, and its beauty helped inspire in Mexican audiences a sense of collective identity. It affected the way Mexicans viewed themselves and their history and perhaps it shaped the views of international audiences as well.

            If the Figueroa-Fernandez style seems reminiscent of the films of John Ford, then few should be surprised that the three worked together. In 1947, Ford shot The Fugitive in Mexico. Based on the novel The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene, The Fugitive tells the story of a priest who is running from the law in a country that has done away with religion. Fernandez shot several scenes in the film, while Fiqueroa is responsible for the atmospheric black and white cinematography, and Dolores Del Rio and Pedro Armendariz were the stars. Ford greatly admired the two filmmakers, which is evident by one of the characters in The Searchers. Former silent film star Antonio Moreno (who also directed films in Mexico) appeared in a small role as a Mexican rancher who leads John Wayne to the Indians who have kidnapped his niece. The character’s name is Emilio Gabriel Fernandez y Figueroa.

EL INDIO AS THE GENERAL IN THE WILD BUNCH

            Hollywood directors who admired Fernandez hired him as a character actor for roles in their films, including Sam Peckinpah. Fernandez not only appeared in The Wild Bunch for Peckinpah but also Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. John Huston hired him for Night of the Iguana and Under the Volcano, and he also appeared in The Appaloosa, The War Wagon, and Lucky Lady.  

            As a significant figure in the film history books, it is easy to admire Fernandez for his amazing contributions to the Mexican and Hollywood film industries. But he was also a larger than life legend whose offscreen personality was certainly an exciting one. Fernandez had a volatile personality, a healthy ego, and a lusty appetite, which means there are a lot of stories swirling about the Internet that I could not verify but were entertaining all the same. I am sure the story that he posed nude for Cedric Gibbons when the latter was designing the Oscar statue is not true. But, the one in which he killed a farmer and served only six months for manslaughter — probably because of his fame — is undoubtedly true. My favorite story — and God help me, I hope it’s true — is the one where he shot a film reviewer in the testicles.

            Colorful stories aside, by looking into the careers of Emilio Fernandez and Gabriel Figueroa I realized just how much the Mexican film industry contributed to Hollywood. Not only did actors and filmmakers move back and forth between both industries, but important American filmmakers from multiple generations — from Ford to Peckinpah — were influenced by them.