Few know the name Maria Montez today, but her story is just the kind of Hollywood miracle that people love to hear about. An immigrant from the Dominican Republic with minimal acting skills, she managed by sheer force of will to become one of Hollywood’s brightest stars during the second world war years. Montez built her legend through a series of escapist fantasias that moviegoers, exhausted by the bleakness and sacrifice of the war, were all too eager to melt into.
The leading lady’s story is carefully recounted in the new biography The Queen of Technicolor: Maria Montez in Hollywood, by photographer and author Tom Zimmerman. “It’s such a bizarre story, it started to intrigue me,” Zimmerman said to the Guardian. “Montez was just determined to become widely known.” Zimmerman’s book is the first full-length English-language biography of the Dominican actor.
