Happy 100th: Why Doesn't Movita Have a Biopic?
Tuesday, April 12, 2016 at 10:08AM
Today is the Centennial of the Mexican American actress Movita, who was born as Maria Luisa Castaneda but renamed Movita by MGM because the name sounded Polynesian to them. Well maybe it's her centennial. She claims the studio fudged with her age to make her older for legal reasons. She's surely best remembered today as "Tehani" one of two young island beauties (the other being "Maimiti" played by Mamo Clark) that got entangled in all that Mutinous Best Picture business on the Bounty back in 1935 (if you know what I mean).
Movita went on to international fame and married two famous masculine hunks, first the boxer Jack Doyle and then superstar Marlon Brando (quite atypically she was an "older woman" marrying a young superstar) so we're guessing she had a type...
Movita with Franchot Tone & Clark Gable in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
In a strange, and one might argue ugly, coincidence Brando starred in a new version of his then-wife's starmaker Mutiny on the Bounty in 1962 and promptly dumped the original old Tehani for the young new Maimiti in the remake.
So, the logical question is: why doesn't she have a biopic? It feels like writer/directors in Hollywood are missing a lot of opportunities to tell fascinating "new" stories about cinema's old self, especially in the current climate -- stories about diversity and tokenism and the fetishizing of its few "ethnic" stars by way of repetitive types (the Latin Lover, the Exotic Woman, etcetera), and even in Movita's case Hollywood's ugly business of "replacing" last season's starlets with new models. There's a wide range of untold stories within Hollywood's favorite topic (itself). It would just take someone to actually look for them and want to tell them. This international beauty starred in movies with Gable and Wayne, owned and performed in night clubs sometimes with her boxer husband (who also sang), so it's not like her life was lacking in glamour, romance, or easily adaptable narrative themes. She nearly made it to her centennial but died about a year ago.
Movita with Brando & Debbie Reynolds in 1962
Showtune to go!
Here is Movita with, I think, Warren Hull (1903-1974) -- not sure why the video is labelled Richard Kennedy -- in the 1943 picture Paradise Isle.
Reader Comments (8)
The first question you should ask yourself is who would play her? Second this would make no money at the box office hence the HBO treatment would be necessary for the film to happen at all. Hollywood not making more biopics on old Hollywood doesn't seem surprising when many in public rarely know of old Hollywood stars unless they've been marketed to death to them like Shirley Temple and Marlyn Monroe.
Seeing that pic I immediately thought of Joan Crawford getting busy with both. She married Tone and had a serious affair with Gable. And then all of her other victims. Sigh.
/3rtful - you are far too literal.
brookesboy -- "victims" haha. there were sure were a lot of willing ones lining up.
Nathaniel, can you tell I'm not a Joan fan lol. I'm reading a book now about her and Bette's famed rivalry. And it's really juicy. Joan screwed EVERYONE. She would summon them to her lair for dinner, married or not, and then pounce. I'm surprised she didn't expire from syphilis. Dreadful behavior. LOL
you are far too literal
I took your article seriously unlike the majority you decided to either ignore it or read it and say nothing.
/3rtful -- there's a difference between taking things seriously and taking things literally. There's no need to be defeatist suggesting that no film starring a non-white actress will ever be made or be a hit. It's simply not true. It's happened before and will happen again.
and besides... there have een many biopics made of people that the general public didn't know too much about.The general public is alas, not very culturally informed about anything that happened before they were born. This has gotten worse with the self curating of the internet age. nobody learns anything they don't have a natural interest in anymore so people have really narrow fields of knowledge.
It's how you market and sell the movies as well as it is about a good story and subject matter. Many hits could be made about good subjects with the right team behind them.
Tell me what actress you envision for this role?
Movita was my aunt and our family history is really quite fantastic. If they made a biopic I think our family history would be of great interest, as well as my cousins (her children).