Miranda, Carmen

Carmen Miranda

At the peak of her career, Brazilian singer Carmen Miranda (1909–1955) was the highest paid woman in Hollywood. Known for her colorful outfits and fruit-bedecked headgear, Miranda was one of the first ambassadors of Latin American popular culture. She appeared in more than a dozen movies, often along-side the era's top stars, but was usually typecast as the exotic songstress in the plots. "Many of her compatriots never forgave her for the pastiche of mischief and malaprops that became not only Miranda's trademark Hollywood act but also synonymous with Latin America itself," Mac Margolis wrote in Newsweek International.

Miranda was born in Portugal in February of 1909, and christened Maria do Carmo Miranda da Cunha. Her parents, Jose and Maria, left the town of Marco de Canaveses, near Oporto, when she was still an infant; they settled in Brazil, home to many Portuguese immigrants. They lived in central Rio de Janeiro and her father worked as a salesperson and a barber. The nick-name "Carmen" dated to Miranda's childhood, when her family reportedly dubbed her that after the Georges Bizet opera by that name.

Sang for Co-Workers

Miranda was raised in a strict Roman Catholic household. Nuns schooled her at the Santa Teresinha convent academy for girls, but her education ended at age 14, when she had to take a job to help support her family. She worked in a Rio department store as a model and millinery sales-woman, and during her breaks she often performed popular Brazilian hit songs to entertain co-workers. When a guitarist overheard one of her impromptu performances, he invited her to sing with him on a local radio show. Soon Miranda was offered a nightclub singing job, but her conservative father strongly opposed the opportunity at first. Reportedly, he changed his mind when he learned of the generous offer and agreed to let her perform, provided he serve as her manager and she not be billed under her family name. Thus, she became "Carmen Miranda."

Miranda recorded a few albums with composer and violinist Josue de Barros, but these failed to catch on with Brazilian listeners. Her breakthrough came in 1930, when she made "Prá Você Gostar de Mim," a traditional Brazilian marcha tune by composer Joubert de Carvalho. The record was a massive hit, propelling Miranda to a string of top-sellers that turned her into one of her country's biggest stars of the 1930s. While not a particularly gifted vocalist, her style was appealing, and she was sometimes billed as "The Singer With The 'It' On Her Voice."

The movie A voz do carnaval, a musical comedy made in Brazil and released in 1933, marked Miranda's big-screen debut. She made several more films, in between a heavy touring schedule that took her across South America several times. She was usually backed by her own five-man band, called Banda da Luna (Band of the Moon). During one of her shows at a casino in the Rio district of Urca, well-known American theater manager Lee Shubert spotted her and offered her a role on Broadway.

Succeeded on Broadway

Miranda arrived in New York in 1939 to perform one song in The Streets of Paris, a musical review at the Broadhurst Theater that ran from June of 1939 until the following February. She sang it in Portuguese, and spoke very little English when she came to New York, but she was game enough to give an interview to promote the show. Her limited vocabulary became a long-running joke in that and subsequent stories in the press about her. She enthusiastically repeated a few words, including "yes," "no," "money," and "hot dog." Though her treatment in the press seemed to reinforce stereotypes about Latin Americans, Miranda's Streets of Paris number was a hit with audiences, and led to an engagement at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. She also made her first film for a Hollywood studio, the musical romance Down Argentine Way, starring Don Ameche and Betty Grable. Miranda was cast as herself in the 1940 release, which was one of the first musicals filmed entirely on location, in both Buenos Aires and New York, due to her still appearing nightly in The Streets of Paris.

Miranda returned to Brazil after the Broadway show closed, but found she was viewed as a traitor. Brazilians asserted she had turned their beloved culture into a joke, and she was ridiculed in the press for selling out. Riots erupted when Down Argentine Way was released in Buenos Aires for its depiction of Argentine customs. Her response was the song "Disseram Que Eu Voltei Americanizada" (They Say I've Become Americanized), which did little to help her land new performances. Hoping to continue her career, she returned to the United States when the Hollywood powerhouse studio 20th Century Fox offered her an exclusive contract.

Miranda was promoted as the "Brazilian Bombshell" by 20th Century Fox and she began appearing in its films as a featured performer. Some were set in South America, and sometimes representatives from the film division of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, a government agency that worked to promote U.S. foreign policy initiatives, offered suggestions on the script or other aspects. The interference was linked to the "Good Neighbor Policy," which had been in effect since the mid-1930s. U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt sought to forge better diplomatic relations with Brazil and other South American nations, and pledged to refrain from further military intervention, which had sometimes been done to protect U.S. business interests in industries such as mining or agriculture. Hollywood was asked to help out with the Good Neighbor Policy, and both Walt Disney Studios and 20th Century Fox participated. Miranda was considered the goodwill ambassador and promoter of intercontinental culture.

Inspired Fashion Trends

Miranda became a household name in the United States, thanks to her films and singing engagements. She sang in Portuguese, often accompanied by frenzied gesturing that was widely caricatured as a hallmark of the exotic Latina songstress. She had brought from Brazil her trademark look, which was known as bahiana in her country. The term was taken from Bahia, Brazil, home to many African-Brazilians, and was characterized by many layers of bright fabrics, often with ruffles or rick-rack, along with a turban-style hat. Miranda's look usually featured a long skirt, midriff-baring halter, lots of jewelry, and headgear topped by flowers or fruit. The elaborate banana headdress became her Hollywood trademark, and soon more subdued styles of hats embellished with fake fruit were turning up in millinery collections in department stores. The singer also received credit for starting a trend for platform shoes, which she wore because she was just five feet, three inches tall.

In 1943, Miranda appeared in an extravaganza from noted director Busby Berkeley called The Gang's All Here. Berkeley's musicals were known for their lavish production, and Miranda's role as Dorita featured her number "The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat." An optical trick from the set behind her made the fruit-bedecked hat she was wearing appear even larger than humanly possible. By then, Miranda seemed to be locked into such roles as the exotic songstress, and her studio contract even forced her to appear at events in her trademark film costumes, which grew even more outlandish. One song she recorded, "Bananas Is My Business" seemed to pay somewhat ironic tribute to her typecasting.

Miranda became the highest-paid female performer in the United States during World War II. She sang regularly at New York's Copacabana nightclub, where her turban even became part of its logo. She led a subdued personal life, befitting her conservative Roman Catholic background, and did not marry until age 38. Her marriage to David Sebastian, a minor Hollywood producer, was said to have been problematic. Some reports hint that Sebastian was physically abusive, and conspired with the studios to check any ambitions of hers to move beyond her "Brazilian Bombshell" persona. Only once was she ever cast as the romantic lead in a movie, which came in 1947 with Copacabana. She played opposite comedian Groucho Marx, and had a dual role as a spicy Latina performer and blonde French cabaret singer.

Fondly Remembered

Miranda's final film appearance came in 1953 with Scared Stiff, which starred the comedy duo Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Her stage persona had deteriorated by then, with Lewis grotesquely mimicking her style in one scene in the film. By this time, she was a frequent guest on variety shows that were broadcast on a new medium, television. Her last performance came on one early series, The Jimmy Durante Show, in August of 1955. After she finished her song, the show's host came out to applaud her, and Miranda appeared to come close to fainting, but Durante quickly moved to catch her. She smiled, waved, and exited the soundstage, but she died the following day at her home in Beverly Hills, California. Her death was officially reported as a heart attack, but it was later revealed that the 44-year-old star was pregnant, and died of pre-eclampsia, a pregnancy-related condition characterized by high blood pressure and kidney malfunction.

The Brazilian government sent a plane to California to retrieve Miranda's coffin, and a crowd estimated at well above half a million lined the streets of Rio de Janeiro when her funeral cortege made its way to São João Batista cemetery. For a later generation, Miranda was viewed as a contemptible example of Hispanic stereotyping in American popular culture. The subject was explored in a 1995 documentary Carmen Miranda: Bananas is My Business, made by Brazilian filmmaker Helena Solberg. A decade later, Miranda's posthumous reputation seemed to have under-gone rehabilitation, with several events taking place in 2005 that marked the fiftieth anniversary of her death. These included a film and costume retrospective, "Carmen Miranda Forever," at Rio's Museum of Modern Art, and a serious biography written by Ruy Castro, author of several books on Brazilian culture. Brazilians "tend to forget," Castro told Margolis in Newsweek International, that "no Brazilian woman has ever been as popular as Carmen Miranda—in Brazil or anywhere."

Books

Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement 5: 1951–1955, American Council of Learned Societies, 1977.

International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, Volume 3: Actors and Actresses, 4th edition, St. James Press, 2000.

Periodicals

Americas, January-February 1996.

Newsweek International, January 23, 2006.

Online

"Brazilian Bombshell," Palma Louca, http://palmalouca.com/0,,0,33,00.html (January 20, 2006).