The documentary "The Spanish Dancer" rescues the fascinating figure of Antonio Moreno, the great silent film star who worked with Garbo
The Spanish Dancer is the title of a silent film in Spanish Antonio Moreno starred in Hollywood in 1923. When he was already a big star. Time has been cruel to the silent cinema (physically extinguished in many cases) and, therefore, to the native of Madrid and Andalusian by adoption, Moreno, who came to work with Greta Garbo and Gloria Swanson. The filmmaker Mar Díaz rescues her from oblivion in her splendid documentary The Spanish Dancer one of the first "Latin lovers" in history.
Hollywood, in the early 1930s. "The sound system had just been born, "Díaz told the Magazine" and viewers who did not speak English rejected American films. Hollywood entered into a crisis because it was losing a huge market in Latin America and Europe and it occurred to them to shoot versions in different languages of the films that were shot in English. So they used the same sets and the 'foreign' crews would shoot at night and it was very cheap. In a book entitled 'An American Adventure' by Álvaro Armero, who spoke of these Spaniards, appeared the photo of a very elegant gallant leaning on a big car in front of a huge mansion. 'Antonio Moreno in front of his house in Hollywood in 1926', said the caption of the photo.
Seeing that image gave birth to a fascination for a man who "integrated completely due, I think, to two reasons. The first and fundamental is that in silent movies accents didn't matter, faces mattered, as Gloria Swanson said in "The Twilight of the Gods" (with which, by the way, Antonio worked in 1922). The second is that he was there from the beginning. Antonio began doing theater in New York at the beginning of the 10s. Cinema was being born then and Griffith was shooting his first shorts at Biograph. Antonio got into film acting under Griffith before there were feature films when movies were ten minutes long (one reel).In the late 1910s, he became a movie hero. action, in a star of the serials, very popular at the time, which were filmed on the cliffs of New Jersey. And when a group of film workers went to California and founded Hollywood, Antonio was among them. He was a real pioneer and not only at the beginning of his career but throughout it".
In addition to his physical good looks, "he was a very good actor because he had theater training. He started at the bottom with minimal roles in repertory companies that toured the country and worked with the biggest stage actors of the day. He ended up doing Shakespeare on Broadway It is true that not the protagonist because the accent played tricks on him, but this learning is fundamental. He said that it was difficult for him to get used to the coldness of the camera, being used to public life, but it is clear that the camera fell in love with him He was a very good actor because he was not affected as the vast majority were with the bombastic gestures typical of the mute, he was much more natural. But I have to say that his most marked characteristic is undeniable charisma. I have seen all the movies that still there are many of him left in the archives and in poor, incomplete, poorly preserved, etc. conditions, and I can assure you that when he appears in the painting it produces a feeling of witnessing something special".
Everything would have been different "if the appearance of the soundtrack had caught him a little younger. He certainly had a magnificent voice, well-toned and manly. As for the accent, I think it was minimal, it was hardly noticeable, he had been in the United States for many years United since he was 15. But he was already 43 years old and, personally, he was tired of the role of a leading man and he was looking for interpretive challenges, he wanted to play villain characters, who were more complex, even if that meant going to play secondary roles".
At the same time, the appearance of the double versions "forced him to participate in them in some way: on several occasions, he played the same leading role in the English and Spanish versions, and all the Hollywood studios hired him to do his first double versions: his experience gave them confidence. I am sure that the inferior quality of these films hurt his career and, at the same time, by being dedicated to them, he distanced himself from the American public, disappeared for a time from English-language films and Recovering your place is always difficult in such a competitive industry. It also coincided with the fact that he wanted to make his great dream come true: directing, but he had to do it in Mexico and that distanced him even more from what was happening in Hollywood at that time: A whole new generation of actors with new ways of acting came along and radically changed the industry.
According to historians, Moreno fell into oblivion "because of the great tragedy of the disappearance of 90 percent of silent films. Moreno made about 100 silent films and only 22 survive of these, there are only 6 released on DVD, the rest are in archives scattered in various countries. How are we going to meet Antonio Moreno?"
Moreno was "the golden bachelor of Hollywood for many years and always said that he couldn't marry a flapper, that he might just want a more educated woman who could teach him since he couldn't go to university and had a poor childhood in Campo de Gibraltar selling bread on the streets. Unlike Valentino and other male stars who said they wanted their wives to wait for them with home-cooked dinners, he was looking for a woman he could admire and he found her. Daisy Canfield, a rich heiress to a large oil fortune, who had learned art in Florence, who was older than him and had three grown children, and who divorced to marry Antonio in 1923. They lived a few years of happiness in the mansion they he appeared in the photo that fascinated me at the beginning of this story, his parties were the best in Hollywood with guests from the Californian jet set and the movie stars of the time until he went to Mexico to direct "Santa" and something happened that made them separate for a while. In 1933 tragedy struck when Daisy was killed in a car accident on Mulholland Drive. They had not gotten divorced, Antonio took a long time to recover and never remarried.
Between 1923 and 1927 "he was the great romantic leading man of the Mecca of cinema: was he a partner of Gloria Swanson, Marion Davies? When Greta Garbo arrived from Sweden and Metro Goldwyn wanted to make her a star, she gave him the role of 'The Temptress ' alongside Antonio because he was the one who took viewers to the theaters. And in 1927 he was the first IT boy alongside Clara Bow in the film titled: "It", a term invented by the writer Elinor Glynn for them. That was his pinnacle moment."
Unlike other stars of the time, he did not succumb to alcohol, drugs, or the madness of the star system: "That's amazing, that's why I think he was an admirable man, with tremendous willpower and an ability to Brutal effort. A man capable of fulfilling the American dream from the streets of Algeciras with spectacular elegance. I suppose that such a profound adventure furnished his mind well and I have not found the slightest slip in his life. In some sources, I do not Documented reports say he was homoS- but I have not found anything to support that theory and his diaries in the 40s and 50s were full of appointments with women. I think he was very intelligent and knew how to fill his life and career with great dignity."
When I watched his films, "Every time I saw him appear, my heart jumped. I can be corny, I know, but that's the way it is. Is that what it is like to be obsessed with someone? I have often wondered what I would have asked if I could have and I think he would have such a huge list of questions that first he would have asked for a long, long time to be with him and enjoy his stories. He was a witness and participant in the entire history of cinema, from 1912 to 1959, he worked with the best, He was there and no one knows? It makes me dizzy just thinking about it."
