PAST TIMES The Carmen effect on Hollywood L

ATIN AMERICAN star Carmen Miranda made Hollywood sit up and take notice when she arrived in Tinseltown. She stood barely 5ft tall, but with her three inch platform heels and her towering headgear she cut a striking figure.

“I have never followed what people say it is ‘fashionable,’” she once explained in her broken English. “I think that a woman must wear what fits her. That is why I created a style appropriated to my type and my artistical genre.”

Carmen was already a major star in Brazil before heading to the US and was discovered singing at her hat-making job. She was a singing sensation at 15 and had a recording contract, before going on to appear in films like Alo Alo Brasil and Bananada-Terra. By 1939 she was ready to conquer America.

It did not matter that her English was not perfect. Carmen knew her destiny was to be a big star. She said: “I say 20 words in English. I say money, money, money and I say hot dog. I say yes, no, and I say money, money, money and I say turkey sandwich and I say grape juice.”

Her towering platform shoes were no obstacle when it came to delivering dazzling high-energy samba dance routines and Carmen took Broadway by storm when she made her debut in the musical The Streets Of Paris 80 years ago.

Her first Hollywood movie, Down Argentine Way, was released the following year and saw her in a nightclub setting as herself singing South American Way alongside film favourites Don Ameche and Betty Grable.

Movies like That Night In Rio and Weekend In Havana followed and by 1945 the performer known as The Brazilian Bombshell was the highest-paid performer in America and one of the world’s best known stars.

The tiny artiste with the big talent was born Maria do Camo Miranda da Cunha in Portugal and moved with her family to Brazil when she was still Carmen Miranda in a publicity picture for her 1941 movie Weekend in Havana Carmen in the 1947 film Road to Rio, and, below in The Girls He Left Behind