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Hispanic Heritage Month — Night One: ‘Lalo Rios — First Latinx Rebel Hero’ TCM, beginning at 7 p.m.
Hispanic Heritage Month 2022 began last Thursday and will continue until Oct. 15. Tonight and next Sunday, Turner Classic Movies celebrates Hispanic cinematic heritage with themed evenings of films. Tonight’s lineup is a double feature starring Mexican-born American actor Lalo Rios, who had a brief but accomplished film and TV career spanning 1950 to 1969, prior to passing away at the young age of 46 in 1973. Up first tonight is, fittingly, Rios’ feature-film debut — The Lawless (pictured) (1950), a film noir in which he plays a young Mexican fruit picker in a small California town who faces a racist lynch mob. The second movie on tonight’s double bill, The Ring (1952), features Rios in his most well-known role, as Tommy, a Mexican-American who becomes a boxer, believing that will gain him respect among the English-speaking white majority. Co-starring Rita Moreno in one of her earlier film roles, The Ring examines institutionalized bigotry and was one of the first sports-themed Hollywood films that depicted discrimination against Hispanics in its story.