The tragic interracial love story NEGRO ES UN BELLO COLOR (BLACK IS A BEAUTIFUL COLOR) -- a Mexican production starring Libertad Lamarque, Fernando Allende and Jeanne Bell -- opened in nine New York-area Spanish-language theaters on Wednesday, April 24, 1974.
This was one of the last leading roles for Lamarque, an Argentine actress-singer who was embraced by the Mexican film industry and became famous throughout Latin America after being blacklisted in her home country by Eva Perón. She toplined only two more movies after this one, then made the transition to television, where she continued to work until her death in 2000 at the age of 92.
Lamarque plays Eugenia, a famous actress-singer who is dismayed to find out that her son Mario (Allende) is in love with a black woman, Joyce (Bell), whom he intends to marry.
Allende, a popular Mexican actor who also appeared on American television shows in the 1980s and '90s (including a recurring role on the nighttime soap FLAMINGO ROAD), recently made his directorial debut with the feature film MARÍA (2010), starring his son Adan Allende as Efrain, the role he himself had played 38 years earlier in Tito Davison's filmed adaptation of the Jorge Isaacs novel.
However, what
really drew us to this movie was Jeanne Bell,
Playboy's Miss September 1969 and the gorgeous star of our favorite Cirio H. Santiago fighting femmes flicks, TNT JACKSON (1974) and THE MUTHERS (1976). Ms. Bell also appeared in POLICEWOMEN, THREE THE HARD WAY, and THE KLANSMAN the same year.
NEGRO ES UN BELLO COLOR is available on DVD, and also turns up on Spanish television stations, but there is no English subtitled or dubbed versions that we know of.
