Raquel Torres
| Raquel Torres | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Paula Marie Osterman November 11, 1908 Hermosillo, Mexico |
| Died | August 10, 1987 (aged 78) Los Angeles, California |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Spouse(s) | Stephen Ames (1935 - 1955) Jon Hall (1959 - ?) (divorced) Jon Hall (? - ?) (remarried) |
Raquel Torres (born Paula Marie Osterman; November 11, 1908 – August 10, 1987) was a Mexican-born American film actress. Her sister was actress Renee Torres.
Torres was born either 'Paula Marie Osterman' or 'Wilhelmina von Osterman' (there are two obituaries, with differing names) in Hermosillo to a German emigrant father and a Mexican mother. Her mother died while Raquel was very young and the family moved to the United States, where she spent most of her time. Her name change, including adoption of her mother's maiden surname, was done to capitalize on, and conform to, early Hollywood's idea of 'Latin-ness'.
She played a Polynesian beauty in White Shadows in the South Seas (1928), a silent film shot in Tahiti which was Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's first feature fully synchronized with music and effects. The next year Raquel was third-billed behind Lili Damita and Ernest Torrence in The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1929), the first film version of the classic Thornton Wilder novel, which was a part-talkie. This Oscar winner (for Art Direction) was an early disaster movie that bonded a group of strangers who see their lives flash before their eyes while trapped on a collapsing bridge. Raquel's other 1929 film was The Desert Rider (1929), a standard western in which she provided spicy diversion opposite cowboy star Tim McCoy.
Torres continued the tropical island pace with The Sea Bat (1930) and Aloha (1931) playing various island girls and biracial beauty types. In her last year of filming, she played a sexy foil to the raucous comedy teams of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey in So This Is Africa (1933) and the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup (1933). It was Raquel to whom Groucho delivered his classic line: "I could dance with you until the cows came home. On second thought, I'd rather dance with the cows until you came home."
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