Estelita Rodriguez: "The Cuban Fireball"

Today Estelita Rodriguez may be best remembered her for supporting roles in Republic Pictures B-Westerns with Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, as well as her appearance in the classic Western Rio Bravo (1959). Even so, there was a time that Estelita Rodriguez appeared to be poised for stardom. While at Republic Pictures she starred in short series of musical comedies in which Republic attempted to duplicate the success of Mexican superstar Lupe Vélez. Indeed, many of Estelita's film comedies, starting with  Cuban Fireball (1951), were co-written by Charles E. Roberts, the screenwriter behind the Mexican Spitfire films, starring Lupe Vélez, at RKO.

Estelita Rodriguez was born on July 2 1928 in Guanajay, Cuba. She began singing and dancing when she was still very young, around nine years old. By 1940 she was performing with Tito Puente and the Anselmo Sacasas orchestra at the Chicago Colony Club. She was only 14 years old when she performed at the Copacabana in New York City. The young singer and dancer proved successful enough to be signed to a contract with MGM when she was only 15. She attended school at MGM in anticipation of making movies, but ultimately she did not make even one film at the studio. MGM abruptly dropped her and Estelita Rodriguez returned to New York City.

At some point, Estelita Rodriguez married Mexican singer Chu-Chu Martinez. Their daughter Nina was born in 1946. Even while married to Chu-Chu Rodriguez, she returned to acting. She signed with Republic Pictures and made her film debut in the Roy Rogers movie Along the Navajo Trail in 1945. For the next few years Estelita appeared in B Westerns at Republic Pictures. She was a regular in Roy Rogers movies, and also appeared in the Wild Bill Elliott film Old Los Angeles. During this period she still performed at night clubs, performing at the Havana-Mardid in New York City in March 1949.

Estelita Rodriguez received her first starring role with the comedy Belle of Old Mexico in 1950. The plot involved a World War II veteran who had promised one of his dying comrades during the war to go to Mexico and adopt his daughter. Believing the daughter to be a little girl, he finds out that she is a grown woman and a beautiful one at that. Of course, no one believes their relationship is platonic. Only twenty when she made Belle of Old Mexico, Estelita complained, "Everyone treats me like a kid. I am a mother."

Belle of Old Mexico proved to be a hit at the box office, convincing Republic executives that Estelita Rodriguez could be turned into a star. Gossip columnist Erskine John wrote in his column in 1950 that "Estelita Rodriguez will get the Lupe Vélez treatment at Republic." He also noted that she was balking at doing an outright imitation of Miss Vélez. Republic Pictures' follow-up to Belle of Old Mexico showed how much Republic wanted to replicate the success of Lupe Vélez's films. As mentioned above, it was co-written by Charles E. Roberts, who had written all of the Mexican Spitfire films. The first film he co-wrote, Cuban Fireball (1951), could have easily been written for Lupe Vélez years earlier. Estelita Rodriguez played an employee at a cigar factory (named simply "Estelita") in Havana who discovers a long lost relative has left her $200,000. She then travels to Los Angles to collect her inheritance.

Cuban Fireball was followed by Havana Rose (1951), in which Estelita played Estelita DeMarco, the troublesome daughter of the ambassador from Lower Salamia. The Fabulous Senorita (1952) saw Estelita Rodriguez playing a character named, well, Estelita Rodriguez. In the film she plays the daughter of a Cuban businessman who tries helping her sister Manuela marry the man she wants. The film is notable for being one of the earliest starring roles for Rita Moreno, who played Estelita's sister. The final of the Republic Pictures comedies in which Estelita starred was Tropical Heat Wave (1952). Once more Estelita Rodriguez plays a character named Estelita, this time a nightclub singer who falls in love with a college professor studying criminal psychology. Republic apparently had so much faith in Estelita Rodriguez that eventually they started billing her simply by her first name, Estelita.

All the while Estelita Rodriguez was starring in musical comedies at Republic Pictures, she continued to appear in B-Westerns at the studio. She appeared in Twilight of the Sierras (1950), Sunset in the West (1950), In Old Amarillo (1951), and Pals of the Golden West (1951) with Roy Rogers, Twilight in the Sierras (1950) with Gene Autry, California Passage (1950) with Forrest Tucker, and South Pacific Trail (1952) with Rex Allen. She also appeared in the crime drama Federal Agent at Large (1950).

Following Tropical Heat Wave, Estelita parted ways with Republic Pictures to become a freelancer. She appeared in the movie Tropic Zone (1953) for Paramount Pictures. She returned to Republic Pictures for Sweethearts on Parade (1953). Estelita would not appear in films for many years following Sweethearts on Parade. She returned to performing at clubs. In September 1953 she performed at the Wolhurst Country Club in Colorado in September 1953. Later that month she performed at the Coconut Grove in Miami, Florida. In December 1953 she performed at the Empire Room of the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City.

According to the book West Side Story: The Jets, The Sharks, and the Making of a Classic, Estelita Rodriguez was considered for the part of Anita in the film version of West Side Story. She was ultimately judged as being "Fine, but too old." She would finally return to the big screen after six years in the classic Rio Bravo (1959). In the film she played Consuela Robante, the temperamental wife of hotel owner Carlos Robante (Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez). The part was small, but one could not help but notice Estelita. Over the next few years Estelita would make guest appearances on television. The same year Rio Bravo was released, she guest starred in the One Step Beyond episode "The Inheritance." In 1960 she guest starred on the Father Knows Best episode "Cupid Knows Best," playing the object of the Anderson family gardener's affections. In the next few years she guest stared on Coronado 9, Laredo, and I Spy.

Estelita's final appearance in a feature film was in the B horror movie/Western Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter (1966), in which she had a somewhat sizeable role. The film was released posthumously, in April 1966. According to the book Lupe Vélez: The Life and Career of Hollywood's "Mexican Spitfire" by Michelle Vogel, in early March 1966 Estelita Rodriguez was cast as Lupe Vélez in a biopic about the legendary star and Estelita was enthusiastically preparing for the role. Unfortunately, on March 12 1966, Estelita Rodriguez was found dead at the age of 37 on the kitchen floor of her home near Hollywood and Van Nuys, California.  An autopsy was not performed and the cause of death remains unknown to this day.

Even though Estelita Rodriguez starred in her own feature films, today she is not particularly well-known and very little has been written about her. With regards to her career, Estelita had two things going against her. First, her career largely unfolded in B-movies, from the Westerns she made with Roy Rogers to the musical comedies in which she starred. For that reason, Estelita's movies would not receive the sort of promotion and distribution that a bigger studio than Republic Pictures, such as MGM or Warner Brothers, could provide. Even today many of her films are unavailable. While many of the Westerns she made at Republic Pictures are available on streaming, many of her musical comedies are not even available on DVD.

Second, from the start of her career Estelita Rodriguez was typecast in the stereotypical role of the hot-tempered, highly sexualized Latina. Indeed, this can even be seen in the title of her film Cuban Fireball. In the B-Westerns she made, Estelita generally played fiery Mexican women. An example of this can be found in In Old Amarillo (1951), in which she played Pepita, a fiery cantina singer and the extremely jealous girlfriend of one of the characters. The characters she played in her musical comedies differed primarily from those she played in Westerns only insofar as they were Cuban rather than Mexican. In most of them she played a recent immigrant from Cuba who was a singer or some other sort of entertainer, and who was  always highly sexualized and hot tempered. Cuban Fireball is a prime example of this. The stereotypical roles often required of Estelita may have been made all the worse by the fact that they were already becoming anachronistic. The late Forties and early Fifties saw Hollywood gradually moving towards more realistic portrayals of Latinos, with such movies as Border Incident (1949) and The Ring (1952). The stereotype of the fiery, sexualized Latina persists to some degree to this day, but by the Fifties it was already becoming dated.

While Estelita Rodriguez was stuck playing stereotypes for most of her career, there can be no doubt that she had real talent and could have been a huge star had she been born in a later era. Estelita was pretty, petite, and blessed with a wonderful singing voice. On screen she was vivacious and charismatic, and she also had a gift for comedy. That Estelita could have played much more than the hot tempered Latinas she was forced to play at Republic can be seen in some of her guest appearances on television, where she was allowed to play other sorts of roles. It is impossible to say what might have become of Estelita and her career had she lived, but I can't help but wonder if over time she wouldn't have gotten better roles and achieved more fame than she already had.

Sadly, Estelita's story is similar to that of many other Latina actresses during the Golden Age of Hollywood. Most of them were forced to play stereotypical roles and often their careers tended to be short. Some, like Lupe Vélez and Maria Montez, died young much as Estelita Rodriguez had. Hollywood during the Golden Age tended to be hard on actresses, and tended to be even harder on actresses who were also Latinas. With her looks and talent, I have to suspect Estelita would have been a bigger star if only had she born in a later, more progressive era.