1941 Mexico City, Mexico

Maria Elena Ross

1934

Mexico City, Mexico

Interviewed on 2/3/2023

By Matthew Ross

I was born on May 25th, 1934 in Mexico City, where I spent my early childhood until my family and I moved to Rio De Janeiro in 1941. During my adolescent years, I would frequently stay in Mexico for the summers with my aunt, and then attend school back in Rio during the year. One of the things I remember before leaving Mexico for the first time was seeing my first movie: Snow White. I was about 6 or 7… so it must’ve been around 1941. 

I remember that I was with my aunt Rosita,  my mother, and my sister Rose. I don’t remember the theater specifically, but I remember that it was close to my aunt’s house in Condesa. It was very beautiful, and I remember that we had to dress properly to visit the theater. In fact, for most of my life, seeing movies was like an outing. You always had to look presentable.

At the time of seeing Snow White, I didn’t know English yet. I remember that the movie was in English, but had subtitles in Spanish. This was the case for many movies that I watched in Brazil or Mexico.

In the theater, during the intermissions, the street vendors would come inside and sell nuts and candies. My favorites were gumdrops and one that was called lágrimas. They were like hard sugar candies that when you took a bite there was sweet liquid inside. Even though I was young, I remember that I really enjoyed Snow White, because when I moved to Brazil I insisted that I bring all the toys. I had three of the little dwarfs. I had Dopey, Happy and Doc, I think.  

As I got older, I would continue to go to the movies with my friends and aunt Rosita, both in Rio and in Mexico City. Sometimes we would go to the moviehouse and watch three movies in a row. Again, we were always dressed properly. My sister and I, but mostly her, would collect Star Magazines that had pictures of the actors and actresses. She had a huge pile of them. 

I remember I had a liking for Tyrone Power. I thought he was very, very handsome. One time, when I was about 19 or 20 – so around the early ‘50s – I was sitting at a restaurant with my family and Mr. Carrasco – a friend of my father- turned and said: “There’s your boyfriend!”. And there was Tyrone Power, sitting with his wife Linda. He looked even more handsome in real life. I remember loving to watch him in Captain of Castille and Blood and Sand. Oh, and also I remember seeing Rock Hudson in Mexico at a nightclub, but he wasn’t that handsome.

For most of my life, until the TV came around, us going to the movies was our source of news and entertainment. During the war especially, they would show these, I guess, news reels that would play before the movie and would show us information about the war. After these newsreels they would then show some little cartoons like Donald Duck. During the war we saw a lot of movies. War movies were popular, naturally, depicting, you know, the problem of the war effort of the US against Germany and against Japan. There were also happy movies too. We used to watch lots of comedies at the time, and Cantinflas was one of my favorite comedy actors. We would sometimes watch horror movies too, like the Mummy, the Wolf Man, and Frankenstein. I would always cover my eyes and my dad, who wouldn’t come with us, would make fun of me. When I would visit Mexico, I remember that at that time, the Mexican film industry was very strong. I watched a lot of movies with Maria Felix, Jorge Negrete, and the Soler brothers. There were three of them. 

I must say that I enjoy going to the movies very much. And you know what the difference is [between today and back then]? Once you were in the movie house, it was so dark. It’s – you kind of would dive into the movie. And you would get very, you know, there’s nothing else distracting you. Plus, as I’ve said, movies are a form of entertainment, and they let your imagination take you to other places.