Book Review: The Queen of Technicolor: Maria Montez in Hollywood

My most enjoyable movie experiences of the last year or two include getting to know the films of actress Maria Montez.

My Montez viewing includes the half dozen films she made for Universal Pictures with costar Jon Hall, all of which are available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber Studio Classics.

Along with watching several Montez films, I learned a great deal about the actress thanks to this year's new biography THE QUEEN OF TECHNICOLOR: MARIA MONTEZ IN HOLLYWOOD. It was written by Tom Zimmerman and published by the University Press of Kentucky

I was intrigued by Montez when reading about her as a teen in the 1974 James Robert Parish book HOLLYWOOD'S GREAT LOVE TEAMS; the films sounded like fun, but none of them were available for watching in the late '70s! And while that book was a great initial primer on the Montez-Hall team's films, some of the biographical material in that book -- including Montez's birth year -- has been superseded by the new book thanks to Zimmerman's ability to do in-depth primary source research on the actress.

THE QUEEN OF TECHNICOLOR's pleasures begin with the beautifully designed cover with Montez in a colorful costume against a black and white backdrop, perfectly underscoring the book's title. I was certainly struck by the actress's stunning looks when watching her colorful movies and commented on her appearance in more than one review.

The author did impressive work digging into Montez's early years and reconstructing as many facts as possible -- not easy between the decades which have passed and Montez's creative biographical "embellishments."

One of the most interesting things about Montez is that she seems to have been ahead of her time as a one-woman publicity machine; she was determined to break into the movies and made it happen via well-staged nightclub entrances and other techniques. Her success is all the more impressive given that the Dominican-born actress was handicapped by speaking English as a second language and having to work on toning down her accent for her film roles while learning to act for the movie camera.

The book's main focus is on Montez's Hollywood career years, which makes sense both in terms of available research material and reader interest. The end of World War II also brought an end to her run of escapist film fantasies opposite Hall and her Hollywood career stumbled, though I have also very much enjoyed her in the Universal Pictures suspense film TANGIER (1946), which I'll be reviewing soon. After TANGIER she made nine more movies, some in Europe, before her untimely death in the fall of 1951, age 39.

I found THE QUEEN OF TECHNICOLOR one of the more entertaining film books I've read in the last couple of years; it's engagingly written, and I especially appreciated how much I learned. As a longtime film fan it's a treat to read a book like this with so much "new to me" information.

Since I've been watching Montez's films for the first time, I particularly enjoyed the book's detail on each of her films, including production history and critical reception. I learned a great deal pairing watching the film with reading the book and recommend this to anyone interested.

THE QUEEN OF TECHNICOLOR is 460 pages, about a fifth of which consists of end notes, references, and the index. The book contains over 100 black and white photographs, including publicity and film stills; they're printed directly on the page, but the reproduction quality is excellent. It's a hardcover book which weighs approximately 1.8 lbs.

Thanks to the University Press of Kentucky for providing a review copy of this book.

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