Carmen Miranda was a very musical Hollywood support actress. Once described by Don Ameche as five feet of dynamite, she was called the Brazilian bombshell, even though she was born in Portugal. She did go to Brazil as a child and became famous on radio. In 1939, she appeared on Broadway in Streets Of Paris.
After doing a show at the Waldorf Astoria, a place favoured by Hollywood moguls, TC Fox studios snapped her up for Down Argentine Way (1940), during which she performed her best number, Down Argentine Way. She was made to look taller by extravagantly fruit-filled hats and platform shoes, where it was said she secreted her supply of cocaine. Her broken English and a tirade of abuse spoken at great speed in Portugese were her hallmarks, accompanied by flashing eyes - Groucho Marx suffered all this in Copacobana (United Artists, 1947).
A great singer of Latin-American songs in a strong Samba beat, she was one of the highest paid entertainers of the day.
Carmen Miranda died of a heart attack in 1955, aged 46.
-Gordon Dean, Lancing
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