La vendedora de
amor
[The Love Seller] (Stanger Films, 1964) Prod-Dir: Jerónimo Mitchell
Meléndez; Adapt-Dialog: Frank
Saladín, Oscar Antonio Torres; Story: Jerónimo Mitchell Meléndez;
Photo: Urs Furrer; Music Dir: Tito Rodríguez; Music Coord: Artie Azenzer; Prod Chief: Ronald M. Lautore; Asst Dir: Félix A. Ramírez; Film Ed: Juan José Marino; Camera Op: Ken Van Sickle; Sound: Carroll Warner Williams; Lighting: Pete Benzoni; Makeup: Brian Perrow; Choreog: Elena del Cueto;
Technicolor sequences
Cast: Antonio Badú (Marcos "El Inmaculado"),
Carlos Alberto Badías (Roberto), Gilda Mirós (Sonia), Tito Rodríguez (singing voice on soundtrack only?),
Felipe Rodríguez y Los Antares, Antonia Rey (Lucrecia), Zulema Atala (doña Sara), Otto Sirgo (Canario), Carlos Márquez (Bronco), Freddy Báez (Pinto), Nidia Esther Caro (Celia), Tito Alba (gangster 1), Vicente Colón (Carlos), Sigfredo Rivera (gangster 2), Miguel Llao (lawyer), Rosetta Santaclara (bldg superintendent), Susan
Chankalian (girl),
mourners: Rosalie Libonati, Teresa Desiderio, Gloria Santiago, Pura
Mentrié; Héctor y Nestor (clown
dancers)
A pre-credits montage
of New York scenes (the waterfront, the UN and Panam buildings, the
"Casa Grande" of the Rabinovich Brothers--"Ladies and
Childrens Wear"--etc.) is accompanied by voiceover narration:
"New York, the Port of Gold...for some, the cold, implacable city
that destroys an illusion...for others, the great promise comes
true...This is the story of a dream, an ambition, a
love."
Sonia Gutiérrez is
comforted after the death of her elderly husband of three years. However, her "grief" turns to
anger when she learns her husband left her nothing but debts, and she
can't collect his $300 thousand in life insurance until his death (of an
overdose of sleeping pills) is officially judged an accident, not
suicide. "This is the kind
of life I've always dreamed of living," Sonia tells her mother, doña
Sara, as she smashes her husband's photo. Refusing to return to live with doña Sara in the barrio, Sonia vows to maintain her
upper-class lifestyle. After taking
her mother home, Sonia stops in to visit Roberto, her former
boyfriend. Roberto is working his
way through school to become an architect, with a dream of creating
affordable and decent housing for the residents of the barrio. He and Sonia drifted apart because she
wanted to live in luxury. They make
love, but Sonia refuses to return to the barrio to live. Roberto says he wants a wife, not a
mistress, and they separate once more.
Within a short time, Sonia has become a
featured dancer at the Parasol nightclub. Lucrecia, the star's maid, tells her about gangster Marcos "El
Inmaculado." Marcos has a
reputation as a ladies' man who goes after every vedette who appears at the club;
he's currently wealthy and powerful, although he got to the position he is
in by betraying rival Bronco to the police. Marcos gives Sonia a diamond bracelet
and they move into together (well, he moves into her
apartment).
Sonia visits her
mother. It's been three months
since her husband's death, and the insurance case still hasn't been
settled. Sonia and Roberto have a
confrontation: he has a nice sweetheart, Celia, and says he's given up any
hope of a reconciliation with Sonia. Sonia doesn't agree, and her relationship with Marcos is also on
rocky ground:
Sonia: "No, I have a
headache."
Marcos: "You're an ice cream factory, that's what you
are."
Later, doña Sara tells
Sonia that Roberto's financial situation has improved and he's engaged to
Celia. She advises Sonia to forget
him and try to get on with her life.
Sara: "Are you
happy?"
Sonia: "What else could one
need to be happy?"
Sara: "The only thing one
can't buy--love. I never had jewels
or furs and at your father's side I was the happiest woman in the
world."
Meanwhile, Canario,
Marcos' aide, betrays his boss to Bronco, now out of prison. Marcos and his gang are planning to
hijack a fur shipment, but Canario sells out Marcos so Bronco can get his
revenge.
Sonia calls Roberto but
he refuses to talk to her. She
confronts him as he dines with Celia and he tells her definitively that
their romance is over: "In Celia, I've found a good and decent
girl. I'm going to marry
her." When she gets home,
Sonia argues with Marcos, who slaps her and says "Tonight you're not
going to have a headache!" A
depressed Sonia later tells Lucrecia "I have to end this
situation."
Sonia is visited in her
dressing room at the Parasol club by her mother, who brings a letter from
the lawyer. Before she can open it,
they are interrupted by Marcos, who asks to speak to Sonia privately. He says he won't stand in her way any
more, but she has to realize "If I live the way I live, it's
because I like easy money, but I assume the responsibilities. On the other hand, you want
everything in life without paying anything for it." He admits Sonia was initially just
another of his conquests, but he fell in love with her and she treated him
badly. He departs on a
"business trip."
Doña Sara returns when
Marcos has gone and urges Sonia to re-make her life. They can move back to Puerto Rico. Sonia thinks it over, and the next day
tells Lucrecia she's quitting her job, leaving Marcos, and moving to the
island: "I've learned my lesson." Lucrecia is doubtful Sonia can change:
"You like money a lot, and if you don't find it there and get bored
and decide to come back [to New York], your fifteen minutes [of fame] will
have ended." Sonia says
she'll say goodbye to Marcos that afternoon at his office. [This is a slight plot flaw, since
Marcos told her he was going out of town, although this was just to
establish an alibi for the upcoming robbery.]
Downtown, Canario
prepares Bronco's hitmen for their attack on Marcos. Marcos is suspicious and he and his men
are questioning Canario when the other gangsters burst in and shoot them
all to death (Canario included). Sonia stumbles into this scene and flees, pursued by the
killers. She drives to the barrio but her mother isn't home,
and Roberto refuses to answer the door when she pleads to be admitted to
his apartment. Back in her car,
Sonia opens the lawyer's letter (forgotten until now) and discovers she
has been awarded $300 thousand in insurance money--"What irony, my
God." The gangsters find her
and a car chase ensues, across the river into New Jersey (?). Sonia loses control of her car and
crashes.
The film concludes in a
hospital room, where a heavily-bandaged Sonia is attended by her mother,
Roberto, Celia, and Lucrecia. "I don't want to die," Sonia sobs, "I too have
dreams I want to achieve." She
asks Roberto to come to Puerto Rico with her and he (after receiving a nod
from Celia) agrees. As Sonia dies,
she says "Forgive me, Roberto."
La vendedora de
amor
(the title comes from a popular song heard over the credits) is a
woman-centered melodrama with a familiar, tear-jerker plot. Sonia's "ambition" is her
downfall, causing her to (a) leave Roberto and marry an older man she
apparently didn't love, (b) leave Roberto again after her husband
dies, and (c) become the mistress
of gangster Marcos. When her mother
warns Sonia to remain "decent" in her search for luxury, Sonia
replies "The way isn't important, what's important is reaching the
goal." She eventually learns
(too late) that material things don't bring happiness--ironically, if she
had been patient, she might have had both, since Roberto's career seems to
be on the upswing, but she wasn't willing to risk failure on his
part. It's interesting that neither
of the men in Sonia's life--Roberto and Marcos--are portrayed in a
negative manner, although both unwittingly contribute to her demise. To be sure, Marcos does become
physically and verbally abusive in one scene, but this is (surprisingly)
seen as justified, given Sonia's actions and attitude (withholding sex
from Marcos and betraying him emotionally--by pursuing the uninterested
Roberto--while still accepting Marcos' financial support). However, Marcos otherwise behaves like a
gentleman and his final scene with Sonia in the dressing room is very
effective.
Other time-tested
attributes of melodrama are present here, including the traditional
self-sacrificing mother (a widow, of course), and the wise-cracking
servant/confidant of the heroine. Sonia's instantaneous conversion into an exotic dancer who
headlines the show in a nightclub strains credulity a bit, but this type
of role was a staple in Latin American cinema (especially Mexican movies)
from the 1940s onward. Melodramas
of this sort fall into two general categories, one in which the
protagonist is unwillingly drawn into "sin" (she's seduced,
tricked, or compelled by extreme financial issues, the illness of her
mother or something of the sort) and the other (as in La vendedora de amor) where the
protagonist's desires for fame and/or money cause her to reject a
traditional woman's lifestyle (wife and mother) for the role of mistress,
actress, dancer, etc. In one
touching scene without dialogue, Sonia strolls through New York (passing
large posters advertising Palisades Park, among other things) after an
argument with Marcos, and sees a little girl hungrily staring in the
window of a pizza shop. The girl
doesn't have enough money to purchase a slice, but Sonia buys one and
gives it to her. This not only
humanizes Sonia (who's been kind of a scheming bitch so far), it both
reflects her own childhood (in straitened circumstances) and points out
the sadness of her own childless, unmarried state.
The acting in La vendedora de amor is all fine,
since most of the performers were veterans. Antonio Badú became popular in Mexican
cinema in the 1940s in ranchera
roles, but in the late '40s and early '50s he changed his image and
starred as a gangster in movies like Hipócrita (1949), Vagabunda (1950), Corazón de fiera (1950), Paco el elegante (1951), and Pueblo sin Dios (1954) ; shorn of his usual
moustache, Badú slightly resembles Milton Berle here (!) but he's smooth
and assured as Sonia's middle-aged lover. Carlos Alberto Badías was a young Cuban heartthrob who did a lot of
telenovela work--although he has
some of the largest eyebrows ever seen, he does a good job as
Roberto. Gilda Mirós had previously
appeared in Romance en Puerto
Rico (1961) and would work in a number of Mexican movies of the
late
1960s, but La vendedora de amor
is one of her few starring roles. She later forged an career as a long-time radio and TV
hostess. Her performance in Vendedora is excellent. The supporting cast includes Cubans
Antonia Rey (the only character with a strong regional accent) and Otto
Sirgo, both of whom had long and notable careers.
The production values
of La vendedora de amor are
quite good. Although most of the
movie was shot on location, two "studios" (Charter Oaks and
Stage 57--a "Studio 57" still exists in Islandia, NY but I am
not sure if this is the same facility or not) are credited (probably for
the apartment interior sequences). The original release of this movie featured Technicolor
footage--the two dance sequences by Gilda Mirós--but the version shown on
TV is entirely in black-and-white.
Overall, a fine
melodrama.
