Carmen Miranda Overview

"The lady in the tutti-frutti hat" was an inspiration to wartime audiences long before she inspired Chiquita Banana. While her "Brazilian bombshell" persona embodied the tempestuousness, seductiveness, and most importantly the exoticism of Latin America for U.S. audiences, the campy stereotype... [more]

"The lady in the tutti-frutti hat" was an inspiration to wartime audiences long before she inspired Chiquita Banana. While her "Brazilian bombshell" persona embodied the tempestuousness, seductiveness, and most importantly the exoticism of Latin America for U.S. audiences, the campy stereotype that made her big bucks also made her the object of contempt in her native Portugal and her adoptive home Brazil. She had enjoyed ten years of success as a film and recording star in Brazil before she was lured to Broadway to star in Lee Shubert's revue "The Streets of Paris." New Yorkers were enthralled by her unique style, but when she returned to the streets of Rio, she was attacked as being "Americanized." Miranda fled back to the U.S., joined 20th-Century Fox, and was promptly cast in south-of-the-border, technicolor musicals as fiery-tempered women with names like "Rosita" and "Chiquita." For movies like "The Gang's All Here," she donned her fruit-basket headdress and sang samba numbers while dancing and flashing her dazzling smile. As her fame grew, the stereotype became shallower and the headdresses grew taller. Miranda suffered from severe depression during her Hollywood heyday and tragically collapsed on stage during a live Jimmy Durante show, dead of a heart attack at age 46. The woman who once said that all she needed to be happy was "a good bowl of soup and the freedom to sing" would be glad to know that her music is now more popular than her movies. [show less]