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Alberto Grimaldi is a fine example of a lawyer who become film producer. His first contacts with cinema were of a legal nature, but these slowly led to production. By the early 1960s he had created his company Produzioni Europee Associate (PEA), and was very successful when he distributed Joaquín Luis Romero Marchant's «La venganza del Zorro» (1962), the second European western shot in Almería, Spain, where Sergio Leone had also made his first western, «Per un pugno di dollari». The filmmaker was having trouble with his producers for its sequel, he sought legal advice, and met Grimaldi, who became the majority investor in «Per qualche dollaro in più». With the following success and a third western, Leone turned into one of the greatest European filmmakers and PEA became a significant production company.

In 1967 another encounter and litigation diversified Grimaldi's profession. When Federico Fellini collapsed, after meeting many obstacles to do «Il viaggio di G. Mastorna» for producer Dino de Laurentiis, Grimaldi freed the maestro from the contract and produced him the short «Toby Dammit», for the film «Histoires extraordinaires». Thenceforth, while still producing more commercial films, Grimaldi became associated with several Italian filmmakers who also had artistic aspirations. He produced Gillo Pontecorvo's «Queimada», Elio Petri's «Un tranquillo posto di campagna», Pier Paolo Pasolini's 'Trilogy of Life' and «Salò o Le 120 giornate di Sodoma», Bernardo Bertolucci's «Ultimo tango a Parigi» and Francesco Rosi's «Cadaveri eccellenti»...

In the 1970s Grimaldi had different setbacks and his production activities decreased. First, «Il Casanova di Federico Fellini» was a financial failure, and the «Novecento» proved too problematic, although the cast and production values were attractive for the international markets. Bertolucci proposed a cut of 375 minutes and wanted to release the film in two parts, but Grimaldi had to deliver a 195-minute version to Paramount for the American market. When the producer decided to make the contractual version without the filmmaker and they ended in court, Bertolucci finally agreed and made a 280-minute version, but for Twentieth Century Fox. Then, in the next decade Grimaldi and Leone were reunited for «Once Upon a Time in America», but fearing a five-hour film after reading the final script, he stepped back and impresario Arnon Milchan took charge. Grimaldi only produced Fellini's nostalgic comedy «Ginger and Fred» in the 1980s.

Sixteen years passed until Grimaldi released a new production, when «Gangs of New York» opened in 2002. Under Martin Scorsese's direction, it was shot -like in the old times- in the Cinecittà studios in Rome, but it also had problems: a few months before shooting, Grimaldi sued Universal, Walt Disney, executive producer Michael Ovitz and other persons related to the film, claiming they had denied him the producer credit of a project he had planned for 20 years.

In 2007 the Valladolid International Film Festival honored Grimaldi with a retrospective of his more significant films, and the book dedicated to his work «The Art of Producing with Success» by José María Otero and Paola Savino, was launched on the occasion. Alberto Grimaldi was also awarded for the body of his work by the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists.

Andrea Palma became the first diva of Mexican cinema, when she appeared in the tragic leading role of Rosario, the prostitute of The Woman of the Port (1934), one of the iconic films of the "cine de pecadoras" genre that became a staple in the Mexican film industry. Andrea was the daughter of Julio Bracho Zuloaga, a wealthy land and textile factory owner who lost all his possessions during the Mexican revolution. Mr. Bracho moved his family to Mexico City, where Andrea became interested in theater during her school years, and later in fashion and hat design. She entered the hat business in the early 1920s and opened her own shop, called Casa Andrea (from where she took her first name as an actress, adding the last name of one of her clients, the elegant Mrs. Palma.) Known in the theater world, she had her first opportunity replacing her friend Isabela Corona when the actress gave birth to a child. She closed the shop and remained with the theater company and traveled to the United States, where she stayed until the early 1930s, helped by a young and struggling Cecil Kellaway, having small roles in the films of her cousins Dolores Del Río and Ramon Novarro and as hat and make-up consultant for Marlene Dietrich, when the German diva arrived in Hollywood. When she was called from Mexico and offered the part of Rosario, it was Dietrich's style that inspired her in creating her character. The languid, stylized and slim figure of Rosario stood out in a milieu of drunken sailors and ordinary prostitutes. The Woman of the Port (1934) became an instant success and Andrea Palma became a superstar, practically out of nowhere. In the succeeding years, she was much in demand: her next movie was completely opposite to Rosario, playing the famous 17th century poet, playwright and nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz; she returned to Hollywood to make two "Latin film", took a four-year break doing theater and in 1943 she was directed by her brother Julio Bracho in the classic melodrama Another Dawn (1943). She played Julieta, a frustrated wife during the day and a prostitute during the night, and it is considered by many the best role and film in her career. After other movies, including a Tarzan vehicle, starring Johnny Weissmuller, in which she played the mother of actress Linda Christian, Andrea went to Spain to perform in a play and during rehearsals she met actor 'Enrique Díaz 'Indiano'' who became her only husband. When Andrea returned to Mexico, she was no longer considered a young leading lady and became specialized in character roles. In the 1950s she was in two classic "pecadoras" productions and huge commercial successes starring Cuban superstar Ninón Sevilla and directed by Alberto Gout, playing a mean brothel owner in The Adventuress (1950) and a suffering wife in Sensualidad (1951); and she worked with Luis Buñuel in The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955). Although she worked in the Mexican film industry until the 70s, Andrea Palma concentrated in television and theater since the late 1950s, including her weekly appearance as hostess of the popular series "La novela semanal", based on literature classics, until her retirement in 1979 due to illness. Her last role was besides her niece and goddaughter Diana Bracho in the series Ángel Guerra (1979).

Australian Clytie Jessop moved to London, following her sister and brother-in-law who had settled there. In the early 1960s she was involved with cinematographer and director Freddie Francis, who first photographed her in Jack Clayton's film adaptation of Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw", «The Innocents» (1961). Her enigmatic figure and features were ideal for horror films, and in this one she was photographed to great advantage as the ghost of Miss Jessel, a dead governess. Francis later directed her as the frightful woman in white in «Nightmare» (1964) for Hammer Film, and in «Torture Garden» (1967) for Amicus, in which she played Atropos, the Goddess of Destiny.

However, acting was not Jessop's main interest but painting. From 1965 to 1973 she administered her own art gallery, and exhibited her own works in Melbourne, London, Sydney and New York. In 1977 she went to Australia to work as director of the S.H. Ervin Museum and Art Gallery. She became involved in films again, and directed, wrote and produced a couple of art documentaries and the feature «Emma's War» (1986), which was American actress Lee Remick's last screen role, and became Jessop's last known film activity.

Daniela Rocca was a beautiful and talented model, actress and writer, born in one of the poorest districts of Sicily, who found fleeting success in Italian cinema. Although she had envisioned herself as a writer, she entered a beauty pageant, was elected Miss Catania in 1953, and after competing for the Miss Italy title, she made her screen debut in 1954 in «La Luciana».

Rocca was cast in horror films as Riccardo Freda's «Caltiki, the Immortal Monster» (co-directed by Mario Bava) and international productions as Abel Gance's «Austerlitz», but her attractive looks made her ideal for the péplum genre, appearing in Fernando Cerchio's «Judith and Holofernes», Vittorio Cottafavi's «The Legions of Cleopatra», Bruno Vailati's «The Giant of Marathon» (also co-directed by Bava), Vittorio Sala's «The Queen of the Amazons» and most notably in the Italian-American co-production co-directed by Raoul Walsh and Bava, «Esther and the King», in which she played adulterous Queen Vashti, who dances to the court and ends her performance baring her breasts as an act of defiance to King Ahasuerus, and to the prudish film industries of those days.

The following year director Pietro Germi decided to make «Divorce Italian Style», a comedy denouncing the prohibition of divorce by Italian society, while being indulgent to crimes of passion. Germi gave Rocca the role of her career at 24. When she accepted to play an unattractive wife with a mustachioed upper lip, it was seen as an act of great courage for a young symbol of Mediterranean beauty. The movie became an international hit, she won the Best Actress award at the Avellino Neorealism Film Festival, and the movie received the Academy Award for Best Screenplay.

But Rocca had fallen hopelessly in love with Germi and when he rejected her, she attempted suicide. Although she continued to appear in films, by 1963 she was considered unreliable and received no film offers. She appeared in Fred Zinnemann's «Behold a Pale Horse» in 1964, but fell into a state of severe depression. She recovered in a mental institution, in Palermo. In 1978 Rocca gave and interview to Marco Bellocchio for the documentary «The Cinema Machine», in which the actress claimed she had been abandoned by her former colleagues. "They said I was crazy, when all I had was a nervous breakdown. They sent me off to the hospital. It took a long time for the doctors to realize that I wasn't mad and let me go."

Daniela Rocca spent the last years of her life near Catania, at a retirement home where she wrote the books «Secret Agent with License to Live», «Lawyer for Rent», «Condemned to Death», «Psychoanalysis, Dreams, and Fantasies Hidden in the Mind», and the poetry collection «Ara».

A tragic symbol of short-lived fame in cinema and of unrequited love, Rocca was the object of two literary homages: the Argentine poet Juan Gelman dedicated a poem to the actress called «Theory About Daniela Rocca», and on April 12, 2016 Domenico Trischitta opened his drama in two acts «Quick Sands» in the Musco theater in Catania, based on her life.

Diego de la Texera was one of the founders of Sandino Filmes, a pioneering film company in San Juan, where he worked for many years as cinematographer and producer. In the 70's he migrated to El Salvador, where he wrote, photographed and directed the documentary "El Salvador: el pueblo vencerá" (1980), which won first prize at the Moscow International Film Festival and Havana New Latin American Film Festival. After living in Venezuela and heading the cinematography department at the International School of Film and Television in Havana, he met Brazilian filmmaker Teté Vasconcellos ("El Salvador: Another Vietnam") and moved to Rio de Janeiro. He still works in Puerto Rican productions and in Mexico.

Canadian performer who was seen in films and television from late 1950s to the 1970s. Called "the Canadian James Dean", after appearing in several features with success, Borisenko went to England where he had starring roles in two films by fellow Canadians: Sidney J. Furie's wartime melodrama "During One Night" (1960), and Mark Robson's account of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, "Nine Hours to Rama" (1963), in which he played Naryan Apte, the friend of Gandhi's murderer, Nathuram Vinayak Godse (played by Horst Buchholz). After he walked off the set of Robert Aldrich's "The Dirty Dozen" (1967), dissatisfied with his role (which was then given to Donald Sutherland), Borisenko appeared on different television shows, back in Canada and in England. Moving in the 1970s to Los Angeles, he changed his name to Jonas Wolfe, appeared in several films, as "Black Gunn" (1972) and "The Laughing Policeman" (1973), and opened a music club, where he reportedly gave the rock group Van Halen their first paying gig. Borisenko finally retired from acting and dedicated to poetry, painting and sculpture.

Birri is known as the "Father of the New Latin American Cinema". He studied film at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Roma, and after graduating returned to the province of Santa Fe in Argentina, where he founded the first film school specialized in documentary in Latin America. He was forced to exile due to the Argentinean military coup d'état, and lived in Italy where he shot his three-hour experimental film "Org". In 1986 he helped to found the International School of Film and Television in Cuba, and was chosen as first principal. He also taught film courses in Mexico and Venezuela, but remained in Italy, where he died.

Fábio Barreto was the youngest son of a well-known family of producers in Brazil, including his grandmother Lucíola Villela, father Luiz Carlos Barreto and mother Lucy Barreto. He acted in his brother Bruno's first short when he was 9 years old, and since then became active in the Brazilian film industry as assistant director, actor, production assistant, production manager and director, until his death in 2019.

One of the great filmmakers of revolutionary Cuba, Humberto Solás entered the film industry as a teenager, and made his first short at 18. After taking a film course at Centro Sperimentale de Cinema in Rome, he made a big impression with his 1966 medium-length fiction "Manuela", the first of many films dedicated to the Cuban woman. In 1968 his masterpiece "Lucía" won many prizes and brought him international recognition. But the so-called "parametrización" (discredit or persecution of homosexuals and other "anti-socials") during the early 70's, prevented him from making more personal films. In the 80s he had a big success with "Cecilia", followed by a big controversy due to his free adaptation (along with this longtime friend and collaborator, editor Nelson Rodríguez, and Norma Torrado, editor of documentalist Santiago Alvarez' classics "LBJ" and "Now") of "Cecilia Valdés o La loma del ángel", considered the "national novel" in Cuba. After this scandal, he proved he could make a film on time and under budget with "Amada" (co-directed with Rodríguez) and had another big hit with "Un hombre de éxito", which won first prize in the Havana and Cartagena film festivals. In 1992 he realized an old dream, when he filmed Alejo Carpentier's epic novel "El siglo de las luces" for French television.

Isabel Sarli was discovered by filmmaker Armando Bo and became the star of his films, starting with El trueno entre las hojas (1957) in 1956. Her nude scenes in this drama --a first in Argentinian cinema-- and their subsequent soft-porn movies were highly criticized and condemned in Argentina. In spite of censorship and persecution, she became an international star, filming in Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela, and films like Fuego (1969) and Fiebre (1971) reached the American and European markets. Although she was very funny in sex comedies like La mujer del zapatero (1965), Bo insisted in casting her in naturalistic melodramas. After his death in 1981, Isabel Sarli retired and only appeared sporadically in other directors' films.

Ivan Passer was one of the key authors of the "new wave" of Czech cinema, a group of young people who forged an energetic and transgressive film movement in the 1960s, breaking away from the precepts of hard socialist realism. Passer was not only the author of the scenarios of his own films, but he also worked on the scripts of the first four motion pictures made by his countryman, friend and colleague Milos Forman: "Konkurs" (1963), "Black Petr" ( 1964), "Loves of a Blonde" (1965) and "The Firemen's Ball" (1967).

Passer was born in Prague, the son of Marianna (Mandelíková) and Alois Passer. He was the grandson of a silent movie screenwriter. Ivan's parents were persecuted by the Nazis for their Jewish heritage. Ivan was a rebel boy, sent to a boarding school where he became friends with Milos. Together they went to study cinema at the FAMU film school in Prague, but young Ivan was eventually expelled from the academy. By then he had acquired skills in movie-making, some experience and had key friends, such as cinematographer Miroslav Ondricek. With Forman and other friends, they made their first movies.

In 1965 Passer made a remarkable first feature, the beautiful "Intimate Lighting", a film of impressionist inspiration that immediately established his name as a promising new director. But the social pressures and political unrest in Czechoslovakia, which culminated in 1968 with the Soviet invasion, led him into exile the following year. However, in the United States he did not achieve the notoriety of Forman, who received the best proposals, while he rejected offers that did not convince him: for example, he refused to make "Yentl" for a number of reasons, including his conviction that Barbra Streisand was too old and famous for the role, in opposition to other key performers as Mandy Patinkin and Amy Irving. Likewise, he refused to make films with elements of violence, which he always opposed. During World War II he had been directly exposed to violence, and he believed that it was dangerous to represent it in films: violence, he said, affects "some people who are not able to realize the difference between reality and fantasy."

However, he made some worthy movies, such as his American debut "Born to Win" (1971), a complex portrait of a heroin-addict hairdresser; his satire on civil surveillance, "Law and Disorder" (1974); the comedy about money-laundering bankers "Silver Bears" (1977), and the cult film "Cutter's Way" (1981), in which a war veteran investigates a crime, despite he only has one eye, one arm and one leg. For television he directed the biopic "Stalin" in 1992.

Passer taught film at the University of Southern California, and lectured students in foreign film academies. He died in Reno, Nevada, on January 9, 2020.

American comedienne and glamour girl of the 1960s, Jane was invited by her friend, Barbara Steele, to visit the 20th Century-Fox commissary, where she was discovered by an independent producer. She had small but significant roles in J. Lee Thompson's What a Way to Go! (1964), as a beatnik painter living in Paris; in Henry Koster's Dear Brigitte (1965), as James Stewart's sexy neighbor, and in the television series, Batman (1966), starring Adam West, playing Jill against Cesar Romero's Joker. She was also seen in Thompson's John Goldfarb, Please Come Home! (1965), as one of Peter Ustinov's harem wives; and in David Swift's Under the Yum Yum Tree (1963), as one of Jack Lemmon's flirts. She was married to writer William L. Driscoll from 1963 to 1966. In 1967, she married Joseph F. Antonoff, with whom she had sons Joseph and John, and daughter Jennifer. She resides in Los Angeles.

Born as Bobby Wayne Pearson in Seminole, Oklahoma, on August 18, 1930, singer and comedian Jesse Pearson broke into films in 1963 with a hit, but his success was too ephemeral. After recording two singles on Decca Records that had little airplay, Pearson joined the national company of the stage musical "Bye Bye Birdie", and took the role of American rock idol Conrad Birdie who is drafted by the Army at the peak of his popularity, echoing Elvis Presley's story. After a year travelling with the show all over the United States, producer Fred Kohlmar liked Jesse's performance enough to have him repeat the Birdie part in the 1963 film version. This was followed by another funny role as Corporal Silas Geary in George Marshall's comedy western "Advance to the Rear" (1964), but as he had no more film offers, Pearson turned to television, appearing in shows such as "The Great Adventure", "McHale's Navy", "The Beverly Hillbillies", "Death Valley Days", "The Andy Griffith Show" and "Bonanza".

Between acting jobs Pearson worked as composer Rod McKuen's assistant. When the musician was casting a voice for his album "The Sea" (1967), he felt the actor's presence and intimate vocal quality was just what the project needed, and it became the first in a string of albums narrated by Jesse Pearson. After he won a Gold Record for the million-selling "The Sea", Pearson recorded three more albums for McKuen: "Home to the Sea" (1968), and two recordings based on poems by Walt Whitman, "The Body Electric" and "The Body Electric-2", released in the early 1970s. Billed as Jess Pearson, he also narrated the tribute album to songwriter-singer Woody Guthrie "We Ain't Down Yet" and Bolivian composer Jaime Mendoza-Nava's religious LPs "And Jesus Said..." and "Meditation in Psalms", all in 1976. Pearson also recorded the album "The Glory of Love" for RCA Victor, which remains unreleased to this day.

Back to motion pictures in 1978, Pearson narrated the Viking saga "The Norseman", starring Lee Majors and Cornel Wilde and, as the decade allowed movies with more explicit sexual representation in cinemas, he wrote and directed the adult film "The Legend of Lady Blue" (1978) and wrote "Pro-Ball Cheerleader" (1979), under the name A. Fabritzi. But by then he was diagnosed with cancer, and moved to Monroe, Louisiana with his partner, to be close to his mother. Jesse Pearson died on December 5, 1979.

Lili Rentería is the daughter of Lilian Llerena and Pedro Rentería, two renowned Cuban actors from stage, film and television. While in her teens, Lili became a popular personality as the conductor of a music television program for the young, and she impressed in Alea's Los sobrevivientes (1979), as an ill-fated young lover. But in the 80's she grew into a first-rate leading actress on stage productions -as in García Lorca's "Mariana Pineda", for which she won recognition in international theater festivals and many awards in her native country. In the 90's Lili Rentería moved to Venezuela, where she appeared on several television series. After marrying, she worked in Argentina, where she gave birth to her daughter Mariana. Lili presently lives in Miami, where she alternates between television, stage and theater education for children.

Lucía Álvarez Vázquez was born on November 28, 1948 in the city of México. She studied piano and composition at the National School of Music, from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Álvarez has worked extensively on films, the stage and television, but she is also the composer of more than 100 concert works, including duets and quartets for strings, chamber music, and the symphonic poem "Moctezuma", with lyrics by Homero Aridjis. In 1994 she traveled to Siena, Italy, where she studied film composition with Ennio Morricone. Although Lucía Álvarez has worked with many Mexican filmmakers, her work is mostly associated with the films of Arturo Ripstein and Ignacio Ortiz. She has won the Ariel (the top Mexican film award) six times, and received many other distinctions. She teaches at the National Film of Music and at the film school Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos from UNAM .

Beautiful Marie Devereux was photographed partially nude when she was still a teenager. During the 1950s she became a regular nude model in magazines, but she also had a brief career in films, usually playing sexy girls in comedies, dramas and horror films, a few of which were directed by distinguished filmmakers. After appearing in Terence Young's "Serious Charge", she was seen to good advantage in three Hammer Film productions: first, under the direction of genre master Terence Fisher, she played a follower of goddess Kali in "The Stranglers of Bombay" (1959), and she was one of the "Brides of Dracula" (1960); these were followed in 1962 by John Gilling's "The Pirates of Blood River", in which she played a village girl. She was also in Guy Green's highly praised drama "The Mark (1961), and then traveled to Italy to work as Elizabeth Taylor's stand-in in "Cleopatra" (1963), directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Devereux went to Hollywood after the production closed in Rome, and appeared in television and two cult movies directed by Samuel Fuller, "Shock Corridor" (1963) and "The Naked Kiss" (1964). After these roles she decided to marry and have children in the United States, and retired from films.

Matilde Landeta was one of the first woman filmmakers in México, along with Adela Sequeyro. Both wrote the movies they directed, and both could only make a few in a film industry strongly controlled by their male counterparts.

At first Matilde's family opposed to her aspirations, but her brother Eduardo Landeta, an actor in early sound movies, introduced her to director Fernando de Fuentes, who gave her the opportunity to be the script supervisor of his «Revolution Trilogy» (comprised of «El prisionero 13», «El compadre Mendoza» and «¡Vámonos con Pancho Villa!») In this capacity and later as assistant director, she worked in 75 movies, including two classics of the «golden age» of Mexican cinema, Emilio Fernández's «Flor silvestre« and Julio Bracho's «Distinto amanecer«; the comedy «El cocinero de mi mujer» by Cuban director Ramón Peón, and the horror drama «La herencia de la Llorona», one of the few films directed by Mauricio Magdaleno, Fernández's frequent screenwriter.

As she had no support to become a director, Landeta founded her own production company called Tacma and made her screen adaptation «Lola Casanova», a historical drama based on a novel by Francisco Rojas González. But she had "disobeyed" the industry rules, so she was boycotted and the release was delayed for a year. Although people's reaction was good, the film was removed from the cinema in five days. But she went on and adapted another novel by González Rojas, «La negra Angustias», that many consider her best film. A story of the Mexican revolution, it starred María Elena Marqués as Angustias, the young daughter of a generous bandit, who is rejected for living with a witch and for refusing men's harassment. When she kills a charro who tried to rape her, Angustias runs away, joins Zapata's troops, becomes a colonel and, following her father's steps, fights for justice for women and peasants.

Landeta completed her trilogy of female melodramas in 1951 with «Trotacalles», starring the tragic Czech star Miroslava. She was offered a job supervising the content of foreign films being shot in México, and doing shorts for American television. In those years she and brother Eduardo wrote the script for «Juvenile Court», a drama about street boys, which she sold to the National Film Bank of México, under the agreement that she would direct it. But the accord was broken by the industry: the project was given to Alfonso Corona Blake as his first directorial assignment, the title was changed to «El camino de la vida», and they tried to erase the Landeta brothers' names from the writing credits. Matilde sued and won the case, but she was not allowed to work in the film industry in México.

The director continued working in shorts for many years, but in 1975 film critic Jorge Ayala Blanco rediscovered «La negra Angustias» during the preparations of a retrospective of films directed by women to celebrate the International Women's Year. Ayala Blanco wrote the magazine article "Matilde Landeta, nosotros te amamos" (Matilde Landeta, we love you), which led to a revival of the filmmaker's oeuvre. After decades of being ousted of Mexican cinema, she was first the subject of Marcela Fernández Violante's documentary «Matilde Landeta, pionera del cine nacional»; and then she directed her last two films: the documentary »El rescate de las islas Revillagigedo», produced and co-written by actress Elda Peralta, whom she had directed in «La negra Angustias» and «Trotacalles»; and the romantic drama «Nocturno a Rosario», starring Ofelia Medina.

Matilde Landeta won the Ariel, the Mexican top film prize, for Best Screen Story for El camino de la vida, and received the Lifetime Achievement Ariel in 1992. In 2005 the Asociación Cultural Matilde Landeta was created, and with Fernández Violante as its president, the association gives an annual award to the best screenplay written by a woman.

Maury Dexter first entered the business as a teenage actor in The Three Stooges short, Uncivil War Birds (1946). After a few additional movie roles, he busied himself with stage and TV work until the Korean War and military service intervened; following his discharge, he landed an acting job on TV's The Hank McCune Show (1949) and was soon working there behind the scenes as well. A clerical job at Robert L. Lippert's Regal Films eventually led to producing and directing gigs at that independent production company, where many of the movies were shot in seven days on $100,000 budgets. He directed over 20 features there, at American International Pictures and abroad before he became, for the first time in his career, an assistant director, working mostly for Michael Landon on his TV series Little House on the Prairie (1974) and Highway to Heaven (1984). Landon's 1991 death prompted Dexter to retire.

Natacha Ullman was an author who used the pen name Natacha Stewart. Born in Paris in 1929, she was the daughter of Russian-born American pianist Ania Dorfman an Russian businessman Vladimir Dorfman. She was the author of ''Evil Eye and Other Stories,'' published in 1972, and a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, often reporting on musical, artistic and literary life in New York. Mrs. Ullman was married to photographer John Ullman, known professionally as John Stewart, and had two sons, Nicolas and Alex. She died in 1986 in New York.

Nelson Rodríguez joined the Cuban film institute in 1960 as production assistant and then producer, working with Santiago Álvarez. By mid-1960's he was editing features and co-writing scripts, mainly with his friend Humberto Solás, though he also worked with Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Manuel Octavio Gómez and Sergio Giral. His work extended to a new generation of Cuban filmmakers, and with the top directors of Latin American cinema, as Miguel Littin, Jaime Humberto Hermosillo, Patricio Guzmán, Lisandro Duque Naranjo and María Novaro. In 1983 he fulfilled an old dream when he directed Amada (1983), an adaptation of Miguel de Carrión's novel "La esfinge", but due to the Cuban film institute's policy, the direction credit was given to Solás. He taught at the International School of Film and Television in Havana, worked as editor in Spain, Chile, Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia and Panama; and received many awards for his work. Nelson Rodríguez died in 2020.

Ninon Sevilla was a Mexican showgirl born in Cuba and raised by an aunt in the populous Centro Habana sector, Ninón Sevilla was graced with feline features, wonderful legs and exceptional vitality. She successfully danced her way through Havana night clubs and cabarets, and arrived in Mexico in 1946, where she made her film debut. Although she had already imposed her eccentric attires and hairdos, it was her association with filmmaker Alberto Gout that determined the creation of her erotic film persona. She rapidly became the icon of the rumbera, an archetype of the Mexican film musicals, a "bad girl" who is dignified by dancing. Ninón became an erotic myth and a superstar, working with the best talent in the film industry (Emilio Fernández, Pedro Armendáriz, Gabriel Figueroa, Agustín Lara, José Revuelta), in the biggest sound stages at Churubusco, choreographing her own complicated numbers, and her fame reached non-Spanish speaking markets, as Brazil and France. She was also among the first to introduce traces of the santería rites in her dances, and to acknowledge the presence of African elements in the Caribbean cultures in her films' stories. With the decline of Mexican cinema in the 50s, Ninón Sevilla retired, but she made a successful comeback in 1980, with "Noche de carnaval", winning the top Mexican award for an actress for the first time in her career.

Norma Torrado had two loves since her youth: cinema and santería, the religion the Yorubas brought to America. She joined the Cine-Club Visión in the early fifties and studied journalism at La Habana University. In 1961 she began to work in the Cuban film institute (ICAIC) as editor of newsreels. From 1964 she became Santiago Alvarez' editor, and together they worked on classic documentaries as Now! (1965), Hanoi, martes 13 (1967) and LBJ (1968). Due to illness she retired from filmmaking, but she collaborated on the script of Cecilia, thanks to her growing interest in santería. She lives in Miami, travels extensively and lectures on santería and film editing.

Discovered by a talent scout at Northwestern University in 1958, Paula Prentiss was signed by Metro Goldwyn Mayer and teamed with Jim Hutton in a string of comedies. She rapidly became one of the best American comediennes of the 1960s. Her funny voice inflections, free acting style and brunette good looks established her as a leading lady in comedies of the screwball type, although she was very good in dramatic roles, too. Not much attracted to the Hollywood scene, she retired from films on several occasions, due also to illness and motherhood, but she was always admired and welcome whenever she made a comeback. She and her husband, the actor and director Richard Benjamin, are the parents of Ross Benjamin and Prentiss Benjamin.

Although his actress wife Paula Prentiss became a star by the early 1960s, it took Richard Benjamin almost fifteen years to establish his screen persona, but the wait was rewarding. After extensive work in theatre as actor and director, and his participation in the cult TV series He & She (1967), in which he co-starred with Prentiss, he won the starring role in the screen adaptation of Philip Roth's best-seller, Goodbye, Columbus (1969). That was followed by roles in Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970), The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker (1971) and another Roth adaptation, Portnoy's Complaint (1972), that turned him into a prominent "archetype of East Coast Jewish intellectual agony", as critic Jonathan Romney defines him. But his forte was comedy and he won a Golden Globe when he repeated his stage role in the film version of Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys (1975). Although he still performs, Benjamin turned to direction since the 80s with the highly acclaimed comedy My Favorite Year (1982).

He was born as Rogelio Pretto Villalaz in Colón City, in the Republic of Panamá. After studying in Dallas and San Francisco, he returned to Colón, administering for ten years his family's business. He quit the job at 33 years old and dedicated to art, having successful exhibitions in Panamá and abroad. He also performed on the stage as a principal. In 1984, in reaction to the tyrannical government of dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega, Pretto moved to the United States, where he also worked in film and television, and still resides.