Review: New volume spotlights 'forgotten' star

THE MAGNIFICENT HEEL: THE LIFE AND FILMS OF RICARDO CORTEZ, by Dan Van Neste. Albany, Ga.: Bear Media Manor, 2017, 584 pages. $40 (hardcover), $30 (paperback).

Meticulously researched and entertainingly written, THE MAGNIFICENT HEEL: THE LIFE AND FILMS OF RICARDO CORTEZ sheds light on one of the forgotten stars of the silent film period and early talkie era who made a successful transition to character roles and even directing for a brief time. Author Dan Van Neste reveals how Ricardo Cortez (1900-1977) was a busy if under-appreciated leading man who shook off his initial screen identification as a Latin lover in the Rudolph Valentino mode to become a smooth villain in numerous crime films of the 1930s. THE MAGNIFICENT HEEL truly does justice to an actor whose screen persona stood apart from other stars and supporting players in his and Hollywood's heyday.

"Personally, Cortez was an enigma, a complex, insecure, self-conscious, extremely cautious, very private human being, the product of his humble beginnings and conservative upbringing, and, influenced by the positive and negative events of his life," Van Neste says of the man. Although he clearly admires his subject, the author is not blind to Cortez's faults that led to the failure of his first two marriages and unpopularity with some of his co-stars and other actors. Such objectivity makes THE MAGNIFICENT HEEL a well-rounded, probing work for any fan of Tinseltown history.

Born Jacob Krantz of Jewish parents in New York, Cortez as a young man knocked around at various occupations until entering the film business as an actor and extra in 1919. After amassing some credits under the name of Jack Crane, he set out for Hollywood in 1922 with a dream of stardom. By the end of the year, the dream was well on its way to becoming a nightmare until fate too a hand. Paramount Pictures, looking for a back-up to its rebellious screen idol Valentino, signed Crane, renamed him Ricardo Cortez because of his dark and handsome looks, and set him on the path to achieving his goal.

Although initially resented by fellow contractees as a ringer for their friend Valentino, Cortez won them over by devoting himself to his career, soon netting leading roles of consequence. Among them is his hero in THE PONY EXPRESS (1925), an impressive followup to Paramount's western extravaganza of 1923, THE COVERED WAGON. Unfortunately, THE PONY EXPRESS is one of those silents that exists only in partial form, offering us a glimpse of one of Cortez's more distinctive roles of the time.

Cortez left Paramount in 1927, banking on the romantic lead in M-G-M's LOVE of that year as another stepping stone to acclaim. He won the part of Count Vronsky in this adaptation of ANNA KARENINA opposite Greta Garbo and Lionel Barrymore, only to be replaced by John Gilbert. Now bereft of a studio and its support, Cortez freelanced along Poverty Row and briefly in vaudeville to keep working as his marriage to the ill-fated star Alma Rubens disintegrated. His fortunes changed for the better in 1930 when his performance as the bad guy in RKO's HER MAN won him a contract, but also established a pattern that affected the rest of his career.

At RKO, and then Paramount and Warner Bros., he was at first warmly received and obtained good parts. But those studios, for varying reasons, lost interest, relegated him to supporting parts and eventually dropped him from their contract rosters. Despite the insecurity, Cortez honed his craft and delivered the goods as the roles demanded. This included his loanout by RKO to Warners to play Sam Spade in the first film version of Dashiell Hammett's novel THE MALTESE FALCON (1931, a.k.a. DANGEROUS FEMALE). While his performance is generally panned by stalwarts of Humphrey Bogart's characterization in the more famous 1941 production, Cortez offers a striking comparison as a smug, self-interested womanizer who veered more closely to Hammett's conception of Spade.

Trying his hand at directing B movies as well as acting in them for Twentieth Century-Fox as the '30s closed, Cortez returned to acting solely as a new decade dawned, but found himself less and less in demand. Fortunately, his aptitude for investing paid off handsomely, and the onetime Wall Street message runner became a counselor for a prominent investment house from the early '60s until his death. Ironically, his last filmed appearance, in a 1960 episode of the popular western TV series BONANZA, was shot on the Paramount lot where he began his Hollywood career nearly 40 years earlier.

Van Neste's research is staggering in its detail because, as he relates, Cortez's preference to be "a very private human being" who gave few interviews during his career made the task all the more difficult. Also complicating matters was that many of his personal effects, including scrapbooks, were auctioned off following the death of his third wife in 2008. Yet the author's work offers a more complete portrait of an individual some folks found cold, stand-offish and self-centered, characteristics that  masked his self-consciousness and desire for solitude.

Van Neste also argues convincingly that Cortez skirted fame because, among other factors, he was never in a classic on the level of CASABLANCA and didn't think twice about appearing in such second features as CHARLIE CHAN IN RENO (1939) for Fox and I KILLED THAT MAN (1941) at Monogram. For all of its detail and information, the filmography Van Neste provides is more than worth the book's price alone.

Van Neste previously authored THE WHISTLER: STEPPING INTO THE SHADOWS (2011, also from Bear Manor Media), a similarly exhaustive study of the the cherished mystery series produced by Columbia in the '40s. THE MAGNIFICENT HEEL is a rewarding reading experience for both movie fans and general readers, offering a long-overdue tribute to one of the film capital's long-ignored icons. -- Kevin Kelly