Acquanetta
Hollywood’s
Jungle Girl
Jet
magazine February 1952
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Acquanetta (φωτο Jet magazine)
Hollywood Jungle Girl
For a small
town girl who never dreamed—at first—of becoming a Hollywood movie queen, Brunu
Acquanetta has come a long way since leaving West Virginia State College for
Negroes to start a career as a Broadway dancer. Known then as Mildred Davenport
from Norristown, Pa. (population: 20,000), she became an immediate success on
the New York stage, — winning acclaim as one of its most beautiful and
promising performers.
In time, she
was spotted by John Robert Powers, who promptly added her name to his list of
exotic cover-girl models.
For many a
young glamour girl being named a Powers model would have been enough, but not
for Acquanetta. Counting on her luck she went west to crash the movies. Unlike
the thousands of young hopefuls who starve for years before getting their first
breaks, Acquanetta was signed within a few months by Universal International to
a starring role in a jungle film which earned for her the title of “Jungle
Queen.”
She received
top billing as the glamorous “gorilla girl” of UI’s Captive Wild Woman. Wearing a sarong as effectively as Dorothy
Lamour ever did, she so impressed producers that she was immediately signed for
two more pictures, Rhythm of the Islands,
and Dead Man’s Eyes.
Thanks
largely to the glamorous Acquanetta, jungle movies which were once attended
mainly by children became, almost overnight, popular adult entertainment.
Publicists
billed her as “a great new discovery.” She quickly became known to movie goers
as “the Venezuelan Volcano,” the most beautiful “eruption” ever to adorn a
jungle scene.
In 1945 she
made one of her best motion pictures, Arabian
Nights, also for Universal International.
There seemed
to be no obstacles between Acquanetta and success in those early years of her
career. During the months that followed, she met and married Mexican
multi-millionaire Luciano Baschuk, settled down in a swank Beverly Hills home
and soon gave birth to a son, Sergio. She and Baschuk apparently had a happy
marriage, but when she filed suit for divorce and half of his fortune a few
years later, gossip columnists had a heyday.
The resulting
scandal caused Acquanetta to vanish from pictures for a while. Losing her suit
against the millionaire, Acquanetta remained carefully out of the Hollywood
social scene until 1950 when she married famous illustrator and painter Henry
Clive. Almost at the same time that happiness returned into her life, her
career too took another upswing, and Acquanetta signed contracts for several
new jungle films.
Limited
chiefly to decorative roles in jungle films, Acquanetta has never had a real
opportunity to act. Yet, today she rates among Hollywood’s biggest box-office
jungle women. As one admirer explained: “People never pay to see Acquanetta
act. They pay to see her.” And that may be the reason why, at 30, the former
co-ed glamour girl is making a sensational comeback.
Jet magazine, February 14,
1952, pp. 58-62.
Acquanetta
Cover Photo
Jet mazine, vol. 1, No. 16, February
14, 1952.
Published weekly by Johnson Publishing Co., Inc., at
1820 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago 16, Illinois. New York office at 55 West 42nd
Street.
Entered as second class matter at the Post Office at
Chicago, Ill., under the Act of March 3, 1879.
Entire contents copyright 1952, by Johnson Publishing
Co.
Subscriptions: $7 one year, Canada $9, Foreign $10.
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[ ανάρτηση 8 Δεκεμβρίου 2024 :
Acquanetta
Hollywood’s
Jungle Girl
Jet magazine February 1952
Gallery
of
Stars
Καλλονές
Θεάματα
Κινηματογραφικά ]
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