Father Geek here with the sad news that 4 time "Entrega del Ariel" winner Katy Jurado has died at her home in Cuernavaca, Mexico. The Ariel is Mexico's Oscar and is awarded each year by the
Premio de la Academia Mexicana de Artes y Ciencias Cinematográficas. But Katy was not just honored in Mexico, in 1953 she took home the Best Supporting Actress Award at the Golden Globes for her performance as Gary Cooper's former lover in HIGH NOON. Then in 1955 she received an Oscar nomination for her fantastic work in Edward Dmytryk's
BROKEN LANCE. She also was honored with an Alma nomination in 1999 for HI-LO COUNTRY, and sometime during her long screen career she received a Star on Hollywood's legendary "Walk of Fame."
Here's what appeared on the Reuters wire...
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican film star Katy Jurado, who also appeared in U.S. classics including "High Noon" and was the only Mexican actress to ever garner an Oscar nomination, died on Friday in the central state of Cuernavaca, family members said.
"She died when her heart stopped beating at eight in the morning," her nephew, Oscar Jurado, told Reuters. He added that a nurse who had been caring for the actress, whose real name was Maria Cristina Jurado, found her dead in her house.
Jurado, who was 74, appeared in more than 20 Mexican films since the 1940s and earned the Mexican film industry's highest prize, the Ariel award, for her role in EL BRUTO.
The actress also filmed movies in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. In the United States in the 1950s she appeared in "High Noon" with Gary Cooper, and in "Broken Lance," for which she received an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress. She was married to U.S. actor Ernest Borgnine from 1958 to 1963.
According to Mexican radio station Infored, Jurado's funeral will take place in Cuernavaca, but her remains will be taken to Mexico City so fans and Mexico's artist community can pay homage to her at the National Association of Actors headquarters.
Father Geek back again, Katy was the second Mexican star whose name I ever made a mental note of. (The first was San Antonio's Pedro Gonzales Gonzales) I had seen all her American films as a kid in the 50's and had viewed BROKEN LANCE, SAN ANTONE, and HIGH NOON multible times each at SA's wonderful and huge downtown Motion Picture Palaces, The Aztec and The Majestic, sooooo her (as Leonard Maltin once described them)
Smoldering, sensual, fieryeyed Mexican goodlooks captured my attention for good even at the youthful ages of 8 and 9. Those charms were never more on display than when she shared top billing with Gina Lollobrigida, Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis in Carol Reed's 1956 circus thriller TRAPEZE. Yet another of her movies that I visited time and time again on the big screen.
As a San Antonio high schooler I enjoyed her in two of my most favorite westerns from those years Alan Ladd's THE BADLANDERS and Brando's uber cool ONE-EYED JACKS. Later as a film student at the University of Texas I spotted her during a Budd Boetticher retrospective in his 1951 flick, THE BULLFIGHTER AND THE LADY. I introduced Harry to her charms at the same age I had first noticed her when I took him to PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID in 1978. Over the next couple of years we would see that Sam Peckinpah epic probably a dozen times at Austin Drive-ins double & triple featured with films like The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs, and Cross of Iron. Then in 1984 Harry's sister would meet Katy when I took them to see UNDER THE VOLCANO in Dallas during one of our post-divorce weekend visitations, we would repeat that bit of cinema excellence several times at Dallas-Fort Worth Drive-ins.
So the whole Knowles Family are fans of Katy's decades of film work both in the USA and abroad, and we'll miss her, but not the work, its right here, in our lives... forever.
To see a pretty good list of her international film credits Just Click Right Here
