Queen of Spanish film who became nation's sweetheart

Carmen Sevilla appeared in more than 60 productions before reinventing herself as an affable staple of national television

- HARRISON SMITH

Carmen Sevilla, a beguiling actor, singer and dancer who became one of the biggest stars of mid-century Spanish cinema, then gained a wider audience playing Mary Magdalene – opposite matinee idol Jeffrey Hunter as Jesus – in the 1961 Hollywood epic King of Kings, has died aged 92.

Sevilla was a glamorous queen of Fifties and Sixties Spanish film, drawing comparisons to actor Ava Gardner with her sculpted features, flowing dark hair and high-arching eyebrows. Admirers nicknamed her “la novia de Espana”, the bride or sweetheart of Spain, and her fans included Pope John XXIII, who sent a congratulatory telegram when she married composer and conductor Augusto Alguero in 1961, at a wedding ceremony that reportedly attracted tens of thousands of people to the plaza outside the cathedral in Zaragoza.

Working primarily in Europe and Mexico, Sevilla appeared in more than 60 movies, starring in musicals including Imperial Violets (1952), with the Spanish tenor Luis Mariano, and dramas such as Vengeance (1958), which was directed by Juan Antonio Bardem and received an Oscar nomination for best foreign-language film.

Early in her career, she prided herself on playing chaste women such as the title character in Sister San Sulpicio (1952), about an Andalusian nun who is barred by her faith from marrying the man she loves (Jorge Mistral). Sevilla sought to maintain that decorous screen persona in her private life and largely steered clear of drama and gossip, as Hollywood columnist Joe Hyams discovered in 1956. Accompanying Sevilla to a film set near Madrid, he asked a local to explain the actor’s popularity. “In Spain,” he was told, “to be glamorous is to be without scandal. Carmen is untouched by scandal. She is also of the people. She is the perfect woman.”