Raquel Torres cinema card: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

Hand-colored cinema card for actress Raquel Torres with a short biography on the back. Mexican-American actress Raquel Torres was born Paula Marie Osterman on 11 November 1908 in Hermosillo, Mexico. After finishing her education at a Los Angeles convent, Torres began acting in films at age 19. In 1928, she starred as the leading lady opposite Monte Blue in the MGM film White Shadows in the South Seas. This was MGM’s first film to synchronize music, dialogue, and sound effects. The film also won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography that year. The following year, Torres starred in The Desert Rider and The Bridge of San Luis Rey, which won the Academy Award for Art Direction. Her most remembered role is that of Vera Marcal in the Marx Brothers 1933 film Duck Soup. Torres also starred in other comedies such as the 1933 film So This is Africa with Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey. She died of a heart attack on 10 august 1987 at the age of 78.

This card belongs to a set titled "Cinema Stars: A Series of 30 Hand Coloured Pictures" which features popular film actresses from the 1930s. Collectible cards like this were very popular during the 1920s and 1930s, and they were distributed by various brands in both tobacco and food products. In the 1920s, Cavanders Ltd. also released the following sets of cards: "Beauty Spots of Great Britain," "Foreign Birds," and "River Valleys."

Materials, dates and provenance

• date made: 1934
• depicted (sitter): Torres, Raquel
• Object Name: card
• Object Name: collectible card
• Physical Description: paper (overall material)
• Physical Description: paint (overall material)
• Physical Description: ink (overall material)
• Measurements: overall: 2 5/8 in x 1 7/16 in; 6.6675 cm x 3.65125 cm
• place made: United Kingdom: England, London
• Subject: Movie
• Subject: Actors
• ID Number: 2014.0117.28
• accession number: 2014.0117
• catalog number: 2014.0117.28
• Data Source: National Museum of American History

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of American History through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed.