Born 1908 as Paula Marie Osterman in Hermosillo, Mexican-American actress Raquel Torres played a Polynesian beauty in White Shadows in the South Seas (1928), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s first feature fully synchronized with music and effects. She also became the first person to have her voice recorded as part of “a new system in the selection of motion picture talent”.
Torres continued the tropical island pace with The Sea Bat (1930) and Aloha (1931) playing various island girls and biracial beauty types. Also in 1931, she had a vaudeville act in New York. On Broadway, she played Teresa in Adam Had Two Sons (1932).
In her last year of filming, she played a sexy foil to the raucous comedy teams of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey in So This Is Africa (1933) and the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup (1933). It was Torres to whom Groucho delivered his classic line: “I could dance with you until the cows came home. On second thought, I’d rather dance with the cows until you came home.”
Torres abruptly retired following her marriage to businessman Stephen Ames in 1935. Her husband later produced postwar “B” films but she never returned to the film industry even with her husband’s "in" connection.
Torres died from a heart attack in 1987 in Malibu, California. She was 78 years old. Take a look at these beautiful photos to see portraits of a young Raquel Torres in the 1920s and 1930s.
What a gorgeous lady!...Just crazy, that she dropped out of movies by 1935...she was still in her 20s!...Apparently she married Jon Hall--her 2nd husband--in 1955. Not much info on this babe!
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