Lonely end to Brando romance

SHE found love with superstar Marlon Brando but their marriage almost ended the career of Mexican-born actress Movita.

History: Publicity still from 1935 film Mutiny on the Bounty showing Movita Castaneda as Tehani.

When old Hollywood wanted a dark haired, slightly exotic looking actress to play a Polynesian, a Latino or even a Native American, there were several names to choose from if they couldn’t get Dorothy Lamour. One of them was a stunning brunette known simply as Movita.

When actor Marlon Brando was looking for a dark haired, slightly exotic woman in the 1950s he also chose Movita. Their on-again off-again romance culminated in marriage and two children. When the marriage ended it almost ended her career. Although Movita had been acting since the 1930s and would continue acting into her 60s she would forever be known as ­Brando’s ex-wife.

Movita, who died last week, was the stage name of Maria Luisa Castaneda. The year of her birth is sometimes listed as 1916, IMDB says 1917 but Castaneda claimed that when she was 14 MGM put her age up to 19 in her studio bio, making her birth year 1921.

She is said to have been born on a train heading from Mexico to Arizona. Her parents settled in California where they looked for work on cotton farms.

She took to singing and dancing as a child, raising money by singing in the street where she was discovered in 1932 playing as part of a duo named Rosita and Moreno.

Signed to RKO Studios in 1933 her first film jobs involved dubbing Spanish language versions of Hollywood films and as a singer on the soundtrack of Flying Down To Rio, the film that first paired Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Castaneda sang the song Carioca, the first song that Rogers and Astaire danced to on film.

It wasn’t long before her face was as in demand as her voice and she landed her first major role as Tehani, daughter of Tahitian chief Hitihiti in the 1935 Clark Gable and Charles Laughton version of Mutiny On The Bounty. Having changed her age MGM also gave her the name Movita, which they thought sounded Polynesian or at least exotic.

It led to some typecasting as a South Sea islander in films such as Captain Calamity, The Hurricane and Paradise Island, followed by Latina roles, like Rosita in Rose Of The Rio Grande and even some “Indian maiden” roles.

In 1939 she met Irish boxer turned actor and singer Jack Doyle. Known as the “Gorgeous Gael,” he was on the rebound from his relationship with Dodge car heiress Delphine Dodge, which had been ended by Dodge’s family. Doyle wooed and wed Movita in a matter of months. They formed a stage partnership that wowed audiences in England and Ireland, but their offstage partnership was a mess. Doyle was an unredeemable womaniser and boozer. When Movita caught him dallying with a woman in a taxi outside their home in Ireland, he dragged her inside by the hair and knocked her out. She had a miscarriage and the couple separated. Movita returned to Hollywood and tried to resume her film career.

There are conflicting stories about where she first met Brando, some say in 1951 when he was in Mexico researching his Mexican accent for the 1952 film Viva Zapata. The pair were romantically linked for some years but in 1957 he married another seemingly exotic brunette named Anna Kashfi, aka Joanne O’ Callaghan, an actress who controversially posed as ­Indian despite having British parents. When that marriage ended in 1959 he returned to Movita.

They married in 1960, but the marriage was kept quiet until it was forcibly brought up in a court case over alimony payments to Kashfi. There have been claims that Brando and Movita never lived together as husband and wife, but they had two children; Sergio (Miko) in 1961 and Rebecca in 1966.

In 1962 Brando had met Tahitian woman Tarita Teriipaia on the set of his version of Mutiny On The Bounty and his marriage to Movita was annulled in 1968, on the grounds she was still legally married to Doyle.

Brando is said to have left Castaneda little, even taking the family Mercedes and leaving her with a battered station wagon. She got work delivering auto parts and later took minor TV roles to raise his children. In the 1980s she had a recurring role in the glitzy Dallas spin-off soap opera Knots Landing. It was her last screen role.

Not much has been heard of Castaneda over the last 25 years until she was hospitalised recently for a neck injury. She died on February 12 and is survived by her children Miko and Rebecca.