Conchita Montenegro Portrait Treatment 2011

1. Montenegro first worked professionally as a model for the famous painter Ignacio Zuloaga y Zabaleta. During her childhood she learnt classical and Spanish dance. She was credited with revolutionizing the presentation of Spanish dances. She attained theatrical fame in Hollywood, France, and Germany by the time she was thirteen years old.

2. She came to Hollywood in June 1930 with a contract at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She was seventeen years old and could not speak a word of English. Montenegro learned enough English in three months to play the leading female part in Never the Twain Shall Meet (1931), with Leslie Howard, at the age of eighteen.

3. In August 1931, she was aboard the Southern Pacific Argonaut passenger train. The train was wrecked near Yuma, Arizona and killed two trainmen. Luckily for Montenegro she was in the second section along with actors Warner Baxter and Edmund Lowe. The forty people among the film company were unharmed when the second section did not crash into the wrecked first section.

4. Montenegro was sometimes featured in stage shows which coincided with the screening of film premieres. One such instance was the premiere of A Passport To Hell, which starred Elissa Landi. The movie debuted at the Loew's Kings Theater in August 1932. Montenegro provided the vaudeville entertainment beforehand.

5. Following a rare interview with Montenegro shortly before her death, Spanish author José Rey-Ximena claims that British actor Leslie Howard used her to get close to Spanish dictator Franco after being given the special mission by Winston Churchill. She claimed that she used her husband's influence to secure a meeting between the British actor and the Spanish dictator. "Thanks to him, at least in theory, Spain was persuaded to stay out of the war," Mr Rey-Ximena went on to claim of Howard. According to the author, Montenegro had an affair with Howard after the pair starred together in the 1931 film Never the Twain Shall Meet.