Soledad was well-received in Spanish film as well as international co-productions. The fragile beauty worked constantly, appearing in numerous movies (she played in over thirty altogether from 1960 to 1970). There were epic adventures (Ursus, The Castilian, Cervantes); horror films (Pyro, Sound of Horror); dramas (Canción de cuna, Currito de la Cruz); comedies (Eva 63, La familia y uno más); and even a spaghetti western (Sugar Colt). Her talents in singing and dancing were shown off in several movies as well as on stage in folkloric shows, and she also released a couple of pop records in the mid-1960s with some success. Soledad was a well-rounded girl who enjoyed writing poetry, painting, and reading books.
In 1964 Soledad had made a trio of films in Portugal. José Manuel da Conceiçao Simões, a Portuguese racecar driver, was a producer and also acted in them. In one of the films, Un día en Lisboa, they played a couple traveling between Estoril and Lisbon. After a secret courtship, the pair married in 1966. In April 1967 Soledad had her greatest triumph: a baby boy, Antonio. Her husband retired from racing and took a safer job in the auto industry. Both parents liked cars, and hoped little Tony would follow his father's footsteps. At this point Soledad retired from performing in order to raise her son. For nearly two years she did not work at all, but when she was offered a role in the western 100 Rifles she decided to return, hoping to receive a great role and become known outside of Spain. But she said if she hadn't truly triumphed with a couple of years, she would retire forever.
In this second phase of her career, Soledad took on a lot of work, appearing in several films and Spanish television shows. This is also when prolific legendary cult director Jess Franco was casting in Spain for his film Count Dracula. Remembering a girl who'd had a tiny cameo in his musical La reina del Tabarín nearly a decade before, Franco hired Soledad and managed to save her from becoming forgotten. She became his great star. Soledad was very happy and fulfilled and told friends that she was convinced that 1970 would be her biggest year. She made numerous films with Franco, including Eugénie de Sade, Vampyros Lesbos, She Killed in Ecstasy, and The Devil Came From Akasava. Due to the erotic nature of these films, Soledad took the pseudonym Susann Korda. According to Franco, she greatly enjoyed working with him and was transformed. Once a young, dimpled, bubbly starlet, she became the pale, haunted, mysterious icon of Franco's movies.
Soledad was a well-known figure in Spanish cinema, but it had always been her dream to be known outside of Spain as well. Her life was tragically cut short just as that was about to happen. However, after many years of obscurity, her legacy is spreading due to Jess Franco's popularity and the fact that many of her films are on DVD. Soledad Miranda has posthumously become the international celebrity she always wanted to be. Film expert Tim Lucas (of Video Watchdog) described Soledad as "a singular and truly irreplaceable personality... Whereas many of Franco's subsequent female leads have tended toward tawdry obviousness, weird eccentricity, or both, Soledad Miranda was alone in exuding an alluring, enigmatic quality that allowed her to remain provocative and unknowable in scenes that would have stripped any other actress of all mystery. In a phrase, she was to the Spanish horror cinema what Barbara Steele was to the Italian horror cinema of the 1960s: a uniquely compelling personality in whose face the shadings of fear and desire are equally discernible and tantalizing."
Jess Franco and Soledad Miranda
Soledad Miranda is generally regarded as legendary cult director Jess Franco's greatest discovery; her films with him are the
ones with lasting fame and are what have made her a star. They first worked together in 1960 in La reina del Tabarín,
a vehicle for singer/dancer Mikaela Wood. According to the book Immoral Tales, Franco met Soledad through Mikaela as
Soledad was one of a lively mob of "gypsies" living in Mikaela's house, where Franco visited frequently. According to Franco,
"Gypsy people in Andalucía in south of Spain are different... They are much more creative, elegant. Even in know how to
breathe." He said, "Soledad was a half-gypsy girl from Seville and she came into Madrid to look for a chance to work in
theatre or movies or something... Mikaela Wood – who herself was a normal half-gypsy girl – told me about her and asked me to
give her a little part and that's how I met Soledad... She came from a very low, low, low class family of half-gypsy people." According
to Franco, Soledad "never studied a school of theatre or cinema." The only art she'd formally studied was dance. Franco
described Soledad as "very spontaneous... She had no culture. No intellect but a primitive instinct. A very clear and clever
mind. She was just letting herself float through life. She was very sentimental and very carnal at the same time." He also
said "she made a lot of films with stupid parts" and that Spanish cinema "tried to turn her into the usual idiot, into a
doll." These statements, however, contradict many Spanish articles and interviews with Soledad, which speak of her
intelligence and her great love for reading, writing poems, and art. Furthermore, she had some great roles in Spanish cinema
that were not idiotic at all!
According to Franco, "She had a rather unfortunate and difficult life, which began with flamenco dancing
and led to small roles in films. It is very difficult for actors in Spain to achieve any kind of recognition. She eventually
gave up and married a Portuguese racing driver - a very nice fellow, by the way - and they had a child. She retired for a
while into her own private life but, in the end, she couldn't resist returning to the cinema." He said "She couldn’t resist
the temptation to make more movies because she had show business in her blood." Though he hadn't seen Soledad in years, when
Franco returned to Spain to film Count Dracula and was looking for his Lucy, he thought of Soledad because he saw her
in a film. Franco said, "I thought she was fantastic and everybody in the crew said, 'Oh, my God, she's wonderful, she's perfect'" and "I think Soledad was fantastic in my Dracula. Even Christopher [Lee] was very impressed. Then
I proposed to her to do different films with Artur Brauner in Germany. I wanted her... because she had this 'something'. And
she immediately accepted." Brauner told Franco, "She's fantastic. Don't lose her." When Franco asked her "about the problems
of nudity," she said she had no problem with it.
During the course of filming these Brauner productions, Franco said "She came out of her little world. Not
of her internal world, because she had an intense internal life, but of her external world. She discovered Europe, she went
to Paris, to London, to Berlin, to Rome. She began to discover cinema, because it’s difficult to know it if you stay in
Spain. She was completely dazzled, changed, and for the first time in her life, she felt complete, ready to become someone,
something else." Franco has also said, "When she began working in my films, it was like watching her undergo a
transformation. She told me it was the first time in her life she felt so fulfilled." Jess Franco told Tim Lucas that Soledad "seemed to come fully to life only on camera." Franco said that
she "had a personality which translated to the screen a lot of the things that she felt deep inside. But it translated in an
unconscious way. She was a funnel. It was very simple for me to explain things to her. She got it immediately because she was
like a funnel. I think she had this special thing that the stars have. It's not that you have to be a great actor but when
this actor enters the scene you don't look at anybody else – you only look at this girl or this guy. And she had this. She
was a very sweet and very nice person... It happened very often with the Spanish gypsy people... Those gypsies had a kind of
majesty and personal class. Who knows why? Because there's no reason for it. They work very well and they pose in a fantastic
way – a lot of them. Soledad was a maximum of this kind of person."
Franco made six films with Soledad and showed some footage to Artur Brauner. According to Franco, Brauner
told him, "I really want to hire this girl because she has a truly extraordinary potential, a personality, a presence, she
has it all." Brauner wanted to offer her the chance of a lifetime: a multi-year contract to star in big films with important
parts. "She was going to become a major star in Europe," Franco said. Soledad and her husband were on holiday in Lisbon.
Franco went there with producer Karl Heinz Mannchen and they met Soledad to give her the news: "I explain to her that this is
the offer, of Brauner. She was kind-of flying, full of happiness. So we took an appointment the next day to make the
contract... But we never met her because she died in the way... She got a crash, a terrible crash, of the car... She was
destroyed, in pieces. A monstrosity." Franco said, "When the hospital called me to break the news... I nearly passed out."
Soledad's shocking death left a deep void and was a real blow to everyone who knew her, particularly
Franco. He was visited by Soledad in his dreams and whatever she would tell him, he would act upon. Karl Heinz Mannchen
remembers changing a shooting location because of Franco's dreams. Franco has confirmed that bits of clothing that Soledad wore in a film have mysteriously found
their way into productions after she died. Franco summarized: "She left
behind an incredible legacy. All of the women who acted in my films after her were deeply affected by her legend... My
actors, my crew, and myself as well - we all had tremendous feelings for her. She still exists for us." He revealed his favorite films with Soledad: "I think she's very good in Eugénie, she's
wonderful in Eugénie... And She Killed in Ecstasy. In this film she's fantastic, she's strong and wonderful... I think those two are the best."
Short Soledad Miranda Bio
Soledad Miranda was a Spanish actress who appeared in many films in the 1960s. Her remarkable beauty and her tragic untimely death make her story the stuff of legend. She was born on July 9, 1943 in Seville, Spain. The daughter of Portuguese parents, she started her career when only eight years old as a flamenco dancer and singer. She made her film debut at age sixteen as a dancer. During the following years, the fragile beauty appeared in numerous comedies, dramas, B-movies, and horror films, mostly in Spain (over thirty films altogether from 1960 to 1970). Her biggest break came from legendary director Jess Franco, who cast Soledad in such cult classics as Count Dracula and Vampyros Lesbos. Soledad is generally regarded as Franco's greatest discovery. On August 18, 1970 Soledad was in a car accident on a highway in Portugal. She died hours later, survived by her husband (a former racecar driver) and young son. Ironically, before this tragic accident, a German film producer had offered her a contract which would have made her a great star. Soledad was destined to become a legend. Not until the years after her death has she become a cult starlet with fans all over the world now discovering the beautiful, doomed actress.
Soledad Miranda Facts
BIRTH NAME / PSEUDONYMS: Soledad Rendón Bueno / Soledad Miranda, Susann Korda, Susan Korday
BIRTH DATE / PLACE: July 9, 1943, Seville, Spain, in the barrio of Ciudad Jardin (around 1950 her family moved to the barrio of Triana and lived in El Corral de la Perla courtyard)
DEATH DATE / PLACE: August 18, 1970, Hospital of San José, Lisbon, Portugal (as the result of a car accident on the Costa del Sol expressway near the Hotel Estoril-Sol)
PARENTS: mother Mercedes, father Juan Antón (Portuguese; he worked in a fish warehouse, overseeing boats)
SIBLINGS: Ana, Armando, Carmen, Mercedes, and María Elena (two brothers and three sisters, all younger)
FAMOUS RELATIVE: singer/actress Paquita Rico (a first cousin of Soledad's father)
HUSBAND: José Manuel Simões (a Portuguese racecar driver; they married in 1966 in Lisbon, Portugal; he then retired from racing and took a high office in the auto industry)
CHILD: son José Antonio ("Tony"; born April 7, 1967)
GODDAUGHTER: Angelina Montes (niece of bullfighter Manuel Benítez "El Cordobés", christened in 1963)
EYES / HAIR: dark olive (almost black) / dark brown (sometimes dyed blonde)
HEIGHT / WEIGHT / WAIST: 5 feet 5 inches (1,66 meters) / 106 pounds (48 kilos) / 21 inches (55 cm)
LANGUAGES SPOKEN: Spanish, Portuguese, English, and some French, Italian, and German
FAVORITE COLOR / VICE / FILM: Blue / Smoking / Gone With the Wind
FAVORITE ACTRESSES: Ingrid Bergman, Sophia Loren, Nuria Torray
FAVORITE MUSIC / BAND / SINGER: popular and classical / Up With People! / Mary Hopkin
HOBBIES: singing, dancing, reading, studying languages, painting, drawing, writing poetry, watching movies, swimming, horseback riding, snow skiing, shopping, family, cooking, doll collecting (she had over 200)
PERSON SHE MOST ADMIRED: Alexander Fleming (he discovered penicillin)
DISLIKED: travelling by boat
PROFESSIONAL DEBUT / FILM DEBUT: flamenco dancer, age eight / dancer in La bella Mimí, age sixteen
FAVORITE PERFORMANCE GENRE: dramatic film
FAVORITE PERFORMANCE GIVEN: in Currito de la Cruz (she affirmed this throughout her career)
ROLE SHE'D MOST LIKE TO PLAY: Scarlett O'Hara (from Gone With the Wind)
