Maria-Rosa Rodriguez

[beutelwolf]

Dolce Vita no 6
IMDb link

German mags:


Er, September 1964


Party no 2

[Joszka]

Born November 7th 1942, in Quito, Ecuador.
Miss Ecuador in 1960, actress then mostly in France & Italy.
Also known as Yana Choury or Toty Rodriguez.
IMDB.

[Joszka]

"Ciné revue" n°40, October 1st 64.

[Joszka]

"Stop" n°55, 1966.

[Joszka]

"Cinémonde" n°1669, November 29 1966.

[Findcandor]

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I was doing research for another post, and then this humdinger of a face popped up (not what's seen above; it was a similar humdinger). So the spirit of Cliff Robertson, from Brian De Palma's Obsession, strangely possessed me. I had to dig into who this sexy señorita was. (As a side note, I had composed most of what is below, only I got sidetracked by other ladies while performing the research, and the VEF "token" expired. I then needed to start over, dash it all.)



Maria-Rosa Rodriguez was first brought up ten years ago by valiant VEF'er Beutelwolf, although mistakenly placed in the "Mexican Classic Stars" thread (Maria-Rosa is an Ecuadorian), and a fine semi-nude composite of the lady began the post. (As seen below; another presented photo turned out to be one I had come across, which I will later put up anyway.)

Originally Posted by beutelwolf

Maria-Rosa's next exposure on this forum boiled down to four posts, all from this "South & Central American celebrities - Classic" thread (which I'm visiting for the first time), and all by another VEF powerhouse, Joszka, who provided the essentials in his post Numero Uno, from 2015.

Originally Posted by Joszka

Born November 7th 1942, in Quito, Ecuador.
Miss Ecuador in 1960, actress then mostly in France & Italy.
Also known as Yana Choury or Toty Rodriguez.
IMDB.

Directly underneath that post was Joszka's Numero Dos post, and since Maria-Rosa penetrated his brain (she possessed him, too; this is all very disturbing), directly underneath was his post Numero Tres. (Ergo, three posts in a row; it was non-stop Maria-Rosa.) This witch kept enchanting poor Joszka, because he returned a year later with his final Numero Quatro post, and then her spell was finally broken. (Warning; anyone who keeps reading from this point on does so at his own risk.)

Originally Posted by Joszka

............................
"Cinémonde" n°1669, November 29, 1966, and "Ciné revue" n°40, October 1, 1964, repectively.
Second image from Post #58.

I have reproduced two magazine article scans from Joszka's Numeros Dos and Cuatro, as seen above, since reference will be made to both. The first article features an interview with the lady (the subtitle reading, "Luck and Disadvantages of Being a Beautiful Girl" to give you a heads-up on where we will be going), and she herself has corrected the "1942" birthday that has been presented among the "essentials" above, also widely reproduced throughout the web.



Her date of birth is August 28, 1941 (and she was being honest, because a "sexpot" actress would normally be subtracting a year, not adding an additional one; the IMDb, by the way, rejected what should have been proof positive). Allow me to highlight the two images from the second article:



She looks damned sexy, doesn't she? (Great facial expressions.) These are from The Looters (1967), A.K.A. Estouffade à la Caraïbe, a French caper film where the dashing James Bond-like hero (Frederick Stafford) is a criminal who hasn't been caught, and gets talked into doing a job for the beautiful Jean Seberg, daughter of the leader behind a rebel group wishing to overthrow a dictator, and to steal his gold; this is where Frederick Stafford's ace burgling talents come into play.



Photos of Stafford frolicking with our lady behind-the-scenes came from Getty images, and will be decorating the post below, as well. (A year ago, I prepared a look at Jean Seberg; boy, was she lovely. She died tragically, officially a suicide, but it appears funny business was involved. Interestingly, her co-star from this film also died prematurely — from a plane crash — in the same year of 1979.)



Let's put up more biographical information. The photo above was (and still is) being peddled on Ebay, and the seller claimed had originated from a French press agency, identifying our performer as an "Ecuadorian singer, theatre and film actress in Ecuador and France." Yes, she is playing what appears to be a musical instrument, so it's interesting her role as "singer" trumped the rest.



The second article featuring the "Looters" photos also highlighted this musical side of hers. Before venturing into the world of cinema, she was "nicknamed the nightingale of Lima," and the sentence ends by comparing her voice to a moonlit paradise. Why an Ecuadorian came to be regarded so highly in the Peruvian capital becomes a question, but we'll put that aside. We also are privy to how an Inca princess ancestor of hers confronted their conquistador oppressors from Spain, and the article ends with "Viva Maria-Rosa" for, I guess, embodying a similar warrior spirit.



As Joszka mentioned, she became Miss Ecuador in 1960, and then she also competed in that year's Miss World contest. In the interview from above, Maria-Rosa stated she was "offered a trip to London" from the win, and a follow-up trip to Paris led to "Love at first sight," leading to efforts of attempting to stay in that city, and stay she did. The Ebay bio mentions this, and adds that she "was offered and rejected a part in a movie with her favorite actor Gregory Peck." (If Peck was her favorite, and also given how the film was likely an attention-getting U.S. production, why would she have rejected the part? Okay, we'll put that one aside, too.)




There is a photograph (second one from top) of that interview page (from the "Quote" box above), and if you're like me, and you can't resist damsels in distress, I thought that shot called for a closer look; you may now see it in detail, directly above.



The photo from the article was from A Taste for Women (1964), A.K.A. Aimez-vous les femmes?, a black comedy with actor Guy Bedos trying to find his lady love (played by the innocent-looking Sophie Daumier, who has a VEF thread, and was reportedly Bedos's lover in real life), but gets caught up with two gangs looking for a drug-filled statue, with one being a group of cannibals whose dish of choice happens to be beautiful women. (This is the point where I put aside this post that later vanished, because the description brought to mind the notorious Blood Sucking Freaks, and I started work on a couple of that film's actresses for the "Classic American Lesser Known Celebrities" thread.)



The screenwriter was Roman Polanski, so the film's weirdness may be more inviting, maybe having a Fearless Vampire Killers bent. A poor quality print has been put up on YouTube, which is where these frame grabs are from.


Guy Bedos is at left in the last shot, and the other two are having too good a time enjoying our lady's predicament.

So Maria-Rosa is laid out on this wheel for the amusement of club patrons, and somehow her dress keeps getting slashed. Naturally, the kink value of a lovely lady slowly being denuded in public is hard to beat. As luck would have it, nothing is exposed before the curtains are closed. (I know it was 1964, but the film was French, for heaven's sake. There should have been more skin, I say.) Now hold that thought regarding this film, because A Taste for Women actually turned out to be significant for our prurient purposes.



Now let's get back to the interview, as we learn more about Maria-Rosa. She seems to have expressed a preference for theater over movies, and volunteered how she has few friends (although she appreciated the ones she had), preferring to spend her non-working time reading, and listening to records. She also revealed her interest in comedy, studying under some French guy. Ms. Rodriguez turned philosopher at one point: "I do not believe that we can be happy permanently, but that happiness is only made up of small moments."


The second photo above is being sold on Amazon for thirty dollars,
and is identified with the name of her alter ego, Yana Chouri,
"holding a flower. March 27, 1963."

The part that is of greater interest was her views on nudity, and the following is from the last section of the article (under the subheading, in bold, "We use female nudity too much"). While stating that this does not mean she would be behaving as Joan of Arc, and that nudity is suitable when "artistic" (nixing exercises that are dirty or pornographic, or gratuitous), she revealed, "This systematic exploitation of female charms in our work shocked me a lot."

Article's end (and you'll have to examine for a better translation, I'm afraid): "I agreed to pose practically naked, although not for long; I regretted it after having done it, because I had let myself be convinced by weakness, and also by believing in advertising arguments which ultimately smells fallacious, because these types of too sexy photos end up giving a pejorative label to an unknown woman."

What was she referring to? The semi-nudes, as of the kind put up by Beutelwolf? The word "photos" was specified, implying that she was griping about modeling assignments, as with this shot from below that I found, which was also used in Beutelwolf's post:


The photograph is from The Big Scare (1964), A.K.A.
La grande frousse, a thriller, comedy and fantasy/horror
film rolled into one, about an inspector who arrives at a
small town to catch a dangerous criminal, only to find the
townspeople are afraid of being at risk from a monster.

The photos below are from a film that has a reputation in France, What's Cooking in Paris (1966), A.K.A. Le Grand Restaurant.





The main character is a tyrannical restaurant manager (played by a beloved comedian named Louis de Funès, nicknamed "Fufu," appreciated for his ability to contort his face, among his other talents) who mistreats his employees while kowtowing to the establishment's rich clientele.



"Fufu" becomes a suspect when a visiting dignitary is kidnapped; much as an innocent lead from a Hitchcock film, he has to deal with both the police and the bad guys, members of a revolutionary group from South America.


Looking a bit like Mary Tyler Moore... well, she looks like somebody, anyway.

The four photos above are frame grabs from the film's trailer (which adorns top of Maria-Rosa's IMDb page), as Maria-Rosa drives while attempting to outrun the bad guys.



Maria-Rosa holds a gun to Fufu's head at one point, and is South American, so these clues may help with getting a bead on her character in this film. (On the surface, she would appear to be one of the bad guys, but since she is getting away from them, maybe not.) Nevertheless, the actress was cast in a very important role for what appears to have become a cult comedy, for which she deserves credit.


Maria-Rosa Rodriguez appeared in two 1965 episodes of Foncouverte, a French TV
series, in the role of "Gypsy Girl" (Photo: Aveleyman.com.) The second photo is from
The Gorillas (1964), a comedy about airport luggage handlers who attempt to locate
missing suitcases.


Now it's time for the "big finish." While going through A Taste for Women that was put up on YouTube to grab frames from, I came across this very lovely looking lady who sits at the table of the hero (again, played by Guy Bedos), and he asks whether she is the love he's looking for (she was wearing a mask, but couldn't he tell?), and after she removes the mask, he says, "You're the martyr." I wondered who the woman was, so I started going through the cast list, but the one onscreen didn't match the few other actresses. (I ruled out Maria-Rosa, since the curtains had closed on her as she was tied to the wheel, her dress in tatters, and it didn't seem she would have had enough time to look pretty again.)


The kind of profile that calls for a hootenanny.

Then there was a scene where the mystery lady and the hero went off to bed (it turned out the lady's plan was to entrap the hero), but she does remove her clothing, and although she was in the shadows, some genuine nudity was afoot. After her cronies break in to take the hero away, there was this close shot below, and (so that you may compare) next to it are photos of the actress we are exploring. Why, this was Maria-Rosa!

.......

How intriguing, after she was revealed to have displayed her negative feelings about film nudity (unless "artistic," of course), while also expressing her regret for having taken off her clothes, that Maria-Rosa actually appeared nude. (The article had a photo of this film; could she have been referring to the part she played here?) Remember, to boot, this occurred during the relatively repressed sixties (where cinematic nudity was rare, especially in the earlier part of that decade).


Now is that, or is that not, one succulent nipple in the last shot? Let's have a hand count and vote.

After settling in France, Maria-Rosa got going with her screen career in 1962. She lined up an impressive string of credits until 1969, all French productions (with a 1967 detour, appearing in three episodes of an Ecuadorian TV series), culminating in a 1969 spy film that was Mexican, regarding a James Bond-type up against a group of beautiful bad girls. (She may have been one, if this view of her getting shot in that film is an indication.) It's fair to assume this year marked her return to South America. She returned to the silver screen twenty years later to act in a German-Ecuadorian co-production, and her next three ventures until 2019 (impressively, pretty recent) were all Ecuadorian movies. The lady is eighty-two today.


In Maria-Rosa's later years



If I may go off-topic, the thread featured a post by Member "Norman's Photos," whom I had never encountered before, and I see he is no longer all that active on VEF, but I appreciated how there was one among us who manages a hotel, and whose hobby involves stuffing birds. During a testy exchange, I see Wendigo once gently chastized Norman: "By the way you forgot to change the sheets in cabin 1 and the shower curtain is torn."











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