Katy Jurado Sure Gave Lloyd Bridges a Good Talking-To

Welcome to 2023, everyone! 

 

In the first Nine Pockets installment of the new year, we'll be going back exactly 70 years, to a set that Topps released in 1953 called Who-Z-At Star? 

 

It's an 80-card set that features many remarkable actors, actresses, singers, and musicians from the era: Clark Gable, Elizabeth Taylor, Lionel Barrymore, Gene Kelly, Slim Pickens, Ava Gardner, and Errol Flynn, to name a few.

 

And here's the focus of today's post: actress Katy Jurado.

 

 

 

Jurado became a crush for me as soon as I saw her in the classic 1952 Western called High Noon, starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly. In the film, she plays a beautiful and tough saloon owner named Helen Ramirez who, among other things, gives a young Deputy Marshal named Harvey Pell a good stern talking-to about manhood in the Wild West. (Pell was played by Lloyd Bridges.) 

 

The role earned Jurado a Golden Globe award for Best Supporting Actress. Have a look:

 

She's a stunner inside and out, right? 

 

Jurado played memorable characters in other films of the decade as well, such as Bullfighter and the Lady (1951), Arrowhead (1953), Broken Lance (1954), and The Racers (1955). She also had a love for Mexican cinema, and devoted as much of her time, if not more, to starring in Mexican films as she did Hollywood films.

 

Here are some quotes from Jurado that help define who she was:

[On High Noon] I am very proud to make this picture because I look and act like a Mexican—not imitation. Some Mexicans go to Hollywood and lose their career in Mexico, because they play imitation. I don't want this to happen to me.

 

Movies will have to change—they just show too much. Sex is supposed to be what people feel and think. If you show it, there's no sex. It's just like women's skirts and see-through dresses. They got shorter and shorter and were so ugly until they came out with the maxi. People get tired of that sort of thing.

 

[When asked if she preferred Hispanic men] Nationality has nothing to do with being a man. What counts is the way he brushes your hand, the way he looks at you, and the little things he does and says.

I am not afraid to play mothers. Some of these little girls are afraid to admit they are getting older. I am not afraid. You can't put your finger in the sun and stop time.

 

Women can have a career, but the real career is to be a woman. It's beautiful to be a woman and give birth.

 

 

There's definitely some food for thought in those quotes, all these years later. And I'm happy to have a Katy Jurado card in my collection. 

 

Here's what the card back looks like. 

 

 

 

They're pretty well done. I might have to pick up a few other cards from the set, too.

 

As for where this card came from, I've got to thank Mr. Jon Pennysleeves.

 

He saw the card on my want list at TCDB, and sent it to me as a RAK. Or, more specifically, a return RAK for a book that I'd sent him shortly before. You can learn more about the book, which documents Theodore Roosevelt's adventures through the Brazilian wilderness, at another one of Jon's blogs, My Kind of Nonsense. The blog—and the book—are both worth a read, for sure.

Jon, thank you so much for the surprise gift. It's the new star of my vintage collection. If I can get down to Tennessee one day, maybe we'll meet up and watch High Noon, or explore the Tennesean wilderness like Colonel Roosevelt did in Brazil—just with a little less danger and difficulty, thank you very much.