Block Party

Financed by Jaime del Amo's Cantabria Films for Columbia during 1938, this forgotten motion picture was his second and last production, after Edgar G. Ulmer's "La vida bohemia" in 1937, for which Del Amo had hired several actors who also appeared in "Verbena trágica". Directed by Charles Lamont, after working for Mack Sennett and before he made his cult western "Salome, Where She Danced" (1945), this film is demonstrative of the "Hispanic cinema" made by Hollywood for the Spanish-speaking markets. The dialogues were by the Spanish journalist Miguel de Zárraga and Jean Bart wrote the script, which, according to film historian García de Dueñas, is a typical tearjerker. The cast included Luana Alcañiz, in her last Hollywood movie before she settled in México; Mexican star Fernando Soler, playing a Spanish boxer; the Basque-Philippine Juan Torena; Pilar Arcos, Cuban singer married to Spanish actor Fortunio Bonanova, with whom she moved to Spain, until 1936 when the Spanish Civil War forced them to leave Europe; and the Spanish actors Romualdo Tirado and Carlos Villarías, who replaced Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula in the Spanish version of the Universal production.