Míriam Colón Valle (néeColón y Quiles; August 20, 1936[2] – March 3, 2017) was a Puerto Rican actress. She was the founder and director of New York City's Puerto Rican Traveling Theater. Beginning her career in the early 1950s, she performed on Broadway and on television. She appeared in several Hollywood films including The Appaloosa, The Possession of Joel Delaney, Backroads, Gloria and Lone Star and One-Eyed Jacks.[3]
Colon appeared on television programs from the 1960s to the 2010s, including Sanford and Son and Gunsmoke. She is best known as "Mama Montana", the mother of Al Pacino's title character in Scarface.[3] In 2014, she received the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama.[4] In 1993, Colón received the Obie award for her theatre career, she also received several ACE awards.[3] She died of complications from a pulmonary infection on March 3, 2017.
Early life
Míriam (or Mírian) Colón y Quiles was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico[5] to Teodoro Colón De Jesus and Josefa Quiles Burgos, a seamstress. In the 1940s, her parents divorced, and her mother moved the family to a public housing project called Residencial Las Casas in San Juan. She was an admirer of accomplished Puerto Rican actor José Ferrer.[6]
Colón attended Román Baldorioty de Castro High School in Old San Juan, where she took part in plays.[5] She discovered her interest in theater while performing in a school rendition of La Azotea at the age of 15.[7] Her first drama teacher, Marcos Colón (no relation) believed in her talent, and helped her gain permission to observe the students in the drama department of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR).[3] She was a good student in high school and was awarded scholarships to the Dramatic Workshop and Technical Institute and Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio in New York City.[8] In New York, she befriended Dean Zayas, another young Puerto Rican actor and future director.[9]
Colón travelled to New York at the age of 18 along her mother. There she met a Puerto Rican director named Roberto Rodríguez Suárez, who gave him a script for an adaptation of René Márquez's La Carreta.[6] The play debuted in a local church, with the author in attendance.[6]
In New York, she worked in theater and later landed a role on the soap operaGuiding Light. She attended a performance of René Marqués' La Carreta (The Oxcart). She was inspired to form the first Hispanic theater group, with the help of La Carreta's producer, Roberto Rodrígue. It was called "El Nuevo Círculo Dramatico".[13]
In 1962, she was featured as the co-star in a teleplay written by Frank Gabrielsen, and produced for the TV series The DuPont Show of the Week. The title of the hour-long episode is "The Richest Man in Bogota", airing on June 17, 1962.[15] It starred Lee Marvin as Juan de Núñez, and Miriam Colón as "Marina". (Her character was called Medina-Saroté in the original H.G. Wells story, The Country of the Blind).
She co-starred as Anita Chavez in the film Thunder Island (1963). That year she also guest starred on Gunsmoke, playing a Comanche woman who marries a white settler. The pair must deal with discrimination and the racial hatred of others in this episode, entitled “Shona” (S8E22). In 1966, Colón sponsored a translation of La Carreta along then-husband George P. Edgar.[7] A young Raúl Juliá attendee the auditions, later starring along Lucy Boscana in the play directed by Lloyd Richards.[7]
Colón has appeared in Puerto Rican productions, including the mini-series El Callejón de los Cuernos.[3] In 1979, she starred alongside fellow Puerto Rican actors José Ferrer, Raúl Juliá, and Henry Darrow in Life of Sin.[3] She portrayed Isabel la Negra, an historic Puerto Rican brothel owner. In 1983, she was cast as the mother of Tony Montana in Scarface. Colón has said that she based her performance on her own mother.[16] She was cast as María in the 1999 film Gloria, starring Sharon Stone.
She continued to perform on stage and appeared in several plays including Las Troyanas, La Casa de Bernarda Alba and Floating Alba. [6] Her television career continued with apearances in Dr. Kildare, LA Law and NYPD Blue.[6]
In 2013, she was cast in the role of Ultima, a New Mexico Hispanic healer, in the movie Bless Me, Ultima, based on the novel by Rudolfo Anaya.[17] She appeared in Season 1 of the TV series Better Call Saul in 2015, as Abuelita.
In the late 1960s, Colón founded The Puerto Rican Traveling Theater company on West 47th street in Manhattan, New York. The company presents Off-Broadway productions onsite and also goes on tour. During her tenure, PRTT focused on Puerto Rican plays.[7] She was the director of the company and she appeared in the following PRTT productions:[18]
The play The Ox Cart (La Carreta), written by Puerto Rican dramatist René Marqués, was first produced in 1953. It was directed by Roberto Rodríguez and starred Colón. The success of the play allowed Rodríguez and Colón to form the first permanent Hispanic theatrical group, and for the group to have its own space, Teatro Arena, located in Manhattan on Sixth Avenue between 43rd and 44th street.[21]
Recognition
National Medal of Arts
In 1993, Colón received an Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theater. In 2000, she received the HOLA Raúl Juliá Founders Award, presented by the Hispanic Organization of Latin Actors (HOLA). Colón's biography, Míriam Colón: Actor and Theater Founder, was written by Mayra Fernandez in 1994. In 2014, President Barack Obama awarded Colón the National Medal of Arts for her contributions as an actress. The citation reads as follows: "Ms. Colón has been a trailblazer in film, television, and theater, and helped open doors for generations of Hispanic actors."[4]
Personal life
Colón was married to George Paul Edgar from 1966 until his death in 1976.[16] In 1987, she married actor and physician Freddy Valle, with whom he continued living at New York.[6]
She was an avid collector of ancestral arts including pre-Columbian, tribal African, historic Native American, and other tribal art. She collected Mid-East artifacts, abstract paintings, and modern sculpture. A Pablo Picasso sketch she owned, she signed with a crayon, and it was auctioned for $6500 on June 16, 2019. At her death, she owned at least six signed movie posters of Al Pacino's Scarface and at least seven signed Scarface soundtrack albums.[22]
↑Rolón, Rosalba (March 9, 2017). "Miriam Colón: Opening Doors". American Theatre. Theatre Communications Group. Retrieved December 26, 2022.
Bibliography
Rivera, Miluka (2010). Legado Puertorriqueño en Hollywood: Famosos y Olvidados. Kumaras Center for the Arts and Etiquette. ISBN9780578069937.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
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