The second daughter of 10 children, she was given the name María África in honor of her diplomat/businessman father's native land, the Spanish Isla de la Palma, off the coast of the African continent. At a young age, she taught herself to speak English, and in 1932 she married William McFeeters, an American banker working in her seaside home town of Barahona.

Her marriage lasted several years but in 1939 she ended up in New York City where her exotic looks landed her a job as a model. Determined to become a stage actress, she hired an agent and created a résumé that made her several years younger by listing her birth as 1917 in some instances and 1918 in others. Eventually she accepted an offer from a Hollywood film studio. Her screen image was crafted as that of a hot-blooded Latin seductress, playing characters dressed in exotic costumes and sparking jewels. Dubbed "The Queen of Technicolor," she made her film debut in 1940 opposite Johnny Mack Brown, marking a career that saw her much loved by audiences, usually in adventure films as the beautiful damsel in distress. Over her career, Maria Montez appeared in 26 films, 21 of which were made in North America and five in Europe.

While working in Hollywood, she met and married French actor Jean-Pierre Aumont (1911- 2001) who had to leave a few days after their wedding to serve in the Free French Forces fighting against Nazi Germany in the European Theatre of World War II. At the end of World War II, the couple had a daughter, Maria Christina, born in Hollywood in 1946. They then moved to a home in Suresnes, Île-de-France in the eastern suburb of Paris under the French Fourth Republic. There, Maria Montez appeared in several films and a play written by her husband. She also wrote 3 books, two of which were published, as well as penning a number of poems.

The 39-year-old Montez died after apparently suffering a heart attack and drowning in her bath. She was buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris where her tombstone reads her theatrical year of birth 1918-1951.

Much loved by the people of the Dominican Republic, in her birthplace of Barahona the city changed the name of an existing street to that bearing her name. Her legacy as the only great star from that country remains, and in 1996 the Aeropuerto Internacional María Montez (Maria Montez International Airport) began service in Barahona.

But it is as a camp heroine that Montez may best be remembered by contemporary audiences world-wide, and particularly in the dual role of Tollea/Naja in Cobra Woman. Her line, "Give me that Cobra Jewel" is cited and quoted regularly within the gay community, and an image of Montez in this film can be found on the cover of the latest paperback edition of Gore Vidal's Myra Breckinridge.

Filmography Boss of Bullion City (1940) The Invisible Woman (1940) Lucky Devils (1941) That Night in Rio (1941) Raiders of the Desert (1941) Moonlight in Hawaii (1941) South of Tahiti (1941) Bombay Clipper (1942) The Mystery of Marie Roget (1942) Arabian Nights (1942) White Savage (1943) Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1944) Follow the Boys (1944) Cobra Woman (1944) Gypsy Wildcat (1944) Bowery to Broadway (1944) Sudan (1945) Tangier (1946) The Exile (1947) Pirates of Monterey (1947) Siren of Atlantis (1948) Hans le marin (1948) Portrait d'un assassin (1949) Il Ladro di Venezia (1950) Amore e sangue (1951) La Vendetta del corsaro (1951) Adapted from the article Maria Montez, from Wikinfo, licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.