Vivacious brunette singer and actress Lina Romay was born in New York
in January 1919, the daughter of Mexican L.A. consulate attaché
Porfirio A. Romay, of European descent. In her teens, she was adept at swimming and diving.
Moreover, she had an excellent voice and could sing equally well in
English and in Spanish. Her show business career took off, when she
joined the flamboyant bandleader
Xavier Cugat as his leading female
vocalist in 1940.
Cugat thought so highly of her, that he built a
chorus of five men and four women to blend with her singing. He also
wrote ballads specifically for her. Lina was featured with the
orchestra in the classic musicals
Du warst nie berückender (1942)
and Badende Venus (1944),
respectively for Columbia and MGM. She also danced in the movie
Stage Door Canteen (1943). Her
most popular numbers included "Alma Llanera", "Babalu"
(pre-Desi Arnaz) and "Guadalajara". In 1945,
Lina appeared on the cover of "Yank", the weekly army publication.
Inevitably, the studio scouts were soon out in force and she was signed
as an MGM starlet that same year.
Until the end of her relatively short Hollywood career just eight
years later, she was cast as second fiddle to the main female lead in
films like Mann ohne Herz (1945) (opposite
Clark Gable and
Honeymoon (1947), or -- more typically -- as
night club singers
(Die Todeskurve (1949),
Glück in Seenot (1949)).
Embraceable You (1948), at least,
gave her a few good wisecracking lines. Lina's voice was also brought
to nationwide audiences via USO broadcasts and regularly spotted on the
popular radio shows of Bing Crosby,
Bob Hope and
Jack Benny.
She retired from public life in
1953, but resurfaced in the late 1970s to work as Spanish-language
radio announcer for Hollywood Park horse races. Her last performance on
stage was for a benefit show in Los Angeles in March 1973, under her
married name -- Elena Romay Gould.
