Salwyn Hurwitz | Representing the Famous Star of the Metropolitan Opera Co. : Ed Altie / c. 1940s

the diva at home

by Douglas Messerli

 

Salwyn Hurwitz (director) Representing the Famous Star of the Metropolitan Opera Co. : Ed Altie / c. 1940s

 

This 2.33-minute film begins with the famous Metropolitan Opera star doing housework on her patio, dusting and sweeping, like all divas, often stopping to pose, and at one point revealing her wide behind in the process when she notices a photograph fallen to the floor.

    She reaches down and brings it up only to admire herself in her heyday dressed in a kind of Carmen Miranda costume. She reenters her house.

     In the meantime, a young male admirer appears from around the corner and just as quickly disappears as she returns dressed in her full Carmen Miranda-like outfit. She dances a little, poses in various positions a great deal and finally turns, back to camera, to reveal the dress she is wearing has no backing, revealing her red dotted underthings.

    But no matter, her admirer returns. She runs to him, literally picks him up in the air, and plants a giant kiss of his cheek. He seems most pleased. And everything ends quite happily.

    This piece, again, represents something close to pure gesture and posing, a kind of camp performance that did not be popular again until the black and Hispanic clubs of the 1960s continuing into today, which began to feature ballroom contests for posing and vogue.

 

   The male is Hurwitz’s brother Louis whose sister Judy appeared about the same time, or very soon after in Romeo & Juliet.

 

Los Angeles, November 9, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (November 2016).