Raquel Torres, born Guillermina Ostermann on November 11, 1908, in Hermosillo, Mexico, began her film career at the age of 19 and quickly garnered attention and admiration for her exotic beauty and captivating screen presence.
Her early success came with W.S. Van Dyke's White Shadows in the South Seas (1928),a predominantly silent film that remains notable for being MGM's first film to synchronize music, dialogue, and sound effects. Torres played the lead female role opposite Monte Blue, and the film won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography.
In 1929, Torres appeared in The Bridge of San Luis Rey, a part-talkie that was an early disaster movie and an Oscar winner for Art Direction. She also starred in The Desert Rider, a standard western film opposite cowboy star Tim McCoy.
Torres continued to work in tropical island settings with The Sea Bat (1930) and Aloha (1931),playing various island girls and half-caste beauty types. Her last films were So This Is Africa (1933) and Duck Soup (1933),in which she played a sexy foil to the comedic teams of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey, and Groucho Marx, Chico Marx, Harpo Marx, and Zeppo Marx.
Raquel Torres abruptly retired from acting in 1935 after marrying businessman Stephen Ames, who had previously been married to actress Adrienne Ames. Ames later produced post-war "B" films, but Torres never returned to the film industry despite her husband's connections.
After Ames' death in 1955, Torres married actor Jon Hall, with whom she had a tropical island-themed marriage. However, this marriage also ended in divorce. Raquel Torres died in 1987 at the age of 78 due to complications from an earlier stroke.
