Lina Romay

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. 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 You Were Never Lovelier (1942) and Bathing Beauty (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 Adventure (1945) (opposite Clark Gable and Honeymoon (1947), or -- more typically -- as night club singers (The Big Wheel (1949), The Lady Takes a Sailor (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. Lina retired from public life in 1953, but resurfaced in the late 1970's 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.