The iconic and eternally glamourous Mario Montez has sadly passed away at the age of seventy eight. Best known for appearing in Jack Smith’s Normal Love and the decadent Flaming Creatures, he also appeared in Ron Rice’s beautiful Chumlum and thirteen of Warhol’s films from 1964-6. Paying homage to the hispanic B-Movie star Maria Montez by manipulating it into his own name, Montez emulated a kind of trans Hollywood glamour onto the New York film and theatre underground scene right up until the early 1970s. Born as René Rivera in Puerto Rico in 1935, in 2010, Montez was honoured by Columbia University’s Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Race as one of the “most gifted performers of the underground period.”

Montez in Warhol’s Mario Banana No. 1, 1964

A photograph of Jack Smith and Montez behind the scenes of Flaming Creatures