(Directed by Marlon Brando. With Marlon Brando, Karl Malde...)
Directed by Marlon Brando. With Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Pina Pellicer, Katy Jurado. After robbing a Mexican bank, Dad Longworth takes the loot and leaves his partner Rio to be captured but Rio escapes and searches for Dad in California.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055257/
(Directed by Sidney J. Furie. With Marlon Brando, Anjanett...)
Directed by Sidney J. Furie. With Marlon Brando, Anjanette Comer, John Saxon, Emilio Fernández. Man tries to recover a horse stolen from him by a Mexican bandit.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060120/
(Directed by Jack Delano. With Ramón Rivero, Miriam Colon,...)
Directed by Jack Delano. With Ramón Rivero, Miriam Colon, José Manuel Matos, Amilcar Tirado. A group of kids in a poverty-stricken Puerto Rican rural town need money to purchase baseball uniforms for little league.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0305956/
She was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico. Although most of her biographers give 1945 as her year of birth, a review of her artistic development makes that date unlikely. Her father was a dry goods merchant who divorced her mother when Colón was a young child. After her parents' divorce, her mother moved with her children to the Las Casas public housing project in the Barrio Obrero, a Santurce neighborhood.
Colón attended local schools in Santurce and was introduced to theater while she was a junior high school student at the Román Baldorioty de Castro School in San Juan. Her talent was so evident that her theater instructor arranged for Colón to take theatrical training at the drama department of the University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras. After a stellar performance in the play La Azotea (The Rooftop) with the University Players Ensemble, Colón was given a special scholarship to the Erwin Piscator Dramatic Workshop and Technical Institute in New York. Her mother traveled with her and worked as a seamstress to support her daughter. Colón flourished as a theater student and was the first Puerto Rican and Latina actress to be accepted to the prestigious Actor's Studio.
Colón began her professional dramatic career in the film Los Peloteros (The Baseball Players) with Puerto Rican actor Ramón Ortiz del Rivero, known as "Diplo." Produced by the Community Education Division of the Department of Education (DIVEDCO) in 1952, this film is considered a classic in Puerto Rico. In 1952 Colón debuted on Broadway in the play In the Summer House. She also had a role in the play The Innkeepers (1956), and appeared in the movies One-Eyed Jacks (1961) and Appaloosa (1966) with Marlon Brando. She did not pursue a Hollywood career because she found life in Hollywood "boring." Like many other Latino actors and actresses, she discovered that the entertainment industry was not ready for a Latino actress and was often relegated to minor roles. After returning to Puerto Rico and doing local theater there with the traveling theater of the University of Puerto Rico, Colón returned to New York and undertook her most significant theatrical achievement.
While participating in a staging of the famous Puerto Rican play The Oxcart at the Greenwich Mews Theater in 1967, Colón wanted to bring the play to poor New Yorkers who did not have had the chance to experience the theater. She solicited funds from her closest friends and found a truck that she used as a stage to bring the play to poor neighborhoods. Her efforts evolved into an organization known as the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater (PRTT), which has become the most important Latino theatrical company in the United States. The goals of the PRTT have been to establish "a professional, bilingual theater that emphasizes the contribution Puerto Ricans and other Hispanic writers have made to the canons of dramatic literature, while highlighting new plays by Hispanic playwrights living in the United States, and to make these plays accessible to the widest possible range of people" (Colón 1989,47). Since its foundation 30 years ago, the PRTT has staged dozens of plays and has fulfilled Colon's goal of bringing theater to people who would otherwise not have access to it.
She made a substantial contribution to American theater not only through her dramatic talents but also through her commitment to bring art to the people. Viewers who may not have seen her stage work, may recognize Colón from the long-running soap opera Guiding Light. In 1993, Colón received an "Obie Award" for "Lifetime Achievement in the Theater." In 2000, she received the HOLA Raúl Juliá Founders Award, presented by the Hispanic Organization of Latin Actors (HOLA).
(Directed by Marlon Brando. With Marlon Brando, Karl Malde...)
(Directed by Jack Delano. With Ramón Rivero, Miriam Colon,...)
(Directed by Sidney J. Furie. With Marlon Brando, Anjanett...)
Colón is a determined theatrical entrepreneur who works relentlessly to secure funding for her organization. When the federal and state governments cut the funding of arts of organization during the 1980s and 1990s, she worked hard to obtain funding from private business. Described by many as a savvy and ruthless administrator, she has been able to guide her organization into becoming one of the premier Latino theatrical companies in the United States. In addition to her work as founder and executive director of the PRTT, she has maintained her vis-ibility as an actress and continues to appear in theater, television, and film. She regularly acts with her company and has made more than 250 television appearances.
Among her film credits are: One-Eyed Jacks (1961), Harbor Lights (1963), Thunder Island (1963), The Appaloosa (1966), The Possession of Joes Delaney (1973), Isabel la Negra (1979), Back Roads (1981), Scarface (1983), A Life of Sin (1990), and Lone Star (1996). In 2001, Colón and the PRTT produced the musical La Lupe, based on the life of Cuban singer Lupe Yoli, to superb reviews. Colon's most recent films are All the Pretty Horses (2001), For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story (2000), and Almost a Woman (2001).
Colón was married to George Paul Edgar from 1966 until his death in 1976. Colón lived the final years of her life in Albuquerque, New Mexico with her second husband Fred Valle whom she married in 1987. Colón biography, titled Míriam Colón: Actor and Theater Founder, was written by Mayra Fernandez in 1994.
