Movita Castaneda obit

Movita Castaneda dies at 98; film actress was Marlon Brando’s second wife

She was not on the list.


Movita Castaneda, a movie actress who married Marlon Brando in 1960 and had two children with him, has died in a Los Angeles rehabilitation center. She was believed to be 98.

Her death Thursday came after hospitalization for a neck injury, said Barbara Sternig, a family friend.

One of Castaneda’s first films, “Mutiny on the Bounty”, a 1935 classic with Clark Gable and Charles Laughton, came back to play a powerful role in her life decades later.


Castaneda, who was known as Movita, had a small role as a beautiful Tahitian maiden who married one of the mutineers.

The film was remade in 1962, with Brando, Movita’s husband, playing the mutiny’s leader, Fletcher Christian. Nineteen-year-old Tarita Teri’ipaia played his Tahitian lover — and the two also became lovers off-screen.

After Movita and Brando split, Teri’ipaia became Brando’s third wife. They were divorced in 1972.

It was another wrenching but intriguing twist in Movita’s colorful life.


Born to Mexican parents on a train crossing the border into Nogales, Ariz., Maria Luisa Castaneda grew up in Los Angeles.

Her actual birth date varies in different accounts. It was April 12, 1916, according to her family, but some sources list it as 1921. Movita told writer Michael Taub that MGM inflated her age. At the time, she said, she was 14 — not 19, as the studio claimed on government documents.

Movita was a name coined for her by MGM executives who thought it sounded Polynesian.

As a girl, she developed a talent for singing and dancing, and performed with a Mexican duo known as Rosita and Moreno. In 1933, she was spotted by RKO producer Pandro Berman, who signed her as a singer in “Flying Down to Rio,” the first film in which Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers danced together.

In the 1930s, Movita appeared in a number of films, including “Paradise Isle,” “The Hurricane” and “Captain Calamity.” In a romance followed by gossip columnists, she married Irish prizefighter Jack Doyle in 1939. Their civil ceremony took place in Ensenada, Mexico, because he had been ordered out of the U.S. for illegally entering it.

Doyle, a tenor known as “the Irish thrush,” performed with Movita at European cabarets. For a time, the two owned a London nightclub called the Swizzle Stick.

They were “as popular as Burton and Taylor were later on or David and Victoria Beckham are today,” the Irish Independent, a Dublin newspaper, said in 2008.

But Doyle was an alcoholic who cheated on her and eventually became abusive. They divorced in 1944.

Movita met Brando on a movie set in the early 1950s. They did not publicly disclose their marriage until he was asked about it in court a year later. He and his ex-wife, actress Anna Kashfi, were at each other’s throats over visitation and alimony problems when he dropped the bombshell.


Her  Filmography

Year       Title       Role       Notes

1930      El Dios del mar                 

1933      Flying Down to Rio           Carioca Singer    Uncredited

1934      La buenaventura                             

1934      The Scandal        Gregoria              

1934      Tres Amores       Doris     

1935      Señora casada necesita marido Doncella              

1935      The Tia Juana Kid              Cabaret Dancer                

1935      Mutiny on the Bounty    Tehani

1935      El diablo del Mar              Maya    

1936      Captain Calamity              Annana                

1936      El capitan Tormenta        Anyana

1937      Paradise Isle       Ila          

1937      The Hurricane    Arai       

1938      Rose of the Rio Grande Rosita del Torre               

1939      Wolf Call              Towana               

1939      Girl from Rio       Marquita Romero           

1941      Tower of Terror                Marie Durand   

1948      Fort Apache        Guadalupe         

1949      The Mysterious Desperado          Luisa     

1949      Red Light             Trina      Uncredited

1950      Wagon Master Young Navajo Indian      

1950      Federal Man       Lolita Martinez / Montez             

1950      The Furies           Chiquita              

1950      A Lady Without Passport               Lorena Uncredited

1950      The Petty Girl     Carmelita Moray               Uncredited

1950      Kim        Woman with Baby           Uncredited

1951      Soldiers Three   Cabaret woman               

1951      Saddle Legion    Mercedes           

1952      Wild Horse Ambush        Lita Espinosa     

1953      Dream Wife        Rima     

1953      Ride, Vaquero! Hussy    Uncredited

1955      Apache Ambush               Rosita