Colorful dancer and actress Yolanda Montes, who performed as “Tongolele,” 93, died on Feb. 16. Born in Spokane, Washington, she moved to Mexico in 1947 and soon became a star attraction, dubbed "The Queen of Tahitian Dances.” She performed in revues and cabarets, and movies. (I love Google Translate, which tells us that she “became one of the greatest icons of Mexico's delusional noctura life during the fifty-first and sixty-sixties,” a feat we should all aspire to). She usually appeared as herself, or as an anonymous dancer, in movies and TV; but in ¡Han matado a Tongolele!, she was pursued by assassins; she also displayed her charms in the cheesy horror movies The Panther Women and Isle of the Snake People. More recently, Montes appeared in the telenovela Salomé. She was married to Cuban musician Joaquín González from 1956 till his death in 1996 (the couple had twin sons). Montes was still performing till recently: she joked that “I'm kind of like Dorian Gray; the older I get, the younger I look.”
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