ABSTRACT

Spanning over several years, Tito Guizar's performing career on stage and set, as well as in recording, broadcasting, and television studios made him familiar with audiences not only in Mexico, but throughout the Americas. This chapter recovers a largely forgotten aspect of Tito Guizar's stardom: a transnational Latino identity expressed in English-language media through intermedial linkages between print journalism, radio, and cinema in the early to mid 1930s. Guizar, it seemed, might be different than other Latino/a crossover performers such as Jose Mojica, who aimed to replace silent era stars who dimmed due to the perceived reactions of audiences to their (accented) voices, but usually worked in Hollywood's films hispanos produced by Fox Film and other studios. It would not be long before Guizar was to make his debut on the big screen, and he was to do so as a radio star in the English-language Vitaphone series Rambling 'Round Radio Row.