Xavier Cugat: Creative Cool-Cat With All The Kittens

Xavier Cugat, the Rhumba King, is as known for his love life as he is his Latin rhythms.



A notorious womanizer, he married five times:

#1 Rita Montaner
#2 Carmen Castillo
#3 Lorraine Allen
#4 Abbe Lane (In his bands for many years, until their divorce.)
#5 Charo (She & Cugat were the first couple to marry at Caesars Palace when it opened in Las Vegas in 1966.)

Cugat also has many film credits, mainly for playing himself.

From Stage Door Canteen (1943) here's Lina Romay (not this Lina Romay) with Cugat & orchestra, performing She's a Bombshell from Brooklyn:



Lina Romay sings Antonio in the motion picture The Heat's On (1944)with the Xavier Cugat Orchestra.



Cugat supposedly gave Rita Hayworth one of her first jobs, and so later appeared with her in You Were Never Lovelier, but I remember him from so many of Esther Williams films, including the remake of Annette Kellerman's Neptune's Daughter.

Via A Damn Find Product's post we learn that Xavier Cugat was also a talented illustrator. Exhibit A, cover of Game & Gossip, 1932:



Exhibit B, Fandango - Dance Rhythms - IV (from Game & Gossip, 1932):


Perhaps the most fascinating is this fold-out with 74 caricatures of the most popular Hollywood celebrities such as Fanny Brice, Mary Pickford, Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Clara Bow, Gloria Swanson, Constance Bennett, Billie Dove, Greta Garbo and Charlie Chaplin.


For more names, see the list of names and the key; but note the following: Dietrich could not even pose in Cugat's imagination with Garbo, and note how powerful women were -- their names & personalities still awe.

That Cugat would was an illustrator shouldn't be shocking. Golden Age of illustration notwithstanding, Cugat was a bit of a money-grubbing sell-out jack-of-all-trades who's been quoted as saying, "I would rather play Chiquita Banana and have my swimming pool than play Bach and starve." According to Solid!:

Cugat was often depicted in publicity photos holding a chihuahua and a pipe, even though he didn't smoke. He was never the one to miss out on a good business opportunity, however. He cashed in on this image and began selling his own line of pipes. He also started a chihuahua breeding business which featured documentation certifying that the dogs were Cugat dogs. Cugat never met a marketing deal he didn't like. Over the years he hawked a diverse line of products, including cigarette lighters and shirts, and also owned several Los Angeles-area restaurants. In addition Cugat was a talented caricaturist. His work appeared in newspapers, magazines and galleries around the world. During the 1920s he worked as a cartoonist for the Los Angeles Times newspaper while playing music at night.

Perhaps this is why Cugat was never without beautiful women.