Three Classic Films Featuring Portuguese-Americans: A Critical List

Have you ever watched a film featuring Portuguese-American characters? They’re not as prevalent in American movies as Italian-American or Hispanic-American characters, yet you can find them if you’re looking for them. Scripts do not always explicitly state Portuguese ethnicity onscreen, unless it’s part of the plot point. Their ethnicity becomes an Easter egg for those in the know, recognizable by surname, location, and often career. You even may have seen a fairly recent Oscar-winning film featuring one! As someone with Portuguese heritage from my mother, I’ve searched for their portrayals. I know how excited the Portuguese-American community is to be represented. Some movies I’ve enjoyed, and some have made me cringe. Here’s a critical list containing three classic films featuring Portuguese-American characters.

TIGER SHARK (1932)

Plot

A traditional love triangle tale is livened up by adding an ethnic element and the dangers of fishing. In San Diego, Portuguese immigrant and tuna fisherman Mike Mascarenhas (Edward G. Robinson) marries a recently deceased friend’s Portuguese-American daughter Quita Silva (Zita Johann). She agreed to the marriage out of obligation, the much older Mike helped her after her father’s death, and because she had no other decent prospects. Then at her wedding she meets his young and handsome friend Pipes Boley (Richard Arlen), and they start to fall for each other. Of course, fate pushes them together when they try to stay apart, and their romance grows. Its discovery will try the normally good and kind-hearted Mike’s soul.

Performers’ Ethnicities

Edward G. Robinson was Romanian-Jewish, and he was born in Bucharest to a Yiddish-speaking family.

Zita Johann was Banat Swabian, part of an ethnic German population. Her birthplace was in Austria-Hungary, but now is part of Romania.

Most of the IMDB credited supporting cast playing Portuguese fishermen were of Mediterranean origin, notably Italian and Greek.

Portuguese Characters’ Portrayals

Edward G. Robinson portrays Mike as a real person, not a caricature. He shows Mike to be a basically decent, hardworking person who loses his way. Mike desperately wants to end his loneliness, but local women rejected him, maybe because of his work-earned disability. He lost a hand to a shark saving his best friend Pipes.

Costuming and makeup make him look like an older generation Portuguese fisherman. His hair is dark, curly, and bouncy, and he wears a single earring along with his workwear. He doesn’t dress up unless there is a special occasion. Mike’s hook to replace his lost hand looks realistic.

Robinson does one of the best accents on this list. I don’t hear the soft gs, r sounds, or sh sounds of Portuguese accented English, but that may be a choice on Robinson’s part to make himself more easily understood by audiences. Like Portuguese, Romanian is a Romance language, and that was the main language of his former homeland. He sounds more Italian to my ears, but believably so!

Zita Johann doesn’t make much effort at giving her character an accent. Then again that’s what can happen with generations born in America. Part of their assimilation can be speaking unaccented English. She concentrates on the sadness and drama in Quita’s life, and Johan makes her sympathetic, even when she realizes she needs to break her marriage of obligation. The dark-haired beauty looks lovely in the wedding scene wearing a traditional Portuguese folk dress.

Trailer

View TIGER SHARK’s trailer here.

CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS (1937)

Plot

Getting suspended from private school wasn’t the best thing that could happen to spoiled, bratty, and rich Harvey Cheyne (Freddie Bartholomew). It was falling over the side of an ocean liner. A Madeiran fisherman, Manuel Fidello (Spencer Tracy), rescues him and brings him back to his fishing schooner. Since the ship hasn’t finished its trip yet, the captain (Lionel Barrymore) refuses to return to dock in Glouchester, Massachusetts. Harvey will have to complete the three month trip as temporary crew. He learns hard work and comradeship, and he grows close to Manuel, who becomes a father figure. Harvey learns a lot about life and the dangers of the sea.

Performer’s Ethnicity

Spencer Tracy was born in a British Isles descent family. His Presbyterian mother’s surname is English, and his father was an Irish Catholic.

Portuguese Character’s Portrayal

I’m going to be blunt. I strongly dislike Spencer Tracy’s portrayal of Manuel. To me, it doesn’t work from accent to characterization.

Tracy allegedly studied the accent with Portuguese-American actor Rodrigo de Medicis, but that could have merely been a photo op. He later admitted basing his accent on a Yiddish one, but what’s on film sounds sometimes Yiddish and sometimes Italian-American. Hair and makeup turned him swarthy and gave him wild curls. Between the accent and the curls, I can’t help but see Chico and Harpo Marx’s performance personas being channeled through Tracy!

There are ways to portray noble, earnest, and simple-yet-not-stupid men, but that kind of character wasn’t Tracy’s forte. He thought Manuel read phony. Plus, Tracy was wary of all the required onscreen singing. During filming, he thought he had turned in a stinker of a performance. He was lucky Freddie Bartholomew gave a beautiful, strongly affecting, Oscar-worthy performance, that impacted how audiences and Tracy later viewed his performance.

At its best the film adaptation says that the common working man is a person of value and has something to teach people like the Cheynes. A multi-ethnic crew work together and add this troubled boy to their ad hoc family. He becomes a better human being because of his experience.

At the same time, I can argue the script adopts a brown-faced version of the Magical Negro trope. Manuel is the Southern European ethnic who transforms the life of a WASP, but at Manuel’s ultimate expense. His near son never has to decide how Manuel fits into Harvey’s post-return life. Manuel disappears once he serves his purpose in the story.

The film contains a variant of the ethnic/racial slur Portagee. The captain calls Manuel “Portugoosey.”

Trailer

TORTILLA FLAT (1942)

Plot

Paisanos once filled the Tortilla Flat district of Monterey, and the film shares a collection of vignettes about this community. The paisanos had Spanish and Native American blood maybe crossed with Italian or Portuguese or both. The film focuses on Pilon (Spencer Tracy), Daniel Alvarez (John Garfield), Dolores “Sweets” Ramirez (Hedy Lamarr), and The Pirate (Frank Morgan). Pilon is the head of his gang of friends. He’s crafty and always finding ways he can benefit, even off his friends. Periodically he shows a moral code. Danny is generous, hotheaded, and reactionary. They get in lots of trouble together, particularly when newly-propertied-through-inheritance Danny begins to show an interest in disrupting the gang by settling down with Sweets.

Performers’ Ethnicities

Hedy Lamarr’s father “was born to a Galician-Jewish family” in what is now the Ukraine, and her mother was from a “Hungarian-Jewish family.”

Allen Jenkins was “born Alfred McGonegal,” and he was a part of Hollywood’s “Irish Mafia.”

Portuguese Characters’ Portrayals

Even though Sweets’s last name is the Spanish origin Ramirez, Pilon warns Danny away from the “Portagee girl.” Pilon says all she wants to do is get married, like all Portagee girls. While the film portrays some women as freer with their physical affections, Sweets acts more proper and man wary. She works multiple jobs to earn money to get ahead. She’s shocked to learn Danny has no job. When he’s trying to win her over, he takes on regular work.

The film’s script never explains where her family is. Sweets lives by herself in one of the nicer homes of Tortilla Flat. Typically an unmarried Portuguese girl of that era would be living with her family or with other relatives. That would protect her and her reputation, and that would make the most economic sense to give her a better start at married life.

I am not sure what accent Lamarr uses for Sweets, but the dark haired actress looks beautiful in the role and seems to have fun playing her. Her character brings the romantic comedy angle plus some drama to the film.

Allen Jenkins has a small role as Big Joe Portagee. He’s mostly a lurking supporting character, until Joe steals from a friend. Then he becomes the temporary focus of the film. I am uncertain what accent Jenkins is attempting as well. Most of the accents are bad in this film.

Big Joe Portagee fulfills an unpleasant, stereotypical role in John Steibeck’s story onscreen and in the novel. Steinbeck portrayed the Portuguese as possessing all the negative traits, including being lazy and promiscuous. When the novel TORTILLA FLAT was first published, the offended San Diegan Portuguese-American community erected a statue of Portuguese explorer João Rodrigues Cabrilho, also known by his naturalized Spanish name Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, “on Point Loma, which he probably discovered.”

Obviously, this film contains the ethnic/racial slur Portagee.

Trailer

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