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  • Latin Numbers: Playing Latino in Twentieth-Century U.S. Popular Performance by Brian Eugenio Herrera
  • Anne García-Romero
Brian Eugenio Herrera. Latin Numbers: Playing Latino in Twentieth-Century U.S. Popular Performance. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015. Pp. 288, illustrated. $85.00 (Hb); $32.50 (Pb).

Latin Numbers: Playing Latino in Twentieth-Century U.S. Popular Performance establishes Brian Eugenio Herrera as a leading scholar of Latina/o performance. His meticulously researched book makes visible the significant contributions of Latina/o performers over the past century. From the Good Neighbor era to the AIDS era, Herrera offers in-depth case studies drawing from theatre, film, television, and even the toy industry to shed light on the ways that Latina/o performance has functioned, survived, and thrived. Defining Latin numbers as "moments of spectacular proliferation of Latinos on varied stages of US popular performance" (4), Herrera delves into influential, well-known productions, rescues little-known works from the archive, and provides important insights into performances that have not been well documented or analysed previously.

Herrera's study primarily concerns Latina/o performers and performances that have shaped conceptions of Latina/os as a distinct racial and ethnic group in US culture. Building upon the work of scholars such as David Román, Bert States, Frances R. Aparicio, and Susana Chávez-Silverman, Herrera posits that [End Page 394] Latin numbers enact a "cycle of discovery, disidentification, and dissolution" (21). By examining Latina/o representation on Broadway, in Hollywood, and in other arenas of popular culture, Herrera shows how Latina/o performers and performances have variously been embraced and rejected. His book seamlessly weaves together studies of the Conga line, Latina/o actors playing "non-Latina/o" roles, the phenomenon of West Side Story on stage and film, Latina/o writers and performers confronting stereotypes, and the portrayal of gay Latino roles in theatre, film, and television.

Each of Herrera's case studies demonstrates how Latin numbers have performed changing notions of raciality. Moreover, they analyse the fluid representational borders between Latina/o and non-Latina/o writers and performers. Chapter one begins the book with the Good Neighbor era (1933–45), during which President Franklin D. Roosevelt encouraged friendly commercial, cultural, and military relations with Latin America. The chapter examines composer Harold Rome's songs "Be A Good Neighbor" from the musical Give a Viva and "South America (Take It Away)" from Call Me Mister and shows how Latin America was celebrated and later parodied by non-Latina/o writers and performers. The chapter also offers a close reading of multiple versions of My Sister Eileen; originally a book about two sisters from Ohio who move to New York City, it was adapted into a play, a film, a musical, and a musical film. Herrera explores the nuances of each representation while demonstrating the conventions of the Latin number by analysing a Conga-line sequence involving the Midwestern sisters and Brazilian navy cadets. In chapter two, Herrera turns to three Latino actors whose "'stealth Latino' performances rehearsed the distinct legibility of Latina/o nonwhiteness in US popular performance" (60): Ricardo Montalbán, a Mexican-American actor of Spanish descent; Juano Hernandez, a Puerto Rican actor; and Mel Ferrer, an actor born to a Cuban-American father and an Irish-American mother. Montalbán played Latino, Japanese, Jamaican, West Indian, and French characters; Hernandez performed many African-American roles; and Ferrer played characters of colour trying to pass as white. Herrera highlights the representational flexibility of these performances in the 1950s, a time when Hollywood consistently cast Latino actors in culturally diverse roles. Herrera then carefully chronicles cultural shifts in Latina/o performance in the second half of the twentieth century. The chapters that follow examine the deployment of stock characters and stereotype in Latina/o performance. In chapter three, Herrera considers the musical West Side Story and its development history. An idea to adapt Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet into a modern context, initiated by director/choreographer Jerome Robbins, composer Leonard Bernstein, and playwright Arthur Laurents, led to the commercially successful stage and screen musical. Herrera looks at how the portrayal of [End Page 395] West...

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