The celebritisation of Carmen Miranda in New York, 1939–41

Abstract

This article considers the process of celebritisation that Carmen Miranda rapidly underwent after arriving in the United States for the first time in 1939. It focuses upon the period she spent in New York (1939–41), performing on Broadway, prior to her move to Hollywood, and examines how she negotiated her move from Brazil to North America via a conscious process of auto-exoticisation, knowingly appropriating the self-tropicalising agenda of the regime of Brazilian president, Getúlio Vargas (1930–45), as exemplified in the Brazilian Pavilion at the World's Fair in New York of 1939–40. It analyses her celebrity text by examining intertexts such as press releases, interviews and reviews published in newspapers and magazines, and interrogates the impact of her involvement in product endorsement, chiefly in the area of women's high-street fashion. It aims to show the extent of her agency in the construction of her celebrity text, focusing in particular upon how her ethnic identity shifted in the move from South to North America, and seeks to offer a historical, evolutionary perspective on the concept of the bicultural celebrity. It concludes that she can be seen as one of the earliest examples of the transnational star, not simply famous in more than one national context but actively employing her inter-hemispheric, no-man's-land position in order to carve out a niche for herself in the US imaginary.

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