Anecdotes

Made her professional debut as a dancer in 1947 at the Tivoli Theater in Mexico.

In 1971, Tongolele played in the Mexican-American co-production Isle of the Snake People. In the film, she appeared alongside the American actor Boris Karloff. The plot of the film was located on a small island in the middle of the ocean where some beautiful young women are transformed into blue-faced man-eating zombies. Tongolele played the role of Kalea, the dancer with the snake.

She began to show symptoms of senile dementia since 2010. Some time later, it was specified that her illness was actually Alzheimer's , and in 2021, it was reported that her condition had already advanced rapidly, to the point of not recognizing anyone, except for her children and her caregivers. As a therapy to slow down the effects of Alzheimer's, she began practicing her old Tahitian dance routines in her own dance studio, located inside a mansion she owned, in the state of Puebla.

Her career was sheltered by theatrical success in the main theaters and cabarets of Mexico City.

With the rise of Mexico City's nightlife in the 1970s and the rise of the vedettes, Tongolele resumed her career in nightclubs and movies, as well as appearing on television shows.

She made her film debut in 1948 in the film Nocturne of Love, starring the actress Miroslava Stern.

In 1948, she starred in the film ¡Han matado a "Tongolele"!, directed by Roberto Gavaldón. The plot was developed in the Folies Bergère theater of Mexico City. At another level of the plot, several envious people attempted to assassinate her. The film premiered on September 30, 1948.

At the time of her death, she was one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema.

She debuted in 1984 in telenovelas in a special performance in the melodrama La pasión de Isabela.

As a child, she danced for the International Ballet of San Francisco, California, as part of a Tahitian revue.

She married in 1956 Cuban Joaquin Gonzalez in New York City, who accompanied her until his death on December 22, 1996.

Yolanda was baptized by Mexican journalist Carlos Estrada Lang as "The Queen of Tahitian Dances", as each night she congregated a wide male audience who adored her perfect silhouette and feline movements that marked an era in Mexico.

In the mid-1960s, CBS recorded a disc titled "Tongolele sings for you", which included 10 songs.

It was not until 2016 when it became public knowledge that she suffered from dementia, which forced her to completely retire from public life in 2015.

Yolanda Montes, better known by her stage-name Tongolele, was a Mexican-American dancer, actress and vedette.

Her stage name, "Tongolele", came from mixing African and Tahitian words.

Between 2011 and 2013, Tongolele participated in the musical stage play Perfume of Gardenia.

Tongolele boosted the success of the Exóticas, a group of vedettes that caused sensation in Mexico in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Although other vedettes appeared and became popular at the time (such as "Kalantán", "Bongala" and Su Muy Key), none reached the levels of popularity of Tongolele.

In 1947, she moved from the United States to Mexico and was hired as a dancer by Américo Mancini, a theater impresario.

In 2012, the vedette returned to the cinema with a brief appearance in the film El fantástico mundo de Juan Orol.