Susana Canales(1933-2021)

Spanish leading lady of 1940s and 50s comedies, musicals and period dramas, the daughter of actor Ricardo Canales. Her family went into exile in Venezuela at the onset of the Spanish Civil War and eventually settled in Buenos Aires. It was there that Susana made her film debut as a nine year old. She returned to her native country in 1950, debuted on stage in 1951 and two years later married the prolific Spanish actor Julio Peña with whom she was sometimes romantically paired on screen. Her best known film roles included Cielo Negro (1951) (opposite Fernando Rey), the swashbuckling epic Les Aventures de Gil Blas de Santillane (1956) and La ragazza di Piazza San Pietro (1958) (opposite Vittorio De Sica). She also played Marie Antoinette (billed as 'Susan Canales') in Samuel Bronston's international production of the founder of the U.S. Navy, John Paul Jones, maître des mers (1959) (Bette Davis also made a brief appearance as Catherine the Great). Susana confined the latter part of her career (from 1967 to her retirement in 1995) to the theatre and to work in TV and radio.