José Mojica

Biography

Mexican actor and tenor, briefly slated to become a Ramon Novarro -style latin lover in early Hollywood sound films. Mojica initially planned for a career in engineering, but changed his mind and studied singing at the National Conservatory of Music. Funded by his mother, he went to New York with $500 in his pocket, attending performances of Enrico Caruso. Caruso, having met Mojica, was sufficiently impressed by his singing to help him obtain a contract with the Chicago Civic Opera Company, where was soon given leads opposite Mary Garden and Amelita Galli-Curci. Signed by Fox in 1930, he moved to California and appeared as a Spanish outlaw in the romantic musical One Mad Kiss (1930), co-starring Argentine actress Mona Maris. Though he lacked neither charm nor a good voice, his popular appeal was limited by a square jaw, a stocky figure and a rather broad nose -- worse, he had a tendency to overact. Fox, as a result, dropped Mojica from their 'A-list' and starred him in a series of Spanish-language romances and adventures for the next three years, often alongside Maris or Rosita Moreno. His characters remained essentially the same, even including a curious impersonation of highwayman Dick Turpin in El caballero de la noche (1932). Mojica made a few more films in Mexico at the end of the decade. Following the death of his mother and prompted by religious visions, he then took the unusual step of selling his worldly possessions and becoming a Franciscan monk under the name Fray Jose de Guadalupe Mojica. He spent the remainder of his life in seminaries and monasteries in Peru, where he died in September 1974 at the age of 78.