Míriam Colón (born August 20, 1936) is a Puerto Rican actress and the founder and director of the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater in New York City.
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Colón (birth name:Míriam Colón Valle[note 1]} was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico. She was a young girl in the 1940s when her recently divorced mother moved the family to a public housing project called "Residencial Las Casas", located in Barrio Obrero, San Juan. She attended the Ramon Baldorioty de Castro High School in Old San Juan, where she actively participated in the school's plays. Her first drama teacher, Marcos Colón (no relation) believed that she was very talented and with his help she was permitted to observe the students in the "Drama Department of the University of Puerto Rico". She was a good student in high school and was awarded scholarships that enabled her to enroll in the "Dramatic Workshop and Technical Institude" and also in "The Lee Strasburg Acting Studio" in New York City.
In 1953, Colón debuted as an actress in Peloteros (Baseball Players), starring Ramón (Diplo) Rivero, a film produced in Puerto Rico, and in which she played a character called "Lolita."[1]
In 1954, Colón moved to New York City, where she worked in theater and later landed a role on the soap opera Guiding Light. On one occasion she attended a performance of Rene Marques' La Carreta (The Oxcart). That presentation motivated her to form the first Hispanic theater group, with the help of "La Carreta"'s producer, Roberto Rodríguez, called "El Circuito Dramatico".[2]
In 1954 she appeared on stage in "In The Summer House" at the Play House in New York City.[3] Between 1954 and 1974, Colón made guest appearances in television shows including (Peter Gunn). She appeared mostly in westerns such as Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The High Chaparral, and Have Gun, Will Travel. In 1961, Colón appeared in One-eyed Jacks as "the Redhead".
In 1979, she starred alongside fellow Puerto Rican actors José Ferrer, Raúl Juliá, and Henry Darrow in Life of Sin, a film in which she portrayed Isabel la Negra, a real-life Puerto Rican brothel owner. In 1983, she played the mother of Tony Montana (played by Al Pacino) in Scarface. She was also cast as "María" in the 1999 film Gloria, which starred Sharon Stone.
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| You may watch "Míriam Colón" act in a short segment of "Gunsmoke'" here | |
In the late 1980s, Colón founded The Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, on West 47th street in Manhattan, New York. The company presents Off-Broadway productions onsite and goes on tour. She is the director of the company and she has appeared in these PRTT productions:
In 1993, Miriam Colón received an "Obie Award" for "Lifetime Achievement in the Theater." A biography of Miriam Colon, titled Miriam Colón - Actor and Theater, was written by Mayra Fernandez.
In 2000, Míriam Colón received the HOLA Raúl Juliá Founders Award, presented by the Hispanic Organization of Latin Actors (HOLA).