Spanish actress Elisa Montés, 89, died on Oct. 9. Montés had an impressive family tree: a grandfather and great-grandfather were composers; her sisters Emma Penella and Terele Pávez were also actresses; she was married to actor Antonio Ozores, and their daughter Emma Ozores is an actress. Montés started her career onstage, but by 1954 was in the movies. Through the 1960s, she played mostly sexpots and menaced maidens; later, she segued into character roles, and continued working through 2009. She was best known in the US for her 1960s spaghetti westerns and sword & sandal epics: Samson and the Mighty Challenge, Erik the Viking, Django the Honorable Killer, Seven Dollars to Kill, Return of the Seven, Maneater of Hydra. One of her most popular roles in Spain was as the mother figure in the 1980s Summer Blue series, which is regularly rerun. On being honored by the Association of Audiovisual Festivals of Andalusia in 2017, Montés said, “the westerns I carry in my heart, because they have given me a lot of popularity in Italy. I’ve made a lot of movies in Germany; I’ve traveled the world.” But she modestly said that in Spain she was known mostly for being related to her sisters.
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