Del Río came to be considered a sort of feminine version of Rudolph Valentino, a ‘female Latin Lover’ ,[8][9] in her years during the American silent era.

In the early 1940s, when her Hollywood career began to decline, Del Río returned to Mexico and joined the Mexican film industry, which at that time was at its peak.

[12] María de los Dolores Asúnsolo y López Negrete,[13][14] was born in Victoria de Durango, Mexico on 3 August 1904,[15] daughter of Jesús Leonardo Asúnsolo Jacques, son of wealthy farmers and director of the Bank of Durango, and Antonia López Negrete, who belonged to one of the richest families in the country, whose lineage went back to Spain and the viceregal nobility.

[33] In early 1925, the painter Adolfo Best Maugard, close friend of del Río and her husband, visited their home and with him was an American filmmaker Edwin Carewe, an influential director at First National Pictures, who was in Mexico for the wedding of actors Bert Lytell and Claire Windsor.

[36] Breaking with all the canons of Mexican society at that time and against their families wishes, they journeyed by train to the United States to start a career in film within that country.

[39] While continuing with his advertising campaign for del Río, Carewe cast her in a secondary role in the film High Steppers (1926), starring Mary Astor.

[43] That same year, thanks to the remarkable progress in her career, she was selected as one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars of 1926, along with fellow newcomers Joan Crawford, Mary Astor, Janet Gaynor, Fay Wray and others.

When actress Renée Adorée began to show symptoms of tuberculosis,[46] del Río was selected for the lead role of the MGM film The Trail of '98, directed by Clarence Brown.

[52] In New York, following the successful premiere of Evangeline, and upon recommendation of the firm's lawyers, del Río declared to the reporters: "Mr. Carewe and I are just friends and companions in the art of the cinema.

[64] But Madame Du Barry was a major cause of dispute between the studio and the Hays Code office, primarily because it presented the court of Louis XV as ‘a sex farce centered around del Rio’.

It was the first time that del Río was accused of being a communist in the United States, a circumstance that would eventually have consequences in her career inside the American film industry.

But despite his position in the studio, Gibbons was never able to help his wife achieve a higher profile, as the main figures of that company at the time were Garbo, Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford and Jean Harlow.

[69] She was put on a list entitled "box office poison", (along with stars like Crawford, Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich, Mae West and others).

[71] While looking for ways to resume her career, she accompanied Welles in his shows across the United States, in works on radio and performances at the Mercury Theatre.

Nelson Rockefeller, in charge of the Good Neighbor policy (and also associated with RKO through his family investments), hired Welles to visit South America as an ambassador of goodwill to counter fascist propaganda about Americans.

[89]While her situation was being remedied in the United States, del Río accepted the proposal of filming in Spain another adaptation of a novel by Benavente, Señora Ama (1955), directed by her cousin, the filmmaker Julio Bracho.

[92][93] She took advantage of her return to the United States and granted an interview to Louella Parsons to make clear her political position: "In Mexico we are worried and fighting against communism.

Throughout the 1960s, del Río produced and starred in Mexico in theater projects such as Ghosts (1962), Dear Liar: A Comedy of Letters (1963), La Voyante (1964) and The Queen and the Rebels (1967)[101] She also appeared in the American TV shows The Dinah Shore Chevy Show (1960), I Spy, Branded (1966) and in the TV movie The Man Who Bought Paradise (1965), opposite Angie Dickinson and Buster Keaton.

[102] Her last appearance on television was in a 1970 episode of Marcus Welby, M.D..[103] Since the late 1950s, del Río became a main promoter of the Acapulco International Film Review, serving as host on numerous occasions.

[110] At the age of 76, del Río appeared on the stage of the Palace of Fine Arts theater the evening of October 11, 1981 for a tribute at the 25th San Francisco International Film Festival.

In 1933, the American film magazine Photoplay conducted a search for "the most perfect female figure in Hollywood", using the criteria of doctors, artists and designers as judges.

[97][61] According to Austrian-American filmmaker Josef von Sternberg, stars such as Del Río, Marlene Dietrich, Carole Lombard and Rita Hayworth helped him to define his concept of glamour in Hollywood.

Del Río defied the change that her appearance suffered in her native country: "I took off my furs and diamonds, satin shoes and pearl necklaces; all swapped by the shawl and bare feet.

[135] American actor and director Orson Welles: "Del Río represented the highest erotic ideal with her performance in the film Bird of Paradise.

Many celebrities would attend and play tennis or swim in the pool including Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Gary Cooper and Cary Grant.

Throughout the filming of Citizen Kane, del Río was often at the difficult Welles' side, soothing him when he banged his head against the wall and dealing with his insomnia as he abused Dexedrine.

[147] For the rest of her life del Río kept a card with two beautiful slanted eyes (easily identifiable as Dolores's own) and a dove drawing along a banner inscribed with the word "always" and signed "Orson".

[152] Del Río spent the last two years of her life at her Newport Beach residence with her husband Lew and only received visits from a few friends and family.

Other artists who recorded her image in her paintings were Miguel Covarrubias, Rosa Rolanda, Antonieta Figueroa, Frances Gauner Goshman, Adolfo Best Maugard and John Carroll.

She inspired Jaime Torres Bodet's novel La Estrella de Día (Star of the Day), published in 1933, which chronicles the life of an actress named "Piedad".