[2] Her name change, including adoption of her mother's maiden surname, as well as speaking with a fake accent, was done to capitalize on, and conform to, early Hollywood's idea of 'Latin-ness'.

[2] Torres played a Polynesian beauty in White Shadows in the South Seas (1928), a silent film shot in Tahiti which was Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's first feature fully synchronized with music and effects.

[4] The next year she was third-billed behind Lili Damita and Ernest Torrence in The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1929), the first film version of the classic Thornton Wilder novel, which was a part-talkie.

This Oscar winner (for Art Direction) was an early disaster movie that bonded a group of strangers who see their lives flash before their eyes while trapped on a collapsing bridge.

Torres' other 1929 film was The Desert Rider (1929), a standard western in which she provided spicy diversion opposite cowboy star Tim McCoy.

[6] In her last year of filming, she played a sexy foil to the raucous comedy teams of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey in So This Is Africa (1933) and the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup (1933).

Following their wedding, they spent several months in New York and Florida prior to purchasing an option on two and a half acres of land in the exclusive Los Angeles enclave of Bel Air where they wanted to build a home.

Embers carried by wind across the wide Pacific Coast Highway ignited the roof of Raquel Torres' home.