Luisa Espinel

Luisa Ronstadt was born in Tucson, Arizona in 1892, the daughter of Mexican-born businessman and musician Federico José María Ronstadt, and his wife Sara Levin.[1] Her mother died in 1902, from a fever,[2][3] and her father remarried, to Lupe Dalton; one of their granddaughters was singer Linda Ronstadt,[4] who recalled "visits from Aunt Luisa" as "wonderfully exciting."[5][6] Luisa Espinel went to San Francisco, New York, and Paris to study music;[7] she went to Spain to study Spanish music and dance in the 1920s.[8][9]

Espinel toured as a dancer and singer in the western states[10][11][12][13] and on vaudeville.[8] She was a member of the Mexican Players of Claremont, California in the 1930s.[8] She taught music and dance in Los Angeles, toured and gave concerts in folk-inspired costumes,[14][15] and danced in the film The Devil Is a Woman (1935), starring Marlene Dietrich.[7] In 1946 she compiled a book of traditional lyrics, Canciones de mi padre: Spanish Folksongs from Southern Arizona, released by University of Arizona.[8] In the 1950s, she taught Spanish to adults in Pasadena,[16] and was a presenter at the Casa de Adobe, a recreated Californio residence at the Southwest Museum.[17]

In 1935,[18] Espinel became the second wife of the American artist Charles Kassler, and was a model for his 1934 mural "Pastoral California", in Fullerton, California.[19] She died in 1963, aged 71, in Los Angeles.[20] Her papers are in the Ronstadt family collections at the University of Arizona and the Arizona Historical Society libraries.[8][3]

• Photographs of Luisa Espinel in the collection of the Autry Museum of the American West.
• Luisa Espinel at IMDb
• The Devil is a Woman (1935), on Internet Archive.