Mapy’s Map

   There are, I am told, enough interesting things within or near Mexico City to occupy months of steady sightseeing … There was a gorgeous naked blonde plastered on billboards all over town advertising a movie called El Sexo Fuerte, but I didn’t get to go to that. The murals and the blonde were all of my cultural education. I didn’t even see a beisbol game or a bullfight.
   How Green Was My Father (1947), Chapter 4

   I said, “My memory fails me as I grow older, señorita. Have we not met before? … Were you ever in Mexico?”
   “No.”
   “The States?”
   “No. But I have been in Paris and London.”
   “I have not. Yet I am sure I have seen you before.”
   She smiled — I forgot to mention that she had beautiful teeth — and said, “At the cine?”
   I didn’t get it. She said, “I have been told I look like Mapy Cortés.”
   That was it. Mapy Cortés was a Mexican movie star, and a pretty flossy one to look at. I had seen Mapy’s map so often on Mexican billboards that meeting it more or less in the flesh had puzzled me.
   The Long Escape (1948), Chapter 4

Image source

Agrasánchez, Rogelio, Jr. Carteles de le Época de Oro del Cine Mexicano = Poster Art from the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema. Harlington, Texas: Archivo Fílmico Agrasánchez, 1997. ISBN 0-292-70485-2.