To be fair, all cats hate you. The contempt is thinly-veiled. For those of you unfamiliar with the wide-eyed Brazil nut pictured here, it’s Carmen Miranda, aka The Chiquita Banana Lady. And wide-eyed she was!
She may have danced her way to fame with a pile of fruit atop her head, much to the chagrin of Latin nations who felt stereotyped, but she had the last laugh. By 1945, she earned more than $200,000 (over $2 million in today’s money), becoming Hollywood’s highest-paid entertainer.
Numero uno, y’all!
She must have had fabulous posture and core control to forever be balancing colorful edible headgear and bearing the burden of 27 lbs of heavy metal accessories. No pain, no gain.
In August of 1955, Miranda was shooting a a song and dance number for the The Jimmy Durante Show when she fell to one knee. Out of breath, she finished the segment and went home. The next morning, Miranda died from a heart attack at her home in Beverly Hills. She was only 46.
To see her sing and samba, catch this 1943 clip of her in “The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat.”
I Don't Get It 