Sunday, June 4, 2006 | 7:39 a.m.
After hearing the torrid voice of Diosa Costello on a vintage recording of Puerto Rican music, Frederic Gleach was mystified.
How could one of the United States' "most important" Latina performers disappear decades after her heyday? And how could she not even be acknowledged by most Puerto Rican historians?
Known in her day as the "Latin Bombshell," Costello rose from the clubs of New York's Spanish Harlem to ride the wave of Latin music in the late 1930s and early '40s.
She was Pepe in Broadway's 1939 musical "Too Many Girls" and the nightclub and romantic partner of Desi Arnaz. In 1949, she was back on Broadway as Bloody Mary in "South Pacific."
Preferring stage to film, Costello appeared in only three movies, including Laurel and Hardy's 1943 film, "The Bullfighters."
Gleach, a Cornell University lecturer and curator of anthropology collections, learned more about Costello after rummaging through hundreds of magazines, photographs, reviews of and advertisements for Costello's nightclub shows. He found half of her records (in the old 78 format) and eventually created a DVD documentary on her life.
Then he finally found Costello, who was retired in Las Vegas after two decades as a blackjack dealer.
Now in her 80s, Costello will take the stage again.
This time, it will be for an oral history interview with the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, at the Black Box Theatre in UNLV's Alta Ham Fine Arts building.
Thanks to an initiative that began with Gleach, Costello's story will be archived at both the National Museum of American History and the Smithsonian Center for Latino Initiatives.
Costello, still frisky and forthright, talked with the Sun about her lifelong love of the stage, her wild side and a long-ago era of professional song and dance.
You were the "Latin Bombshell." When did you start dancing?
When I was 6 years old. I danced for soldiers in Puerto Rico. I'd pass the hat. My mother, she couldn't handle me. She had five kids, one in the belly and I always ran away.
She didn't want you to dance?
In those days, the term "show business," I don't think it existed. Automatically, if you wanted to sing and dance you were a prostitute.
She even put you in an orphanage.
I was too wild. Today my mother would have been jailed - the beatings I used to get. I knew what I wanted and everyone was against it.
And what was that?
To sing and dance.
Later in your career you stuck with Broadway and nightclub acts. Why?
I didn't like films at all. I like an audience. I'd do a lot of ad-libbing, a lot of things with the audience that in those days was risque.
How risque?
I used to use my behind in my act. I used to dance with a glass of water on my behind. If I ever saw J-Lo, I'd say that mine was the original one.
Do you miss the stage?
I could sit here and dream for hours and hours and relive everything again. Sometimes I laugh and I say, "I did that?"
Were you surprised when the Smithsonian called?
Yes. I was very quiet in my house, watching my soap operas in Spanish, going to the gym.
You go by Dee now. How come you don't tell people who you are?
At one time I owned Broadway. I had all the money, all the jewels. Now I want to just live my quiet life.
The Smithsonian interview will be at 2 p.m. Wednesday. It is free and open to the public, but seating is limited. For information, call 895-4210.
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