La Chata Noloesca was the most famous and celebrated vaudevillian on the Hispanic theatrical circuits of the United States, northern Mexico, and the Caribbean. For more than four decades, she sang, danced, and acted on stage and screen, principally drawing her material from Mexican-American working-class culture and performing for the Hispanic working classes in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Tampa, Havana, and San Juan.

Born Beatriz Escalona on August 20, 1903, in San Antonio, Texas, into an impoverished Mexican immigrant family, Escalona's schooling was minimal and she began working at an early age, selling food and drink to passengers on trains that stopped in San Antonio. Undoubtedly her sharp observations of street life and her acute ear for the nuances of Spanish working-class dialect were nurtured during these years of daily contact with the masses of Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans in transit at...