Juan de Orduña

Juan de Orduña y Fernández-Shaw was a Spanish film director, screenwriter and actor. He was one of the most commercially successful filmmakers in Spain during the mid-20th century. Known for his historical melodramas and popular musical films, his work played a central role in mainstream Spanish cinema under the Franco regime. Subservient to the ideological tenets and preferences of Francoism, he was one of the regime's standout directors during the autarchy period. Nevertheless, his film ¡A mi la legión! has been seen as a disguised story of homosexual love, and de Orduña was homosexual himself. He particularly earned recognition for his epic-historicist films, including the extravagant Locura de amor (1948), "an immense commercial success".