PASADENA, California -- Lina Romay, who sang with the Latin-inflected Xavier Cugat orchestra in the early 1940s before beginning a decade-long career as a film and TV actress, has died. She was 91.
Romay s son, Jay Gould, says his mother died Dec. 17 of natural causes at a hospital in Pasadena.
Romay began her entertainment career by touring as the Cugat orchestra s lead singer.
A performance with the orchestra in the 1942 Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth film You Were Never Lovelier led to roles in some 15 other films and appearances on the Milton Berle Show, the Red Skelton Show and other TV programs.
Her show business career ended in 1953, but from the late 1970s into the 1980s, she worked as a Spanish-language radio announcer for horse races at Hollywood Park Racetrack.
