Typical of Argentine melodrama of the 1930s were the films starring Libertad Lamarque, the genre’s biggest box-office attraction. Her most frequent role was that of the tango singer whose romance with a wealthy suitor is blocked by his elitist family. Despite its widespread social acceptance by the 1930s. tango continued to be associated in film melodramas with criminality and vice As Diana Paladino remarks, in these films, “the tango songstress was doomed from the start.” Nevertheless if melodramatic logic dictated that Lamarque be punished for the transgressive act of singing tango, surely that judgment was not shared by the members of the audience, many of whom were drawn to her early movies precisely because of her fame as a tango singer.