Maria Alves

Maria Alves (1897-1926) was a Portuguese actress in the early 20th century who was murdered in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, in 1926. Her murder became the basis for a film, a stage play, and a detective story.

Professional life Maria Alves was born in Campanhã, Porto, in 1897, and grew up wanting to be an actress. She made her debut at the Teatro Carlos Alberto in Porto, but moved to the capital in 1916, where she found roles as a chorus girl in the theatres in Parque Mayer, moving on to perform at the Éden Teatro and the Teatro Apolo. The businessman, Augusto Gomes, saw her potential as a star and hired her for his company, A Portugália, with which she toured Spain, France, Morocco and Brazil. Back in Lisbon she would build on her touring success and become the lead performer in variety shows at the Parque Mayer.

At the end of 1925 she accepted an invitation to spend the 1925/26 winter season in Porto. Oscar Ribeiro, director of the Teatro Águia d'Ouro, had promised her a large sum for three months of performances. She returned to Lisbon at the end of March, worried that she still had not been paid the last instalment of the contract. She wanted her daughter, who was living in Porto, to join her in Lisbon but needed money for this. She also had a son.

Alves was buried in the Prazeres Cemetery. Her funeral procession was delayed by two hours because of the number of people wanting to participate. Meanwhile, another journalist, Antonio Ferro, who worked for the Diário de Notícias, and would later go on to be chief of propaganda for the Estado Novo dictatorship in Portugal, began to make his own investigations. He concluded that Alves could not have been murdered at the location her body was found. His suspicions fell on her manager, Augusto Gomes. Ferro discovered that the two were lovers, that Alves had complained about his fits of jealousy and that he had previously assaulted her.