This street honors a forgotten Mexican chanteuse. The Huntington Palisades tract was laid out in 1926 by Texas-raised civil engineer Willis Waugh Williams (1884-1869), who named several of its streets named after Mexican mines – see Almoloya Drive – but saved this one for a friend: Cristina Méndez (1886-?), a soprano who performed under the stage name “Alma Real”. (While some today claim that Williams and Méndez were a couple, in fact Méndez was really a friend of Williams’s wife Helen Cooper Williams (1887-?), a fellow singer.) María Cristina Méndez was born in Mexico City and made her New York debut in 1918. While she was there, a minor scandal erupted when her ex-husband stole their sons Alonzo and Germán back to Mexico, but she later regained custody. In 1923, she was living and performing in El Paso, TX, where she befriended the Williamses. She was singing Mexican folk songs at the Hollywood Bowl just one year later at the Bowl’s “Spanish-Mexican Night” – the first Latina soloist to grace its stage. Méndez stayed on in Los Angeles, giving concerts, marrying a second time (it didn’t last), and even taking small roles in B-movies before moving back to Mexico City in 1937. I found nothing about her after a 1953 human interest story in an Oklahoma newspaper.
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