Alma Beltran

Alma Beltran was a Mexican-American actress of film, stage and television whose career began in 1940 with dancing, singing and guitar playing, and whose screen credits ran to 82 films from 1945 to 2002, usually in smaller parts as Mexican women and later as matriarch types. She was best known as Mrs. Fuentes, Julio Fuentes's mother, on the NBC series Sanford and Son. Born in Sonora, she joined the company at the Padua Hills Theatre in 1942, and the theater stayed her first love: she starred in Miracle of Tepeyac Hill in Los Angeles in 1954 and played Matilde in Cuando La Vida Florece in 1969. A 1983 newspaper review singled out her mothering portrayal in The Subject Was Roses at the Pasadena Playhouse. She also had a Spanish-language radio show on KALI in 1953, writing a weekly drama for it, and played the grandmother on the sitcom Sanchez of Belair.