Actress, Singer. She was a Big Band vocalist who appeared in roughly 15 Hollywood features of the 1940s. Born Maria Elena Romay, the child of a Mexican diplomat, she broke into show business in the early 1940s as the lead singer for Xavier Cugat's band. Lina made her silver screen bow in 1942's "You Were Never Lovelier" with Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth and was soon seen in USO shows and at the Hollywood Canteen while becoming a popular pin-up girl whose image frequently graced "Yank" magazine. Other film work followed including 1945's "Adventure" with Clark Gable, "Love Laughs at Andy Hardy" (1946) which featured Mickey Rooney, and the 1947 "Honeymoon," a vehicle for a teenage Shirley Temple. In 1949 Lina starred in, arguably, her most remembered role, herself in MGM's "Señor Droopy." Lina continued her musical career, beginning a three-year gig on "Paul Whiteman's Goodyear Revue" in 1949. Her last screen credit was "The Man Behind the Gun" (1953). She was a guest on many radio shows in the 1940s & 50's. She was a regular vocalist on Bing Crosby's Philco Radio Time in 1946, was also a guest on Frank Sinatra's program among many other radio shows. Television audiences saw her several times in the late 1950s on "The Red Skelton Show," "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet," and "The Milton Berle Show." After two failed marriages in the 1940s, she wed Dr. Jay Gould III, son of the New York railroad and financial family, in 1953, the union lasting until her husband's death in 1987. Lina lived her final decades in Southern California and for a few years in the 1970s and 1980s was the Spanish language announcer at Hollywood Park Racetrack; she died of the complications of advanced age. Some of her performances have been preserved.