Searching For Long Lost Madrid Love
An American man has been looking to make contact with a long lost friend he had in Madrid more than 60 years ago.
George Mattox from Miami, Florida, has placed an advert looking for Annie Stringer whom he met in Madrid after coming to Spain in 1963.
George had booked his passage from New York on an Atlantic freighter and found himself in Madrid where he had hoped to follow an acting career. Spain “seemed to be a good place since many major producers were filming in the country.”
Indeed some of which went on to become iconic films of the era including Dr Zhivago and 100 Days in Peking.
For George, Madrid was an ideal place to be – it was cheap, he spoke Spanish and “producers like Samuel Bronston were producing major movies”.
George found work including singing at Madrid´s iconic Teatro Zarzuela and it was during this time that he met Annie, “a young English girl from Middlesex, England”.
They were together for the duration of George´s stay but his acting career didnt materialise and in late 1964 he returned to New York.
They were in touch by letter after that but “time and distance” took its toll.
Many years passed until prompted to write his memoirs by his three children he started going through old boxes of his life in the performing arts and found all of Annie´s old letters.
Re-reading them was ” quite an emotional journey” into George´s past and was the spur to see if he could find Annie after all these years. Despite some leads and emails to people that might have a contact he drew a blank.
Annie today would be around 80 years old and if you have any information about her George would be delighted to hear from you.
He can be reached by email: mattoxg@bellsouth.net
