Beltran's career began in 1940 with her dancing, singing, and playing a guitar. In 1953 Beltran had a six-days-a-week Spanish-language broadcast on radio station KALI. Programmed for housewives, the show included one drama a week that Beltran wrote. Other segments featured fashion news, household hints, poems, and news about Mexico. The theater was Beltran's first love. She said, "I would never want to get away from the theater" adding that the interaction between audiences and performers was essential to a person's development as an artist. In July 1942 she was a new member of the company at the
Padua Hills Theatre. She starred in
Miracle of Tepeyac Hill at the
Philharmonic Auditorium in Los Angeles on November 27, 1954. More than 3,000 people attended the play, which was a fundraising effort for completion of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. Her other work on stage included portraying Matilde in
Cuando La Vida Florece (
When Life Blooms) at the Teatro Intimo in Los Angeles in 1969. When she performed in
The Subject Was Roses at the
Pasadena Playhouse in 1983, a newspaper review said, "Alma Bertran, perhaps the strongest portrayal in the cast, captures the universal qualities of mothering". Beltran portrayed the grandmother on the situation comedy
Sanchez of Belair on the USA network, and she made commercials for TV. ==Personal life and death==