? Why, more than 70 years after her death, Eva Perón remains so fascinating

 

Saint or swindler? Why, more than 70 years after her death, Eva Perón remains so fascinating

Source: The Independent news London

Images from Google

As Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s juggernaut musical ‘Evita’ prepares for its West End return, Alastair Smart revisits the life and legend of Argentina’s former first lady

ome 12 miles southwest of the city of Buenos Aires is a remarkable settlement called Ciudad Evita. It was founded in 1947 by the then-president of Argentina, Juan Perón, in tribute to his wife, Eva. What’s remarkable about it is that the entire street grid is designed to look like her profile – meaning that passengers flying in and out of the capital can, if they look closely enough, make out her nose and chignon bun from 10,000ft in the air.

 

This feat of urban planning is just one example of how Eva Perón’s legacy is kept alive in her homeland, where museums and monuments have been erected in her honour. “My biggest fear in life is to be forgotten,” Eva once said – though she really needn’t have worried.

 

Internationally too, Argentina’s former first lady has inspired many a film, play, novel and TV show. In 2022, Santa Evita on Disney+ dedicated itself to telling the story of Eva’s corpse after her death from uterine cancer aged 33. As a testament to her cultural pull, Eva featured in an episode of The Simpsons in which precocious Lisa channels her in becoming head of her school’s student body.

Most famous of all, though, of course, is the stage musical, Evita, by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber. This tells the story of Eva’s brief, brilliant but controversial life, which took her from nowheresville to the Casa Rosada presidential palace. It received a standing ovation on its opening night at London’s Prince Edward Theatre in 1978, with Elaine Paige starring – and ran for another 2,912 performances. A successful Broadway production followed.

 

Evita was adapted into a film starring Madonna in 1996, and is said by Donald Trump to be his favourite ever stage show. It returns to the West End this summer in a new production at the Palladium directed by theatre powerhouse Jamie Lloyd, with 24-year-old Rachel Zegler – star of the recent movie adaptation of Snow White and Hunger Games – in the title role.

How to explain, though, the world’s lasting fascination with the woman who was briefly married to the president of a Latin American country and who died in 1952? Clearly, a smash-hit musical helps maintain a subject’s fame over the years, but there is plenty about Eva’s story that attracted Rice and Lloyd Webber to her in the first place.

 

“She died so young, yet achieved so much,” says Jill Hedges, author of the 2020 biography Evita: The Life of Eva Perón. “She rose from nothing, to a position of immense wealth and power, yet never forgot where she came from.”

 

Maria Eva Duarte was born into poverty in 1919, in a small agricultural town called Los Toldos: one of five illegitimate children fathered by a farm manager (who died when Eva was a young girl) and a seamstress. Aged 15, she took off for the bright lights of Buenos Aires, intent on making it as an actor. And make it she did, finding success in a string of radio soap operas.

After becoming reasonably famous, she started a relationship with Colonel Juan Perón, then the labour secretary in Argentina’s military government. Perón was a widower aged almost 50 when he and Eva met; she was in her mid-twenties. The couple married roughly a year later, in October 1945, a few months before Perón was elected president.

 

Both were relatively low-born, and Eva in particular had an antipathy towards her country’s rich elite, which goes some way to explain the populist agenda that the Peróns pursued in power. Crucially, Eva wasn’t a spouse to disappear into the background. She was at the heart of policy, with Perón – aware of her mass appeal – happy to give her a platform. “I speak in the name of the humble [and] homeless, to cry out against the old evil days,” she declared.

 

Eva Perón was a little like Diana, Princess of Wales

 

Jill Hedges, author of the 2020 biography 'Evita: The Life of Eva Perón'

For pretty much the first time in Argentina’s history, large sums were spent on building a social infrastructure for the poor: schools, hospitals, shelters and more. In many cases, Eva attended personally to those in need, handing out dentures to the toothless, for example, and medicines to the sick.

 

Her fame reached new heights. “A little like Diana, Princess of Wales, a few decades later, she showed incredible social sensitivity,” Hedges says, “and this resulted in a huge amount of public affection for her.” Her supporters called her Evita, a nickname that translates literally to “little Eva”.

 

Perón won re-election by a landslide in 1951. His wife turned down the chance of being his vice-president, though, in no small part because by then she was terminally ill.  

A year later, she would die and go on to receive a state funeral, with 3 million people lining the streets of Buenos Aires in mourning. Many of those people saw her as a saint who had been put on earth to protect them. The Vatican was inundated with requests for her canonisation. So influential was Eva’s legacy that when Perón was ousted from power years later in a 1955 coup, his usurpers had her embalmed body smuggled aboard a ship to Italy, and buried under a false name – so as to avoid its becoming a rallying point for the Peronist cause.

Another reason that her fame endures – and why it translates so well to the musical form – is that Eva’s life was a stunning case of rags to riches: an age-old story archetype in the vein of Cinderella, Aladdin, and Annie. In her case, those “riches” included diamonds and mink coats, which she was particularly fond of wearing.

 

For all the millions who idolised Eva, there were millions of others who loathed her. The latter mostly came from the wealthy classes, whom the Peróns taxed heavily and disempowered. They told their own tales about her, often misogynistic ones – that she was power-hungry, that she had slept her way to the top, and that much of the money meant for the poor was spent on her own wardrobe (hence the fabulous line from Evita: “They need to adore me, so Christian Dior me”). There were even rumours that she connived with her husband in the transfer of huge wealth from Nazi Germany to Argentina at the end of the Second World War.

 

With so many competing narratives, it’s all but impossible to get to know the real Eva – even for those embodying her. “She was a very polarising figure in Argentina – and still is,” says Elena Roger, an Argentinian actor who has played Evita in big productions on the West End and Broadway. “This made it both a challenge and a responsibility to portray her.”

 

As the writer VS Naipaul put it in a dispatch from Argentina for The New York Review of Books in 1972, “the truth begins to disappear; it’s not relevant to the legend”. The truth, of course, is never as interesting as a legend, and never survives as long.

 

Eva herself had been involved in conjuring a version of her own legend. On becoming Perón’s wife, she created what might be called a carefully edited version of her back story. She replaced her birth certificate, for instance, with a falsified document that concealed her illegitimacy, and destroyed all prints of the old movies in which she had played bit parts to erase any record of her as a struggling actor.

 

In Evita the musical, Rice presents his subject as a supreme social climber, keeping relationships with people only as long as they benefited her advancement; a hostile early biography of Eva by Mary Main called The Woman with the Whip is often cited as his chief source of information. Rice denies this, but did go so far as to describe his subject as “dishonest”, “fake” and “self-interested” (albeit also “fascinating”) in a podcast with the politics professor David Runciman.

 

Whoever you are, power brings out your true self... And the way Eva used her power, in such a brief and intense space of time, is fascinating

 

That view is far from the dominant one, though. After all the research that Hedges completed for her biography, the author came away with the belief that “Eva cared passionately about the causes she backed”.

 

There are at least two further reasons why Eva continues to enthral us. Firstly, she is at the centre of a great what-if of 20th-century politics. With her impassioned speeches made to the masses from the Casa Rosada balcony – and with the important role she played in granting suffrage to Argentinian women during Perón’s first term – Eva was, consciously or unconsciously, forging a presidential path. Had she not been cut down by cancer, she might have gone on to become the first democratically elected female head of state. That honour went instead to Sirimavo Bandaranaike, who became prime minister of Sri Lanka in 1960.

 

Secondly, her journey from entertainer to politician is one mirrored increasingly today. Eva’s successors in this regard include Ronald Reagan, Volodymyr Zelensky and, of course, the erstwhile presenter of The Apprentice who today occupies the White House. All found their performative skills to be transferable. (Trump says he saw Evita six times on its initial run on Broadway in 1979.)

It has been over a decade since Roger, now 50 years old, played Eva on Broadway, and still the actor finds herself in thrall to the role. “The musical character of Evita, just like the real Eva, was someone who assumed great power,” Roger says, “and for me that’s where much of the interest is. Partly because women in power [are so rare that] they’re always interesting, and partly because, whoever you are, power brings out your true self. Once you have it, you no longer need to pretend to be somebody you’re not. And the way Eva used her power, in such a brief and intense space of time, is fascinating.”

With affection,

Ruben

 

 

Marjorie Henderson Buell Little Lulu's Mother

 

Marjorie Henderson Buell

Little Lulu's Mother

Marjorie Henderson Buell became the first 

female cartoonist in

 the American press with the world-famous Little Lulu. This comic is remembered because it is a story.

Marjorie Henderson Buell, Little Lulu's Mother

Marjorie Henderson Buell became the first female cartoonist in the American press with the world-famous Little Lulu. This comic is remembered because it is a story of a mischievous little girl. Henderson Buell was the pioneer in featuring a girl as the protagonist of a comic, although the character has a strong, independent, and unconventional character: she is a girl who outsmarts the boys. Her career began early after she demonstrated her drawing ability. At 16, she had already published her first comic strip in The Philadelphia Ledger, which was later bought by the magazine's syndicate and eventually ended up being published in Life. [single-related post_id="881395"] In 1934, cartoonist Henderson Buell was working for The Saturday Evening Post. The newspaper published a cartoon character named 'Henry,' but after leaving the publication, which was bought by the syndicate, the editor asked Buell to create a new character. Thus, in 1934, Little Lulu appeared in the comic pages of Saturday Evening Post. She replaced the male character with a little girl. She drew the character for nearly ten years, and in 1944, a cartoon adaptation was made, and Little Lulu became a series that reached various European and Latin American countries. From that year on, John Stanley was in charge of defining the lines that brought the doll to life in the pages of the magazine, and Henderson Buell was in charge of writing the scripts that added flair to the character. The cartoon's compilation books were published in several languages: Arabic, Finnish, Japanese, Spanish, and Greek. Marjorie Henderson Buell retired from drawing in 1971 at the age of 64, having dedicated 40 of those years to her career. She ended her life in her home in Ohio, and her family took over from drawing comics. She lived until she was 88, when lymphoma caused her death on May 30, 1993.

With affection,

Ruben

John Gorrie

 

John Gorrie

 

1851.- In the United States, John Gorrie, who had demonstrated his ice-making machine based on compressed air expansion almost a year earlier, received a patent for his invention. He is therefore considered the father of refrigeration and air conditioning.

(October 3, 1803 – June 29, 1855) was a Nevisian-born American physician and scientist, credited as the inventor of mechanical refrigeration.[1][2]

 

Born on the Island of Nevis in the Leeward Islands of the West Indies to Scottish parents on October 3, 1803, he spent his childhood in South Carolina. He received his medical education at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of the Western District of New York in Fairfield, New York.

 

In 1833, he moved to Apalachicola, Florida, a port city on the Gulf coast. As well as being resident physician at two hospitals, Gorrie was active in the community. At various times he served as a council member, postmaster, president of the Bank of Pensacola's Apalachicola Branch, Secretary of his Masonic Lodge, and one of the founding vestrymen of Trinity Episcopal Church.

 

 

Gorrie Monument in Apalachicola, Florida.

Gorrie's medical research involved the study of tropical diseases, particularly yellow fever. At the time the theory that bad air — mal-aria — caused diseases was a prevalent hypothesis, and based on this theory, he urged draining the swamps and the cooling of sickrooms.[3] For this he cooled rooms with ice in a basin suspended from the ceiling. Cool air, being heavier, flowed down across the patient and through an opening near the floor.

 

Experiments with artificial cooling

Since it was necessary to transport ice by boat from the northern lakes, Gorrie experimented with making artificial ice.[2]

 

He first mechanically produced ice in 1844.[4] After 1845, Gorrie gave up his medical practice to pursue refrigeration products. By 1850 he was able to routinely produce ice the size of bricks.[5] On May 6, 1851, Gorrie was granted Patent No. 8080 for a machine to make ice. The original model of this machine and the scientific articles he wrote are at the Smithsonian Institution. In 1835, patents for "Apparatus and means for producing ice and in cooling fluids" had been granted in England and Scotland to American-born inventor Jacob Perkins, who became known as "the father of the refrigerator". Impoverished, Gorrie sought to raise money to manufacture his machine, but the venture failed when his partner died. Humiliated by criticism, financially ruined, and his health broken, Gorrie died in seclusion on June 29, 1855. He is buried in Magnolia Cemetery.[6][7]: 195 

 

Another version of Gorrie's "cooling system"[citation needed] was used when President James A. Garfield was dying in 1881. Naval engineers built a box filled with cloths that had been soaked in melted ice water. Then by allowing hot air to blow on the cloths it decreased the room temperature by 20 degrees Fahrenheit. The problem with this method was essentially the same problem Gorrie had. It required an enormous amount of ice to keep the room cooled continuously. Yet it was an important event in the history of air conditioning. It proved that Gorrie had the right idea, but was unable to capitalize on it.[8] The first practical refrigeration system in 1854, patented in 1855, was built by James Harrison in Geelong, Australia.[9]

 

Monuments and memorials

 

Schematic of Gorrie's ice machine

In Apalachicola, Gorrie Square is named in his honor. The square contains his grave site, a monument, and the John Gorrie State Museum.

The John Gorrie Bridge, across Apalachicola Bay, connects Apalachicola with Eastpoint.

In 1914, the state of Florida gave a statue of Gorrie by sculptor C. Adrian Pillars to the National Statuary Hall Collection.[2]

John Gorrie Junior High School, now an apartment building named The John Gorrie, in Jacksonville and John Gorrie Elementary School in Tampa is named in his honor.

John Gorrie Dog Park at Riverside Park in Jacksonville, Florida opened in the summer of 2016.

The World War II Liberty Ship SS John Gorrie was named in his honor.

The John Gorrie Award is awarded each year to a graduate of the University of Florida College of Medicine believed to be the "best all-around student showing promise of becoming a practitioner of the highest type."

With affection,

Ruben

Pedro Vargas

 

Pedro Vargas

Pedro Vargas Mata (29 April 1906[1] – 30 October 1989) was a Mexican tenor and actor, from the golden age of Mexican cinema, participating in more than 70 films. He was known as the "Nightingale of the Americas", "Song Samurai" or "Continental Tenor".[2]

 

Despite his training in opera, he dedicated his career to popular song, reaching international recognition and becoming one of the main interpreters of Agustín Lara.

 

Biography

Early life

Vargas was born in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato on 29 April 1906[1] and died on 30 October 1989, in Mexico City. He was the second of twelve children that José Cruz Vargas and Rita Mata had.[3]

 

Born into a family of modest means, Pedro Vargas sang in the church choir in his hometown from the age of seven. In 1920, when he was only 14 years old, he came to Mexico City and immediately began singing in the choirs of several churches and giving serenades. It was in Colegio Francés de La Salle where he was given a scholarship to study piano and solfeggio and where he met the composer and tenor Mario Talavera –his guide and mentor– who recommended him to Professor José Pierson [es].[1] While he was there he met Jorge Negrete, Alfonso Ortiz Tirado and Juan Arvizu. José Mojica also recommended him to Alejandro Cuevas, who offered him free lessons.

 

Career

He received the opportunity to participate in the opera "Cavalleria Rusticana" on 22 January 1928, at the Teatro Esperanza, as he had been recommended by Jose Pierson. He traveled to the United States with the Orquesta Tipica (Orquesta Tipica de la Ciudad de México) de Miguel Lerdo de Tejada.

 

On his first visit to Buenos Aires he recorded two of his own compositions for the RCA Victor label: "Porteñita mía" and "Me fui", with musical backing from pianist Agüero Pepe and the legendary violinist Elvino Vardaro.

 

On 12 September 1931, he married María Teresa Camo Jáuregui, who came originally from a Querétaro family and with whom he had four children, Pedro, Mario, Marcelo and Alejandro.

 

He found great success as one of the best interpreters of the composer Agustín Lara, as well as many other composers from Latin America, and enabled their music to traverse the most diverse countries in the continent, mainly Argentina, Colombia, and Venezuela. With a very extensive repertoire that included lyrical songs such as "Jinetes en el Cielo", ranchera songs like "Allá en el Rancho Grande", boleros such as "Obsesión" (sung as a duet with Beny Moré) and nostalgic songs like "Alfonsina y el mar", Pedro Vargas received the well-deserved title of "The Nightingale of the Americas" from the public.

 

Death

Pedro Vargas died due to complications with his diabetes while sleeping and suffered from a heart attack, 30 October 1989, in Mexico City, at the age of 83.[citation needed]

 

Discography

Long (vinyl)

 

El Rey Pedro Vargas – RCA VICTOR – 0107LPA

Tracks

 

– Te Solté la Rienda

– Se Me Olvidó Otra Vez

– A Donde Va Nuestro Amor?

– Mi Paloma Triste #- Volver, Volver

– El Rey #- Cruz de Olvido

– 16 Años

– Eres Tú

– Amor de Mi Vida

– Que Te Vaya Bonito

 

 

Así Es Mi Tierra Pedro Vargas y La Rondalla Tapatía – RCA VICTOR – 0107LPB

Tracks

 

– Así es mi Tierra

– Soy Puro Mexicano

– Allá en el Rancho Grande

– La Feria de las Flores

– Dos Arbolitos

– Cielito Lindo

– La del Rebozo Blanco

– Fallaste Corazón

– La Barca de Guaymas

– La Huella de Mis Besos

– ¿Sabes De Que Tengo Ganas?

– Viva México

Lo Mejor de Pedro Vargas – Vol 1 Pedro Vargas – RCA VICTOR – 0107LPC

Tracks

 

- Mujer

– Te amaré toda la vida

– Noches de Mazatlán

– Esto es felicidad

– Te traigo serenata

– Aquel amor

– Piel canela

– Luna azul

– Te quiero

– Adiós

– La negra noche

– Obsesión

 

 

Lo Mejor de Pedro Vargas - Vol 2 Pedro Vargas - RCA VICTOR - 0107LPD

Tracks

 

- Quizás, quizás, quizás

- Santa # - Que bonito amor

- Jinetes en el cielo

- Canción mixteca

- Por Que ya no me quieres

- Por que negar

- Acércate más

- La flor de la canela

– Pecado

– Granada

– Rosa

Lo Mejor de Pedro Vargas – Vol 3 Pedro Vargas – RCA VICTOR – 0107LPE

Tracks

 

– Quien será

– Lamento borincano

– Suerte loca

– Cuando vivas conmigo

– Despierta

– Perdón

– Pequeña

– Flores negras

– Corazón, corazón

– La última noche

– Amanecí en tus brazos

– Adiós Mariquita linda

Filmography

A Butterfly in the Night (1977) (voice)

Thank (1975) TV

Back (1969)

Retablos of Guadalupe (1967) ... Retablos of Tepeyac (Mexico)

La Duquesa (1966) TV

Cucurrucucu Paloma (1965)

El Study Raleigh (1964) TV

The singer cricket Cri Cri (1963) (voice)

The Paper Man (1963) (voice) ... The Paper Man (International: English title)

Domingos Herdez (1962) TV

Mexico lindo y querido (1961) ... Beautiful and Beloved Mexico (International: English title)

Three Black Angels (1960)

Everyone his music (1959)

Unforgettable Melodies (1959 ).... Singer

Flor de canela (1959)

The Life of Agustín Lara (1959)

"Estudio de Pedro Vargas, El" (1959) TV

Bolero inmortal (1958)

Locos on television (1958)

Mask of flesh, The (1958)

Music in the Night (1958)

Music and Money (1958)

When Mexico canta (1958)

Locura musical (1958)

Feria de San Marcos, La (1958)

Three bohemianism The (1957)

Under naked, La (1957)

Apples Dorotea, Las (1957)

Zany rock and roll, Los (1957)

Teatro del crimen (1957)

"Max Factor, the stars and you" (1957) TV

Golden Jubilee (1956) ... Golden Anniversaries (International: English title)

Pensión artists (1956)

Besos banned (1956) ... Constant Love (Mexico)

Movida Chueca, A (1956)

Wet backs (1955 ).... Worker (International: English title)

De ranchero a businessman (1954)

Reportaje (1953 ).... Pedro, unemployed singer

Meat fork (1953 ).... Mocuelo ... Sierra Morena (Italy: Venice festival title) ... Terror dell'Andalusia, Il (Italy)

Nobody dies twice (1953)

Piel canela (1953)

Caribbean (1953)

Your memories and I (1953)

Yes .. my life (1953)

There once was a husband (1953)

Neither poor nor rich (1953)

Uncle of my life (1952)

Forgotten Faces (1952 ).... Singer

For women who sins (1952)

The Night Is Ours (1952)

There is a child in the future (1952)

Victims of Divorce (1952)

Del can-can to mambo (1951)

Burlada (1951 ).... Pedro

Marquesa the neighborhood, The (1951 ).... Pedro Vargas / Cantante

In Havana I go (1951)

It's a Sin to Be Poor (1950)

Aventurera (1950 ).... Singer

Also pain is sung (1950)

I loved that woman, La (1950)

Lost (1950)

A Gypsy in Havana (1950)

Poor Heart (1950)

Women in my life (1950)

I want to be bad (1950)

Abandoned, The (1949)

Sin for months, Un (1949)

Eyes of Youth (1948)

Revenge (1948)

Here come the Mendoza (1948)

I killed Alvírez Rosita (1947)

Fantasía ranchera (1947)

Morena my copla, La (1946)

Summer Hotel (1944)... Summer Hotel (International: English title)

I'm pure Mexican (1942) ... I'm a Real Mexican (USA: Title in English)

Cavalry of the Empire (1942 ).... Singer ... Imperial Cavalry (UK: Title in English))

Candida Millionaire (1941) ... Candida, Millionairess (International: English title)

Laranja-da-China (1940)

Canto a mi tierra (1938) ... Mexico canta (Mexico)

Hunger (1938)

Boys of the press, (1937) ... The Newspaper Boys (USA: Title in English)

With affection,

Ruben