Cantinflas
El Pelado Más Rico del Mundo

When the Mexican actor and comedian Mario Moreno - known professionally as Cantinflas - died on April 20, 1993, one article mentioned he was a man of simple life and austere habits.

Well, if by a simple life and austere habits you mean living in five homes filled with expensive art collections and complete with swimming pool, bowling alley, private theater, personal barber shop, and beauty salon for his wife, not to mention owing a 1000 acre ranch, La Purisima where he would fly in his private plane in order to supervise the raising of prize fighting bulls, then we suppose he was a man of a simple life and austere habits.

In fairness, though, Cantinflas was also famous for his generosity. If you showed up at his door, you were not turned away empty-handed. He also was a major philanthropist holding benefits, contributing to charities, and even providing low rent housing to the poor.

Mario Moreno y Reyes was born on August 12, 1911 and strictly speaking into the middle class, the son of a postal official, Pedro Moreno, and his wife, Soledad. The details of Mario's early life, though, are a bit vague. We know he came from a large family - some articles say he had seven brothers; others that he had 12 brothers and three sisters. Whatever the real numbers, the family por necesidad must have led a simple life and had austere habits.

So if you consult academic works about Latin American popular culture and the sections dealing with Mario's life, you'll find they are filled with qualifications: "Legend has it ...", "Legend says ...". Some accounts have Mario dropping out of school where he then shined shoes, drove a taxi, and even tried his hand at boxing and bullfighting. Other stories tell us he graduated from high school and attended agricultural college. But all biographies agree that his natural performing talent landed him a spot in a traveling tent show.

Another legend is that in those early days a heckler once shouted, "¡En la cantina tu inflas!", that is, "In the tavern you blow wind!" (inflar: inflate). Contracting the insult, Mario came up with his name Cantinflas.

"Legend also tells us" that when called on to be an impromptu host, a bad case of stage fright rendered Mario nearly incoherent. But his stream of mispronounced words and Spanish malapropisms struck the audience as hilarious. Mario quickly adopted the delivery into his act.

Ultimately Mario ended up at the Folies Theater in Mexico City where the performances were the Mexican equivalent of vaudeville. There Cantinflas's persona of the pelado, one of the urban poor, caught the attention of an advertising company who put him in some short advertising films. These ads proved popular, and like the later commercials that featured American actor Jim Varney, they led to feature films, but films that became hits even beyond any of the Ernest series.

Cantinflas's first film was No te engañes corazón (Don't Fool Yourself, Dear) in 1936. But his first true feature film was the 1941 Ni sangre, ni arena (Neither Blood Nor Sand) where he had a double role of a famous bullfighter and a look-alike bullfighter wannabe.

Cantinflas (pronounced "kahn-TEEN-flass") remained virtually unknown to English speaking audiences until the 1956 release of Around the World in 80 Days starring David Niven. This was a cameo-crammed production the type of which had some vogue up to The Muppet Movie in 1979. For what it's worth, soon after Jules Verne published his book it was proven you could indeed travel around the world in 80 days.

In Around the World in 80 Days Cantinflas took the role of Passepartout (pronounced PASS-par-too), the valet of David Niven's character Phileas Fogg (pronounced FILL-ee-ass FOG). The part won Cantinflas a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor.

Following up this success, Cantinflas took the starring role in another US produced and star-packed extravaganza. This was Pepe (1960). Here he returned to his role as, if not the downtrodden pelado, then as a poor caballerizo, a ranch hand who took care of the horses for a hacendado, the wealthy owner of a large ranch.

The kids liked the film although the younger ones had trouble following the lengthy and rather convoluted plot. Adult critics were more censorious. Sam Chase writing in Billboard doubted the film would draw the audience as did Around the World in 80 Days, and more recently the famous critic Leonard Maltin has given the film 0 out 4 stars: "Incredibly long [3 hours], pointless film wastes talents of Cantinflas and many, many others (Edward G. Robinson, Maurice Chevalier, etc.). This one's only if you're desperate."

The primary criticism was that Cantinflas's undoubted comedic talents had to stand aside for the never-ending parade of Hollywood stars. In Pepe he also abandoned the character of the street-smart pícaro for a somewhat befuddled and even buffoonish palurdo (bumpkin) who finally achieves his goal - retrieving a favorite horse - by pure luck. Rarely mentioned in the reviews is that in the movie, Pepe gets his needed cash by gambling in a Las Vegas casino - where in reality the odds are always against the player - and is scarcely a message you want to send to the kiddies.

The Billboard review was correct. Although nominated for seven Academy Awards (but winning none), the film was a box office flop. Cantinflas returned to Mexico and for the rest of his life worked almost exclusively in Mexican films.

He certainly never lacked for work. There were fifteen more movies after Pepe. There was also an animated cartoon series The Cantinflas Show, some episodes of which were revoiced (and the Cantinflas name removed) for a US audience. In Mexico, the show ran for ten years and ended in 1982.

The last Cantinflas film was El barrendero (The Street Sweeper) in 1981. Here Cantinflas played (what else?) a street sweeper who witnessed an art theft.

After El barrendero Cantinflas felt it was time to slow down. That didn't mean he'd completely retire, of course. In 1983 he made an album Con los niños del mundo (With the Children of the World). The album flopped. Not that he needed the money, but he also began picking up the extra paychecks by doing commercials.

This itself wasn't without controversy. People just expected that the millionaire actor should live the part of his fictional character. When Cantinflas did a series of commercials for Carnet, a credit card company, the people saw billboards of the now definitely older actor next to his younger and poor alter-ego. When he was asked how to reconcile using an image of an impoverished urban dweller with a credit card that most of them would never use, Cantinflas simply said "I never imagined that one might think it wrong to urge the people to get rich."

Of course with few exceptions celebrity wanes and one way to boost fading fame is to put out a movie about the subject. In 2014, the movie Cantinflas was released starring Spanish actor Óscar Jaenada. Although some fans of Cantinflas praised the film, overall it received so-so reviews at best. One positive aspect is that Óscar had a good physical resemblance to the real McCoy - rather the real Cantinflas. So you don't have to suspend belief as for many other biopics where the actor neither looks nor sounds like the person they're supposed to look and sound like.

In later years, some of the Mexican historians and intellectuals saw Cantinflas - or at least his character - as promoting low class stereotypes (similar feelings in the United States led to the demise of the Frito Bandito). The famous novelist and essayist, Carlos Fuentes, didn't bother mentioning Cantinflas in his book length essay El Espejo Enterrado (The Buried Mirror), a cultural history of Spain and the Spanish-speaking world. Nor did the Nobel Prize winning poet Octavio Paz bother running an obituary for Cantinflas in his magazine Vuelta. Still even the eggheads had to acknowledge the effect Cantinflas had on Mexican and Spanish culture, and in 1992, the Royal Spanish Academy (which sets the grammar for the language) listed a verb cantinflear, "to babble".

Sometimes we wonder what the eggheads are thinking. When Mexico was hosting the World Soccer Cup, the president of the Mexican Soccer Federation, Rafael de Castillo, announced that Cantinflas would be the official mascot of their team. That was fine with Cantinflas, and he gave permission for his image to be used.

The intellectuals had a fit. This was totally inappropriate. A lowly pelado as the symbol of Mexican people? Ridiculous! Absurd! Humiliating! Mortified, Cantinflas withdrew his character from consideration.

And what mascot was finally adopted that met with academic approval?

A jalapeño pepper in a sombero.

References

Cantinflas and the Chaos of Mexican Modernity, Jeffrey M. Pilcher, Scholarly Resources, 2001.

"Cantinflas (Mario Moreno), Pop Culture in Latin America and the Caribbean, Elizabeth Nichols and Timothy R. Robbins, ABC-CLIO, 2015.

"Pepe", Turner Classic Movies.

"Cantinflas", Internet Movie Data Base.

Cantinflas, Latin America's Beloved Comic Actor, Dies, Hector Tobar, April 21, 1993.

"Cantinflas, Mexican Comic Actor And Philanthropist, Is Dead at 81", Albin Krebs, The New York Times, April 22, 1993.

"México Llora la Muerte de Cantinflas, El Cómico Más Popular del Cine en Español", Fernando Orgambides, El Pais, April 22, 1993.

"La Vida Secreta de Cantinflas", Lyuba Yez, June 2, 2013.

"Cantiflas Stuck with Sticky Story", Sam Chase, Billboard, December 26, 1960.

"Cantinflas, With His Puns And Satire, Is Back (And Still Relevant)", Jasmine Garsd, National Public Radio, August 29, 2014.

"'Cantinflas': Film Review", Jonathan Holland, December 30, 2014.