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PEDRO INFANTE AT 90

The above title will not make sense to many, and will be recognized as ironic to others. I came upon an interview on a Mexican radio station with journalist Jaime Almeda who was memorializing the 90th year of Pedro Infante’s birth. This presented an opportunity for me to recount a bit of cinematic, radio and popular music history that emanated from Mexico City and captivated the whole of the Spanish-speaking world, from the depths of the South American continent to the Iberian Peninsula.

Singer/actors Pedro Infante and Jorge Negrete and brooding actor Pedro Armendáriz carried the appellation, “Ídolo del cine mexicano.” Each was a giant in his own right, with his peculiar personality and mannerisms, but all were held in “superstar” esteem, even before the invention of that term. They ruled the Mexican silver screen during the “Golden Era” of radio, movies and music that dominated the decades of the 1940s and 1950s for anyone in the world who spoke Spanish—and many who did not. Curiously, they all succumbed close enough in time to be remembered in the same breath.

Today, downtown Broadway in Los Angeles resembles a Mexican tianguis, a colorful market place with stalls selling all variety of merchandise. When I was living there in 1957, before the invention of the shopping mall, Broadway was the proper downtown main street of the city. It was where people went to shop, with department stores and all the other typical businesses. Nevertheless, there was a building on the northwest corner of Third and Broadway that was the mecca for the finest of Mexican/Latino talent. The sign said “Million Dollar Theater,” but it was known as “el Teatro Millón Dólar.” Infante, Negrete and Armendáriz were frequent headliners there. So much so that all their deaths are, in some way linked to Los Angeles.

In 1956, I embarked upon an ambitious bus ride for my very first, of many, trips to Mexico. “Ida y vuelta,” I went from Los Angeles to Mexico City, to Vera Cruz and back. Shortly after my return, I heard of the tremendous earthquake that took place in Mexico City, the one that toppled the famous “Ángel de la república” statue. By then, I was well steeped in “ídolo” lore.

The next year I, along with everyone else, was shocked to learn that, after having departed Los Angeles, Pedro Infante’s private airplane had crashed in Mérida, Yucatán. Pedro Armendáriz had blown his brains out in a Los Angeles hospital in 1963. Jorge Negrete previously had died in a Los Angeles hospital in 1953.

After having collaborated with musical groups in Tijuana, Mexico during the “British Invasion” and at the dawn of “Rock ‘n: Roll,” I took a circuitous route through Puerto Rico and arrived in Mexico City in 1967, just in time to witness the demise of Mexico’s “Golden Era.” I had the good fortune to have collaborated with a number of major artists at RCA Victor who had roots therein. Most notabe among them was a giant of a pianist, composer, lyricist and performer, Armando Manzanero Canché. Armando, a diminutive man, has managed to bridge that era on to the current day, and remains as the most potent musical personality in Mexico and the Spanish-speaking world.

Interesting: 1957, 1967, 2007…