carmen sevilla

Born on October 16, 1930 in the city where she got her stage name, María del Carmen García Galisteo comes from a family closely related to music, since her father, Antonio García Padilla, better known as “Kola”, was an accountant but he wrote lyrics for artists such as Imperio Argentina , while his grandfather, José García Rufino, was a very famous satirical chronicler and playwright. When she was 10 years old, the family settled in Madrid, where the girl attended the dance academy run by Laura de Santelmo, an expert in playing castanets, who was the first to call her Carmen Sevilla, to distinguish her from another student of the same name.

At the age of 13, he went to see Estrellita Castro rehearse , who asked him if he knew how to dance sevillanas. She said that she was, and her folkloric was so impressed to see her on stage that she offered to join her as a dancer in the theatrical production “Rapsodia española”, also with Paquita Rico . Shortly after, she joined the company of the famous singer El Príncipe Gitano. At 18, thanks to her paternal influence, the director Juan de Orduña gives her the opportunity to debut in her feature film, with a brief role in Serenata española .

A friend, José Ángel Ezcurra, director of Triumph, recommended Carmen Sevilla to a Mexican production company, which was finalizing the pre-production of a film that was going to be shot in Spain with the Mexican idol Jorge Negrete . They liked how she looked so much on the screen that she was offered the lead role in the film, Jalisco sings in Seville , by Fernando de Fuentes . They paid her seven thousand pesetas, the largest figure she had ever gotten, and also, at the end of the shoot, they gave her the dresses she wore.

The film was a hit both in Spain and in Mexico, which caused the young actress to receive contracts for films such as Cuentos de la Alhambra , by Florián Rey , Summer Cruise , by Luis Lucia , El relicario , by Rafael Gil , Operación Plus Ultra , by Pedro Lazaga and above all Requiebro , by Carlos Schlieper, where he sang “Carmen de España”, whose lyrics (“I am the Carmen of Spain, and not that of Merimèe) were written by the maestros Quintero, León and Quiroga.In Andalousie they pair her with Luis Mariano, with whom she would repeat in titles such as El sueño de Andalucía. With Jorge Mistral he shoots La hermana San Sulpicio and with Fernando Fernán Gómez A Decent Adultery .

Her best work is undoubtedly the role of Carolina, a woman of character faced with the womanizer Don Beltrán, in The Taming of the Shrew , a fairly faithful version of the work of William Shakespeare . Her career also had a certain international impact. Nicholas Ray chose her to play Mary Magdalene in King of Kings . Don Siegel ( Dirty Harry ) directed her in his film set in Spain Aventura para dos , and she shot the film Bread, Love and… Andalusia with Vittorio de Sica and Peppino de Filippo . With Raf Vallone she films Revenge, by Juan Antonio Bardem , which will be the first Spanish production nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film.

At that time, rumors of romances with stars like Yul Brynner and Frank Sinatra proliferate , although she has always assured that they had not occurred. Yes, she was the formal girlfriend of Ricardo Fuster, a Valencian industrialist, who broke up with her because he considered that he was playing too daring roles in the cinema. She later had a notorious romance with the Mexican bullfighter Carlos Arruza. She finally fell in love with the illustrious composer Augusto Algueró, with whom she married on February 23, 1961, in the Basilica del Pilar. And although they have a son, Augusto Algueró García, they eventually end up divorcing.

In the 70s, her career was declining, so Carmen Sevilla recycled with the risque films that were beginning to be made in Spain. Thus, she stars in titles such as It is not good for a man to be alone , by Pedro Olea , Striptease à la inglés , by José Luis Madrid , or Nosotros los decentes , by Mariano Ozores . In 1972 she was Octavia, abandoned by her husband, Mark Antony, when she became the mistress of the Queen of Egypt, in Mark Antony and Cleopatra , starring Charlton Heston . Her last work on the big screen was Faces , with Juan Pardo and Bárbara Rey .

After pairing up with the businessman Vicente Patuel, Carmen Sevilla decides to retire from the show, to be able to dedicate herself to raising sheep on a rural farm. However, in the early 1990s she embarked on a long television career, ever since Valerio Lazarov, director of Telecinco, a newly created network at the time, recruited her to present “Telecupón”, where she triumphed due to her sympathy, but also because of her numerous errors and oversights. In addition to starring in the soap opera Ada Madrina , a resounding failure, she ends up presenting various programs, such as “Cine de Barrio”, which she recorded weekly between 2003 and 2010.