Celebrity Biographies
Narciso Ibanez Serrador
He will be remembered as one of the great pioneers of television, and above all as the creator of the television phenomenon ‘One, two, three’. But he was a restless man, who worked as a theater director, actor, playwright, screenwriter, and film and television producer. In the field of dramatized fiction, his great specialty was horror movies. Narciso Ibáñez Serrador died on June 7, 2019, at the age of 83, hours after being urgently admitted to a Madrid hospital due to an infection. He had suffered for years from a degenerative disease that had confined him to a wheelchair.
Born in Montevideo (Uruguay), on July 4, 1935, Narciso Ibáñez Serrador, better known as Chicho, spent his childhood accompanying his parents, the Argentine Pepita Serrador and the Asturian Narciso Ibáñez Menta , two renowned actors who triumphed above all. in Argentina, in his theatrical tours throughout the American territory. Given this background, it is not surprising that he soon made his stage debut. In fact, when he was only 8 days old -according to his father’s recollection- he went out on stage for the first time, in the arms of an actress, although his official debut was at the age of eight, when he dubbed Tambor the rabbit, in the version for everyone. Bambi ‘s Spanish-speaking countries , in 1943.
After settling in Spain in 1951, Chicho trained as an actor, and began an intense activity on stage. He also directs the play ‘The Glass Zoo’, by Tennessee Williams and in the end he ends up premiering, in 1959, ‘Approved in Innocence’, written, directed and performed by him. In 1960, using the pseudonym Luis Peñafiel, he wrote the film Obras del terror , based on stories by Edgar Allan Poe , directed by Antonio Carreras, and starring his father and himself. At that time, he was constantly required for various television programs, especially for ‘Estudio 3’, where he was director, screenwriter and actor, of self-contained stories on different themes. He was also the creator of the seriesTomorrow it may be true , which recreated different stories of the fantastic, suspense and horror genre, based on stories by writers such as Ray Bradbury , or with original scripts written by him. Although his greatest television fiction success was the legendary series Stories to Sleep , composed of horror stories that he himself presented in the humorous style of Alfred Hitchcock , in the series Alfred Hitchcock Presents . Despite the obvious risk of imitating the master of suspense, the truth is that the charismatic Ibáñez Serrador came out of the effort with flying colors, and marked the audience of the time. The television production Historias de la frivolidad was also very popular , withIrene Gutiérrez Caba , very critical of the censorship of the time.
An expert in horror films, his father’s great passion, he chose this genre for his film directorial debut, The Residence , starring the veteran Lili Palmer. She played Madame Fourneu, a severe director of a residence for young ladies with problems. Sometimes one of her tries to escape from her, but is assassinated without her companions ever hearing from her. A careful staging, inspired by British Hammer productions, and a brilliant script, make this film one of the best horror films ever shot in Spain.
But Ibáñez Serrador was a hyperactive creator who needed to do very different things. That is why he completely changed register, becoming the creator of the most famous Spanish television contest of all time, ‘Un, dos, tres… Responda otra vez’, which began broadcasting in 1972, presented by Kiko Ledgard. Its name refers to the fact that it consisted of three very different parts, one of questions and answers, a physical test, and one part, the auction, in which the contestants choose a prize. An evil character, Don Cicuta, was happy if they screwed up. The beautiful ‘secretaries’ of the program were all the rage, some of which became very popular such as Victoria Abril , Silvia Marsó or Lydia Bosch .
Ibáñez Serrador’s own favorite program is El televisor , from 1974, starring his father, who warned of the risks of television addiction.
In 1976, Chicho returned to film horror with the horrifying Who can kill a child? , based on a novel by Juan José Plans. A British couple lands on an island inhabited by angelic children only in appearance… Shortly after, the incombustible author presents a project to Spanish Television entitled Letters to the Director , for a suspense series. He is rejected, but in exchange they place him as the presenter of ‘My favorite terrors’, an anthology of the best horror movies of all time, presented by him. But since then he has abandoned the genre almost completely, dedicating himself to the longest stage of ‘Un, dos, tres’, presented by Mayra Gómez Kemp, who was later replaced by Jordi Estadella and Luis Larrodera .. He also created other programs such as ‘Waku, Waku’, ‘Let’s talk about sex’ and ‘El semáforo’.
Despite his advanced age, and the fact that he was half retired, Ibáñez Serrador continued to be active during the last years of his life. In 2002 he premiered the play ‘El águila y la niebla’, starring Luis Merlo . In 2005 he returned to terror with La culpa , in which a nurse thinks she hears knocking behind a closed door. It was part of the excellent series of telefilms, Películas para no dormir , which brought together the best Spanish filmmakers specialized in the genre at the moment, and which could have been a great success if it had not been mistreated on its television broadcast.