Actress and singer Paquita Rico dies at age 87
El Mundo
July 9, 2017
According to a family spokesman, death has been due to "complications derived from old age"
The actress and singer Francisca Rico Martínez, Paquita Rico, died today in Seville, her native city, at 87 years of age, due to natural causes, sources close to the family have confirmed.
Paquita Rico has died shortly before 20:00 hours, and her body is in a funeral parlor in the capital of Seville, where friends and acquaintances have begun to arrive to give her a last goodbye.
She was born on October 13, 1929 in Seville in a modest family, where the father earned his living as a traveling merchant, and as he remembered, he sold in many occasions the typical seafood cucuruchos.
Since she was a little girl, she became interested in copla and, as a young woman, she enrolled in Adelita Domingo's singing and dancing school.
She participated in the Spanish ballet of Montemar with the actresses and singers Carmen Sevilla and Ana Esmeralda until a scout, José Brageli, took her to the company of Pepe Pinto, with whom she toured in Spain.
The year 1948 was the year of her film debut with the film director Florián Rey Brindis to Manolete and two years later she starred in the film Debla, the gypsy virgin, with the postwar gallant Alfredo Mayo.
With this feature film she won the Best Performance at the Cannes Film Festival, which she popularly enshrined, while the producer Cesáreo González took his services exclusively.
Not long afteward she began touring America and Europe, as well as Spain and while it strengthened her career as a singer, she gained special respect for her cinema work.
Among her films, she emphasized her role as Queen of the Mercedes in Where You Go, Alfonso XII (1958), who, along with the actor Vicente Parra, was a commercial success.
Two years later, Paquita Rico coincided with the actresses and singers Lola Flores and Carmen Sevilla in the film El balcón de la luna, an atypical production of the time, since it united three stars that habitually carried out films known for their individual appearances.
At that time also she appeared in the films El duende de Jerez and Malvaloca in 1954, Lavanderas de Portugal (1957), Tierra Brutal, Historia de una noche and La viudita naviera in 1962 and Las otoñales (1966).
In 1960 Paquita Rico married the bullfighter Juan Ordoñez, 'Juan de la Palma', a marriage that ended in tragedy after the suicide of her husband. Eight years later, she married Canarian businessman Guillermo Arsenio Arocha Fernández, who died in 2002.
Throughout her long film career she touched both drama and comedy genres. Of this last belongs the Cid Cabreador (1983), under the direction of Angelino Fons, in which it incarnated to Dona Urraca.
The famous composers Moraleda, Ramón Cabrera, Juan Solano and Quintero, León and Quiroga composed for her.
And among her ample repertoire, are Luis I of Bavaria, El beso, Adiós marinero, which premiered in the film El balcon de la luna (1962), passing through Malvaloca or Do not go the dove.
Also she entered the world of the theater, obtaining successes like Marriage of Blood (1962) in the Madrid theater of Fine Arts under the direction of Jose Tamayo.
Her last theatrical contribution took place at the beginning of August of 1988, with the title Of Madrid to the Sky, of the Company of Popular Theater Don Ramón de la Cruz.
Due to her popularity she was also was asked to collaborate with Encarna Sánchez on her radio program Directamente Encarna during the 1980s, and participated in the TV series Hostal Royal Manzanares (1977) with Lina Morgan and Manos a la obra (1998).
In the late 1990's she retired from the show and returned to her native Seville.
RICO, Paquita (Francisca Rico Martínez)
Born: 10/13/1929, Triana, Seville, Andalusia, Spain
Died: 7/9/2017, Seville, Andalusia, Spain
Paquita Rico’s western - actress
Savage Guns – 1962 (Franchea)