RIP María Concepción César

The 91-year-old artist excelled in radio, film, television and theater  

By Marcelo Stiletano

July 26, 2018

María Concepción César arrived in fullness at the end of her long and fruitful life, from which she has just died.  She was barely three months away from turning 92. In 2014 she confessed that she felt "splendid" and attributed that state of mind to the path chosen to carry out an artistic journey that never knew pauses or visible obstacles.  "My intellectual and emotional life is very intense, I take great care of my career and my spirit, to passively live like a vegetable it is better to leave before," she said at the time.

She had a lot to do, to give and to share. She did it through television interviews, tributes and recognitions that helped us to build the portrait of one of the most splendid women that the Argentine show business industry had in all its history.  She was able to show off in her heyday a figure of admirable and voluptuous natural beauty that became impossible to reach even for some of the most famous vedettes that were her contemporaries. But despite that sculptural profile, highlighted above all in the perfection of her legs, was not the theater of magazines the place in which most stood out. María Concepción César was a complete star, but the theater was her favorite place in the world. "I never left the theater, I never got out of it," she told LA NACION in 2008, while she was about to premiere at the Payró Interviú , a portrait of a great show diva who decides to retire from one day to the next. activity.

It seemed a paper written at first sight for her, but only in artistic fiction.  In real life, as she recognized Alejandro Cruz in that interview, her existence was in the antipodes of that sort of simile Greta Garbo. She felt blessed by a full and intense life of constant activity in radio, theater, film and television.  "I never wanted to stay in my twenties, life goes by, I am a woman who loves what she does, I love the theater, I love everything that is expression, I made beautiful things on television, I made musicals, many comedies, movies. I live my moments very quietly, "she said.  Although she stopped to clarify that tranquility was relative.  "No actress can live quietly if she does not work," she admitted.

She was born in the neighborhood of Floresta on October 25, 1926 as Concepción María Cesarano.  She studied at the National Conservatory of Scenic Art of this city, with the guidance of Antonio Cunill Cabanellas, and made her debut in the cinema with a brief role in Pampa bárbara (1945), by Lucas Demare.  Then came, between the 50s and the 70s, El crimen de Oribe, Rosaura at ten, La madrastra, The bar on the corner, María Magdalena, Hotel Alojamiento and Los chantas , in which a complete nude was animated with almost 50 years.

She had plenty of talent as an actress, singer and dancer, and she always managed to beat time by delivering all those facets, together or separately, in characters that went through several generations of her career.  It went through classical works of Argentine and foreign authors (From Six Characters in Search of an Author , by Pirandello, to A Handsome from the 900 , from Eichelbaum and from El enfermo imaginario , from Moliére, to El conventillo de la paloma , from Vaccarezza) and triumphed in traditional musical comedies ( Can Can , Todos en París ) and modern ones like the Houdini directed by Ricky Pashkus in 2005.

She had an outstanding radio presence, when the Buenos Aires radio stations ensured the exclusivity of her great figures, as she did with Splendid.  And it conquered a good part of its enormous popularity thanks to a constant presence in television, mainly of the hand of Alejandro Romay. Her first steps in the small screen were at the beginning of the 60s with Esquina de tango, together with Enrique Dumas, and in that decade she had her first great success as a star of Tropicana Club , a musical turned into a historical classic of our history television with Chico Novarro and Marty Cosens.  Afterwards, there were innumerable participations in omnibus programs and shows (Sábado de la Bondad, Grandes valores del tango), specials (Alta comedia) and well-remembered fiction comedy (Todo el año es navidad) or soap operas (Vos y yo todo la vida, Master and Lord). Each appearance of María Concepción César as a permanent or occasional figure was a new sample of talent and interpretative versatility. No script was left small, no character seemed alien, distant, forced or artificial.

However, with so much prestige gained and so many recognitions harvested without breaks, she never wanted to keep more than a small sample of them in her home. "Do you know why the house is like this without photos or awards? Because I want my children to visit me when they see their mother, not to see the figure, I want that, because I have not been with them enough. She was a gorgeous girl who came out of a contract and got into another, at one point in my life I had to work a lot, it was to set standards for my children, I was a very young widow and there was no other possibility, more, it did not stop, "she said in that conversation with LA NACION.

After enjoying all kinds of successes, she chose to consecrate her life to her two sons and grandchildren, but never losing sight of her identity and her vocation. It reached that rare balance that so many artists crave and cannot reach. To have the pleasure of continuing with the performance while still receiving awards (she won the Konex, the Quinquela Martín, the Pablo Podestá, the Susini and a recognition granted by the National Congress in 1999) and at the same time devote all the time she wanted to her family and other things surely more personal and simpler.  There she must have found the secret that allowed her to reach the end without losing any of his admirable splendor. She managed to see herself in all her photographs, those of her youth and those of recent times, to prove it: in each of them she never stopped smiling.

Born: 10/25/1926, Floresta, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Died: 7/26/2018, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Pampa bárbara – 1945 (Luz González)