Rosário (Argentina), 1908 – Cidade do México (México), 2000
By Alberto Ikeda
Actress and singer, Libertad Lamarque Bouza developed one of the longest and most prodigious careers in the history of the arts in the 20th century. She worked primarily in Argentina and Mexico, gaining great prestige in the fields of music, cinema, and soap operas. In her later years, she became known as an actress in Mexican telenovelas, broadcast throughout Latin America. She was known as La dama del tango (The Lady of Tango) and La novia de América (The Girlfriend of America) for the roles she portrayed in cinema.
Her activities in theater and music began when she was still a child. In 1926, she moved with her family to Buenos Aires. Her first record was recorded in that same year, already achieving success. In cinema, her first film was a silent one, in 1930; titled Adiós Argentina, it was not widely known. Later, she appeared in Tango in 1933, considered the first sound film in the country. By the 1940s, she was already regarded as a great actress and singer, especially of tangos, but also boleros and other Latin American genres. She was highly active in musical performances, recordings, and films. However, she had to leave Argentina in 1946 because, when she participated in the recording of the film La cabalgada del circo, she had rivalry issues with the then-actress Eva Duarte (later, Evita Perón), who was already involved with President General Juan Domingo Perón. She then moved to Mexico with her second husband, musician Alfredo Malerba. There, she continued her artistic endeavors, acting in a 1947 film directed by Luis Buñuel, Gran casino. In total, she participated in more than forty films, and her musical activities began to take a backseat. She returned to acting in Argentina only in the mid-1950s.
The numbers of her achievements are quite impressive: more than 60 films (in Argentina, Mexico, and Spain); over 200 recorded albums (in Argentina, Cuba, Mexico, and Spain, around 800 songs); as well as theater plays and six telenovelas (in Venezuela, Mexico, and Argentina).
In the later years of her life, she lived between Miami, United States (since 1996), and Buenos Aires, but she passed away in Mexico while making a special appearance in the telenovela Carita de angel (Carinha de anjo in Brazil), due to pneumonia. She had nearly eighty years of artistic career.
