María Rosario Pilar Martínez Molina Moquiere de les Esperades Santa Ana Romanguera y de la Najosa Rasten
[1] (born January 15, 1951), better known as Charo
, is a Spanish actress best known for her flamboyant stage presence, her provocative outfits, and her trademark phrase ("cuchi-cuchi").
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CHARO TICKETS
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Date of birth
Official documents in
Murcia,
Spain (where she was born) and the United States indicate she was born in 1941, but Charo insists she actually was born in 1951, a claim that has been upheld in court (see below).
The performer has said in past interviews that her parents allowed her to falsify her age to appear to be older after marrying 66-year-old band leader
Xavier Cugat when she was 15.
[2] Further complicating the question is the fact that contemporary press reports gave her age at marriage as 21,
[3] [4] an April 1966 column on the wedding plans stated she was 20 and Cugat was 60,
[5] and columns less than two years before the marriage refer to her as Cugat's "18-year-old protegée"—which, if she was falsifying her age, would have made her actually 13 at the time.
[6]
In October 1977
[7] — the same year in which Charo filed for divorce from Cugat and became an American citizen — a United States court upheld the 1951 birth year as official, with the performer providing a sworn statement from her parents in support of her claim.
[8] Commenting on the disputes over her age, she has said that the public's disbelief could prove advantageous: "But if people really believe I'm older, that's fine. Don't be surprised if I come out with my own cosmetics, a new energy bar and maybe some vitamins."
Biography
Early life
Born María del Rosario Pilar Martínez Molina Baeza in
Murcia,
Spain, Charo is the daughter of a lawyer, who reportedly fled to
Casablanca during
Francisco Franco's dictatorship while her homemaker mother stayed behind in
Murcia raising their children. She studied
classical and
flamenco guitar while residing in Murcia, and can claim
Andrés Segovia as her guitar teacher. (Segovia taught general music classes as community service in schools around Murcia.) She took guitar lessons from him and other teachers from the age of nine on. As a result of her training and skill she has been named "Best Flamenco Guitarist" in
Guitar Player Magazine's
readers' poll twice. One of Charo's regrets is that because of her
flamboyant stage presence, she has been overlooked as a serious guitar player.
When Charo was quite young, she was "discovered" by famous
bandleader Xavier Cugat, whom she later wed on August 7, 1966. Cugat was 66 and had married four times before then, though contemporary reports sometimes listed fewer marriages; an April 1966 column by
Earl Wilson on the couple's wedding plans announced, "Sixty-year-old Xavier Cugat and his 20-year-old Spanish girl friend and singing star Charo hope to get married in San Cugat, Spain, in a few days – if Cugat can convince church authorities his two divorces should not be counted against him since he wasn't married in church."
The couple were the first to have their
nuptials in
Caesars Palace in
Las Vegas.
Some fan magazines say that she learned
English from
Buddy Hackett.
In a February 2005 interview with the
Los Angeles-based Spanish-language newspaper
La Opinión
, Charo claimed that her marriage to Cugat had been merely a "business contract," a way for him to legally bring her over to the United States, where he was based.
[9] She moved to 257th Street in
the Bronx,
New York City along with her mother and aunt, and was regularly featured in shows with Cugat's orchestra in New York and Las Vegas, as well as in overseas engagements in Latin America and Europe. She claims he was confident in her eventual success from early on, and that she gave him a
Rolls-Royce as a parting gift once she came of legal age.
Career
Charo's first US TV appearance was on
The Today Show
in the mid-1960s. She later appeared on
Laugh-In
in 1968. She would appear on short chatfests of a few minutes near the end of the show with
Dan Rowan and
Dick Martin. Her almost complete lack of fluency in the English language was played as a comic focus, and she would have the two hosts laughing at her mangled English. This is also the time that the "cuchi cuchi' line passed into the public arena.
The 1970s
She was headlining Vegas shows by 1971, and reportedly being paid as much as
Frank Sinatra,
Ray Charles or
Dean Martin. In 1977, she became a
naturalized citizen of the United States; that same year, she filed for divorce from Cugat, a petition that was granted April 14, 1978.
[10] On August 11, 1978 she married, as her second husband, Kjell Rasten, a producer, in
South Lake Tahoe, California, in a civil ceremony attended by 30 guests.
[11] Rasten soon became his wife's manager, and the couple has one child, a son, Shel (born 1982), who is the drummer for the metal band Treazen.
[12]
Throughout the 1970s, she was a highly visible personality, appearing 8 times on
The Love Boat
, as well as on variety and talk shows such as
Donny & Marie
,
[13] Tony Orlando and Dawn
,
[14] The Captain and Tennille
,
[15] The John Davidson Show
,
The Mike Douglas Show
, which she guest-hosted at least once,
[16] and even the infamously short-lived
Brady Bunch
variety spinoff.
[17]
In 1975,
Dallas Morning News
critic
Harry Bowman wrote that the
ABC network had "penciled in ... a half-hour comedy starring the uninhibited wife of Xavier Cugat" and commented, "This is probably the worst idea of the season."
[18] By October of that year, the performer was promoting a special slated for November,
[19] but the special did not actually appear until May, 1976.
[20] [21] A TV listing for August 24, 1976, shows what appears to be an unsold pilot airing on ABC at 8:30 pm
CST: "
Charo and the Sergeant
- Situation comedy starring Charo Cugat. Charo's first U.S. job is to be a dancer at an off-limits night club, and her conservative
Marine Corps husband finds out."
[22]
By the late 1970s, Charo was being mentioned as an example of how overexposure could damage a celebrity; one such article quoted
Steve Levitt's "
Q score" research to show the performer's popularity declined slightly even as her familiarity increased:
| “
| Before she gained national fame on talk shows in 1975, bosomy Latin starlet Charo was 'recognized' by 57 per cent of Levitt's national television sample - and had a 'popularity quotient' of 9 per cent. Today, known by 80 per cent, a figure as high as Clint Eastwood's 80 per cent, Charo's popularity is 8 per cent. 'If she was known by 100 per cent of the world, chances are her popularity might go down to 7 or 6 per cent,' Levitt says coolly. That paradox makes some performers think twice when invitations to talk shows come in.
| ”
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Post-1970s
During much of the late 1980s to late 1990s Charo had limited visibility as she moved to Hawaii, and opened and performed at her own dinner theater while she and Rasten raised their son. In the 2000s, she returned to television in commercials for
Sprint wireless phone service and
GEICO insurance, as well as guest appearances on
Hollywood Squares, a season-three stint on the celebreality series
The Surreal Life
, as a one-off guest in
Fox Network's
That '70s Show
and appearances in
VH1's
I Love the '70s
retrospectives. Most recently, on May 11, 2008. she made a guest appearance on the Latin-themed VH1 reality show
Viva Hollywood
.
She now has a regular touring show in addition to appearances in
Branson, Missouri, and
Las Vegas (which at one time were choreographed by
Comedy Central actor/dancer
Jade Esteban Estrada). She also donates her talents to
Jerry Lewis's
annual MDA telethon.
Charo appeared as the Celebrity Showtime entertainer aboard Royal Caribbean
Explorer of the Seas on its January 4 & January 13, 2008 sailings, and on the
Adventure of the Seas on its August 10, 2008 sailing. She was a Celebrity Grand Marshal of the
San Francisco LGBT Pride Parade on Sunday, June 29, 2008. She was accompanied by hordes of Charo lookalikes on a pink float. On May 23, 2008, she was a guest on
GSN Live
.
Charo also returned to the Dance music scene in June 2008 with the single "España Cañi." The single was released through Universal Wave Records.
[23]
Discography
- Cuchi-Cuchi
(1977)
- Olé Olé
(1978)
- Mamacita, ¿dónde está Santa Claus?
(Mommy, Where's Santa Claus?)
, 1978, single)
- Bailando con Charo
(Dancing with Charo
, 1981)
- Guitar Passion
(1994)
- Blame It on the Macarena
(1996)
- Gusto
(Pleasure
, 1997)
- Charo and Guitar
(2005)
Her first four albums were made with the
Salsoul Orchestra.
Filmography
- Don Juan Tenorio
(1952) (unconfirmed)
- Tiger by the Tail
(1968)
- Elvis: That's the Way It Is
(1970) (documentary)
- The Concorde: Airport '79
(1979)
- Moon Over Parador
(1988)
- Thumbelina
(1994) (voice)
Television work
This list is incomplete; you can help by [ expanding it]
.
- The Hollywood Squares
(semi-regular panelist from 1972-1978)
- The Charo Show
(1976) (unsold pilot for variety series)
- Chico and the Man
(cast member from 1977-1978)
- The Love Boat
(guest starred in 8 episodes, 1977-1984)
- The Facts of Life
(guest appearance in 1985)
- Marblehead Manor
(Feb 18, 1988)
- Pee-wee's Playhouse Christmas Special
(guest star 1988)
- Olivia Mayo is Life
(special appearance November 20, 1992)
- Mickey Mouse Works
(special guest voiceover)
- That '70s Show
(special guest star: "Red Sees Red" 2000)
- Space Ghost Coast to Coast
(unaired interview, but was quickly glimpsed on Episode 60: "Lawsuit" 1998)
- The Brak Show
(special guest star 2001)
- The Surreal Life
(cast member in 2004)
- So NoTORIous
(episode 5, season 1 in 2006)
- I Love the 70s Volume 2
(appearances in 2006)
- Chappelle's Show
(appearance in 2006)
- Sprint Cellular Phones
featuring the catch phrase "I thought you said bring home Charo"
- Geico Auto Insurance Commercial
(Acts out the Geico customer's experience 2007)
- Viva Hollywood!
New reality show on VH1 May 11, 2008)
- Tonight Show with Jay Leno
(special appearance April 17, 2008)
- Chelsea Lately
(special appearance July 24, 2008)
- Tonight Show with Jay Leno
(special appearance Dec 18, 2008)
- RuPaul's Drag Race
(guest performer Mar 9, 2009)
See also
References
- Title Unavailable
- John Beck. "Ageless persona: Vegas headliner Charo thrills fans at Sonoma County Fair: Cuchi-cuchi time at the fair," ''The Press Democrat'' (Santa Rosa, CA), August 1, 2002, page B1.
- Francis Raffetto. "Las Vegas Opens Caesar's Palace," ''After Dark'' column, ''The Dallas Morning News'', August 8, 1966, page A14.
- Paul Steiner. "Jackie followed trend of May-December," ''The Dallas Morning News'', October 27, 1968, page E9.
- Earl Wilson. "It happened last night" (column), ''The Dallas Morning News'', April 18, 1966, page D18.
- Earl Wilson. "It happened last night" (column), ''The Dallas Morning News'', September 16, 1964, section 4, page 16.
- Jura Koncius. "Personalities" (column), ''The Washington Post'', August 16, 1978, page D2.
- Larry Powell (column). "Exact age for Charo leaves plenty of wiggle room," ''The Dallas Morning News'', February 7, 1999, page 38A.
- "Fin del ‘cuchi cuchi’, principio del arte," ''La Opinión Digital'', February 17, 2005 {{es icon}}
- Roger Piantadosi. "Personalities" (column), ''The Washington Post'', April 15, 1978, page C3.
- Ellen Goldman and Joseph P. Mastrangelo. "Personalities" (column), ''The Washington Post'', August 15, 1978, page C1.
- http://www.garageband.com/artist/treazen
- ''Donny & Marie'' broadcast listings, "Channel Choices," ''The Dallas Morning News'', 1976-02-27, C7 (with George Gobel); 12-03-1976, B11 (with Carl Reiner); 1977-12-02, A16 (with Milton Berle and the Sylvers)
- ''Tony Orlando and Dawn'' broadcast listings, "Channel Choices," ''The Dallas Morning News'', 1974-07-10, page C7 (with Lloyd Bridges); 1975-03-05, page D4 (with Tony Randall); 1976-01-28, page C9 (with Freddy Fender).
- ''The Captain and Tennille'' broadcast listings, "Channel Choices," ''The Dallas Morning News'', 1977-03-07, page B7 (with John Byner, Ben Vereen, Manfred Mann and the Earth Band, and LeVar Burton).
- Rena Pederson (column), ''The Dallas Morning News'', December 3, 1976, page B11; refers to Charo as "the dizzy Spanish sexpot-songstress."
- ''The Brady Bunch Hour'' broadcast listing, "Channel Choices," ''The Dallas Morning News'', March 21, 1977, page A18 (with the Hudson Brothers, Alice B. Davis, and Rip Taylor
- Harry Bowman. "New season guessing" ("Broadcast Beat" column), ''The Dallas Morning News'', April 22, 1975, page A12.
- Earl Wilson. "Hackett 'Teaching' Charo" (column), ''The Dallas Morning News'', October 13, 1975, page D5.
- Harry Bowman. ''The Dallas Morning News'', April 27, 1976, page C5.
- UPI. "Charo special looms as family sizzler," ''The Dallas Morning News'', May 24, 1976, page B7.
- "Channel Choices," ''The Dallas Morning News'', August 24, 1976, page B5.
- Title Unavailable