Pedro Infante - Actor

Actor

His natural talent for acting was made evident in such pictures as:

• Tizoc, along with María Félix, which gained him the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the 7th Berlin International Film Festival.

• The massive migration from the countryside to the cities (mostly to Mexico City) during the 1940s fed the required labor force for rising manufacturing industries. This urbanization created the "working neighborhoods" and the culture of "la vecindad" (group of small apartments around a common patio), and found in Pedro Infante an identifiable icon for these, the new urban working class, with his character Pepe el Toro (Pepe the Bull) in the melodramatic trilogy made up of Nosotros los pobres, Ustedes los ricos, and Pepe el Toro (We the Poor, You the Rich, and Pepe the Bull), costarring with Evita Muñoz "Chachita".

• He worked with Sara García ("Mexico's grandmother") in many movies for Mexican cinema. Sara Garcia frequently played the role of his loving but "no nonsense" grandmother in their movies together, in which she constantly tried to get him to behave, but never succeeded.

• If that same urbanizing population had the nostalgia for the rural life, and with it the popularity of ranchera music and the idealized charro, it was not until he played the poor carpenter with a strong chilango (Mexico City) accent that Pedro Infante achieved a status, at least in Mexico, at the same level of celebrity such as Cantinflas, the Soler Brothers and even Jorge Negrete and María Félix. Despite that, he kept on playing the role of the charro and even the northern Mexican rancher (perhaps his most authentic character) in Ahí viene Martín Corona (Here comes Martín Corona) in 1951 and Los Hijos de María Morales (The Sons of María Morales) in 1952. When Jorge Negrete died in 1953, Pedro was no longer in the shadow of the international idol, even though Pedro was very affected by the disappearance of his idol. During his burial service some saw him slightly inebriated, a rare sight given that Infante was not a drinker.

• The Mexican child star María Eugenia Llamas, who was only four at the time, made her screen debut with him in the 1948 movie classic, "Los Tres Huastecos" ("The Three Men from Hausteca") as "La Tucita", a screen name she has used ever since. She played with him again under the screen name La Tucita in his classic 1949 film comedy, "Dicen que Soy un Mujeriego" ("They Say I am a Womanizer").

• One of his better roles was that of Juventino Rosas in the movie "Sobre las Olas" ("Over the Waves"), based on the life of the Mexican waltz composer. Infante's natural musical abilities contributed to helping him to get into character.

• An important point in his career as an actor was winning the Ariel Award given by the Mexican Academy of Arts and Cinematographic Sciences for Best Actor for his role in La Vida No Vale Nada (Life is Worth Nothing, a line from the song Camino de Guanajuato).