Luisa Vehil
Encyclopedia
Luisa Vehil is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
– October 24, 1991, Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
, Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
) was an Uruguayan
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
theater and movie actress who had a notable career in Argentina. She was an iconic figure in the Argentinean theater scene.
Career
Luisa Vehil was born in 1912 in MontevideoMontevideo
Montevideo is the largest city, the capital, and the chief port of Uruguay. The settlement was established in 1726 by Bruno Mauricio de Zabala, as a strategic move amidst a Spanish-Portuguese dispute over the platine region, and as a counter to the Portuguese colony at Colonia del Sacramento...
, Uruguay
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
, she belong to a eight generation dinasty of actors originally from Catalonia
Catalonia
Catalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...
; daughter and granddaughter of theatre players. Her brothers were Paquita and Juan. She was also the aunt of actors Miguel Ángel Solá
Miguel Ángel Solá
Miguel Ángel Solá is a prolific Argentine actor who has made over 60 film appearances in film and TV in Argentina since 1973....
and Mónica Vehil.
Luisa moved to Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
, Argentina at an early age, and starred in her first movie in 1933, Los tres berretines, directed by Luis Moglia Barth
Luis Moglia Barth
Luis Moglia Barth was an Argentine film director and screenwriter, and one of the influential directors in the Cinema of Argentina of the classic era. He directed some 30 films between 1927 and 1959, often screenwriting for his pictures.He directed films such as Los tres berretines and Amalia...
. It was the second Argentine talk movie. She went on to appear in other minor 'talkies' throughout the '30s, working in tango
Tango music
Tango is a style of ballroom dance music in 2/4 or 4/4 time that originated among European immigrant populations of Argentina and Uruguay . It is traditionally played by a sextet, known as the orquesta típica, which includes two violins, piano, double bass, and two bandoneons...
-oriented films by famed tango writer Manuel Romero
Manuel Romero
Manuel Romero was an Argentine film director, screenwriter , dramatist and score composer, and one of the influential directors in the Cinema of Argentina of the classic era...
and Eduardo Morera
Eduardo Morera
Eduardo Morera Eduardo Morera Eduardo Morera (9 January 1906 - 21 January 1997 in Buenos Aires was an important Argentine film director of early Argentine cinema in the 1930s...
.
Opposite to Juan Perón
Juan Perón
Juan Domingo Perón was an Argentine military officer, and politician. Perón was three times elected as President of Argentina though he only managed to serve one full term, after serving in several government positions, including the Secretary of Labor and the Vice Presidency...
regime she suffered an attack when playing the leading role in the play Fascination.
Vehil's next big role was in Pampa bárbara, an epic western directed by Lucas Demare
Lucas Demare
Lucas Demare was an Argentine film director, screenwriter and film producer prominent in the Cinema of Argentina in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s....
and Hugo Fregonese
Hugo Fregonese
Hugo Fregonese was an Argentine film director who worked both in Hollywood and in Argentina....
. It was her second and last screen appearance throughout the '40s; likewise, she acted in film once per decade – once in the '50s (En la ardiente oscuridad, by Daniel Tinayre
Daniel Tinayre
Daniel Tinayre was a French born Argentine film director, screenwriter and film producer....
, 1958) and once in the '60s (El bote, el río y la gente, 1960).
Nevertheless, her main activity was the theater where she was regarded as one of the Grand-Dames of the national scene, a revered and iconic figure. She played Mary Stuart
Mary Stuart
-People:*Mary Stewart, Countess of Buchan , fifth daughter of James I of Scotland, 1st Countess of Buchan*Mary, Queen of Scots , queen regnant of Scotland, wife of Francis II of France and mother of James I of England...
, Juana La Loca, Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
's Happy Days
Happy Days
Happy Days is an American television sitcom that originally aired from January 15, 1974, to September 24, 1984, on ABC. Created by Garry Marshall, the series presents an idealized vision of life in mid-1950s to mid-1960s America....
, Madame Desmortes in Jean Anouilh
Jean Anouilh
Jean Marie Lucien Pierre Anouilh was a French dramatist whose career spanned five decades. Though his work ranged from high drama to absurdist farce, Anouilh is best known for his 1943 play Antigone, an adaptation of Sophocles' Classical drama, that was seen as an attack on Marshal Pétain's...
's L'Invitation au Château
L'Invitation au Château
Invitation to the Castle is a 1947 satirical play by the French playwright Jean Anouilh. It was adapted in 1950 by Christopher Fry as Ring Round the Moon. The play concerns two twins, a cold, manipulative playboy Hugo, and his sensitive brother Frédéric. Frédéric is madly in love with Diana, the...
and L'Alouette (The Lark)
L'Alouette (The Lark)
L'Alouette is a 1952 play by Jean Anouilh about Joan of Arc. It was presented on Broadway in English in 1955, starring Julie Harris as Joan and Boris Karloff as Pierre Cauchon. It was produced by Kermit Bloomgarden.The English adaptation was by Lillian Hellman and the incidental music was by...
, Alejandro Casona
Alejandro Casona
Alejandro Rodríguez Álvarez, known as Alejandro Casona was a Spanish poet and playwright born in Besullo, Spain, a member of the Generation of '27. Casona received his bachelor's degree in Gijon and later studied at the University of Murcia. After Franco's rise in 1936, he was forced, like many...
's Los árboles mueren de pie, etc.
Between 1964–1967 she directed the Argentina's National Comedy and was also a member of the FNA.
She made a comeback in the '70s, appearing in films by Juan Bautista Stagnaro, Alejandro Doria
Alejandro Doria
Alejandro Doria was a noted Argentine cinema and television director.-Life and work:Born in Buenos Aires in 1936, he first worked for Argentine television in 1965 as a writer for a local variety show, Show rambler....
and Luis Saslavsky
Luis Saslavsky
Luis Saslavsky was an Argentine film director, screenwriter and film producer, and one of the influential directors in the Cinema of Argentina of the classic era...
. She would work with Doria one more time in 1982, in Los pasajeros del jardín.
Turning to TV, Vehil starred in the hour-long programa Navidad en el año 2000 in 1981 and hosted the show Las 24 horas from 1982 to 1985. Her last acting performance was in Kindergarten
Kindergarten (film)
Kindergarten is a 1989 Argentine movie directed by Jorge Polaco, based on Asher Benatar's novel. It stars Graciela Borges, Arturo Puig and Luisa Vehil. It was banned from theaters one day short of its release and has remained unreleased in Argentina for over 20 years.- Plot :The movie focuses on...
(1989), a controversial film by Jorge Polaco
Jorge Polaco
Jorge Polaco is an Argentine filmmaker whose film, En el nombre del hijo, won best film at the Festróia - Tróia International Film Festival.- Career :...
, censored one day short from its release (the first case of censorship in the country following the end of the Dirty War
Dirty War
The Dirty War was a period of state-sponsored violence in Argentina from 1976 until 1983. Victims of the violence included several thousand left-wing activists, including trade unionists, students, journalists, Marxists, Peronist guerrillas and alleged sympathizers, either proved or suspected...
six years prior).
Luisa Vehil was honored as an "Illustrious Citizen of the City of Buenos Aires" in 1990. In 1981 she received the Platinum- and Diamond Konex Award
Konex Award
Konex Foundation awards, or simple Konex awards are cultural awards from the Konex Foundation to Argentine cultural personalities.Created in 1980, where conceived as a way to reward the Argentine personalities and institutions of different fields, as well as to stimulate the beginners.Even though...
.
She died from natural causes on October 24, 1991.