profile image

Cantinflas

Aug 12, 1911 - Apr 20, 1993 (81 years old) in Santa María La Redonda, Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fortino Mario Alfonso Moreno Reyes (August 12, 1911 – April 20, 1993) was a Mexican comedian and stage and film actor, known professionally as Cantinflas. He often portrayed impoverished campesinos or a peasant of pelado origin. The character came to be associated with the national identity of Mexico, and allowed Cantinflas to establish a long, successful film career that included a foray into Hollywood. Charlie Chaplin once commented that he was the best comedian alive. and Moreno has been referred to as the "Charlie Chaplin of Mexico". To audiences in the United States, he is best remembered as costarring with David Niven in Around the World in 80 Days (1956).

As a pioneer of the cinema of Mexico, Moreno helped usher in its golden era. In addition to being a business leader, he also became involved in Mexico's tangled and often dangerous labor politics. Although he was himself politically conservative, his reputation as a spokesperson for the downtrodden gave his actions authenticity and became important in the early struggle against charrismo, the one-party government's practice of co-opting and controlling unions.

Moreover, his character Cantinflas, whose identity became enmeshed with his own, was examined by media critics, philosophers, and linguists, who saw him variably as a danger to Mexican society, a bourgeois puppet, a kind philanthropist, a venture capitalist, a transgressor of gender roles, a pious Catholic, a verbal innovator, and a picaresque underdog.

Description above from the Wikipedia article Cantinflas,licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Known For

poster
What's My Line?
Self - Mystery Guest
poster
Cantinflas y sus amigos
cantinflas
poster
The Oscars
Self
poster
El padrecito
Padre Sebastián
poster
Around the World in Eighty Days
Passepartout
poster
El profe
Sócrates García
poster
Por mis pistolas
Fidencio Barrenillo
poster
Sube y baja
Cantinflas
poster
El patrullero 777
Diógenes Bravo
poster
Cantinflas Show
Cantinflas

Credits