Tato Bores

Mauricio Borensztein (Buenos Aires, April 27, 1925-Buenos Aires, January 11, 1996), better known as Tato Bores, was an actor, comedian and Argentinian monologist.

Although he acted in cinema, theater and television, it is in this last medium where with his political humor he marked generations of Argentines. He nicknamed himself the National Comedy Actor and made several generations of Argentines laugh throughout his career of more than 50 years. He was one of the most respected and beloved figures in the country. He participated in 19 films and an infinity of television series and plays. He was declared an Illustrious Citizen of the City of Buenos Aires in 1992.

Through humor, he said what no one could or wanted to say. The sagacity of his comments, the subtle criticism that avoided censorship captivated viewers. Tato Bores absolutely renewed the language of political humor. Assisted by the best scriptwriters of each era, he transformed the style of Pepe Arias' monologues into a frenetic and surreal torrent of imaginary scenes between the characters of the moment.

Precisely, this way of reciting them, at an incredible speed, spoke much more about the political reality of the moment than the content itself. The function that the newspaper had in the humor of Pepe Arias, in Tato was occupied by the telephone, one of the emblematic elements of his character.

Biography

Childhood and youth

Of Jewish descent and from a low-income family, Mauricio Borensztein (Tato Bores) was born on April 27, 1925. His father was a fur trader with important interests in religion. The family was based in a house in downtown Buenos Aires, near Avenida Córdoba and Libertad. He had two other brothers, Abraham (the eldest) and Enrique (the youngest).

With little interest in studying, he was expelled from the Julio A. Roca school, where he did part of his primary studies. Later, he continued at the Otto Krause Technical School No. 1, but only until the third year, so he could not finish high school. At the age of 15, he began working as lead (the person who carries scores and instruments) for the Luis Rolero and René Cóspito orchestra, since he liked jazz and piano. He in turn, he studied clarinet and at age 9 he had small jobs at the Teatro Nacional Cervantes as an usher for the public.

Beginnings

At the bachelor party of the musician Santos Lipesker, Borensztein told some jokes, and among those present were Julio Porter, one of the best screenwriters of that time, and the comedian Pepe Iglesias "El Zorro". The renowned Iglesias summoned him in 1945 to be his partner on Radio Splendid, and Porter assigned him the pseudonym by which he was internationally recognized: Tato Bores. Then, in 1946, he was hired to work in La escuelita humorística, with Pepe Arias portrayed as the teacher Ciruelo and Tato as El niño Igor, a character who, thanks to the success obtained, had his own section entitled The Adventures of Igor, which was taken off the air due to the serious popularization of his speech. Bores remembered: "Because the boys began to speak like Igor at school." A year earlier, in 1945, he had worked on Madame 13 , a play with Olga Zubarry.

In 1947, he made his film debut with a brief role in La caraba, directed by Julio Saraceni and with a special performance by Olinda Bozán. After dabbling with small roles in films from the early 1950s directed by Don Napy, Catrano Catrani, Mario C. Lugones and Román Viñoly Barreto, he was hired to act in a very successful and well-known film: Bad people (1952), a dramatic comedy with Hilda Bernard. Later, he composed likeable characters in Vida nocturna (1955) and Historia de una carta (1957), by the film company Malvinas. Occasionally, he played dramatic roles in Mala gente and Camino al crimen , with Juan Carlos Altavista.

After her work on the radio, she continued with performances in theaters such as the Maipo, with Fanny Navarro, El Nacional, cabarets and participation in vaudeville. Long before his arrival on television, Tato had begun to design his characters in costumes and speaking quickly and verbosely. On May 12, 1954, he married Berta Szpindler, whom he had met when she was employed in a record business that he and his younger brother maintained. However, Berta's father warned that Tato should leave his job and look for another; By accepting, Szpindler abandoned his family, who had their honeymoon in La Falda, Córdoba, for just five days, as the Maipo Theater license clarified. With great economic difficulties, a friend of the couple lent them an apartment on Juncal and Rodríguez Peña for five months to restore their financial situation. In 1956, encouraged by Pepe Arias, he did monologues after the fall of Peronism at the El Nacional and Comedia theaters.

Consecration

Tato Bores in 1983.

For four years, from 1957 to 1960 and on Channel 7 (today Televisión Pública), he accompanied Dringue Farías on The GESA family has fun, later called simply The GESA family, where the main attraction was the singer Virginia Luque, who was part of the female cast with Gloria Leyland and Nelly Prince. In 1957 he made his debut on the same channel in Caras y morisquetas , with scripts by Landrú (Juan Carlos Colombres), where he performed monologues and began to wear the tailcoat, the wig and the cigar, which he loved so much. characterized. In a note, Bores clarified: "With Landrú we had fun like crazy, we could say anything. You couldn't talk about Perón or Peronism, but all the others were banking on it".

"...maybe he could have been a lawyer. But I think about it now. Because perhaps the only amago of vocation of those years radiates in very simple things, such as the veneration he had for Mickey Rooney's films. One night at the opera I saw it 14 times."

In 1960 he started on Channel 9 Tato, always on Sunday, with scripts by César Bruto, and it was where the well-remembered phrases that characterized him throughout his career began to appear. work, he received a Martín Fierro award from APTRA as Best Comic Actor of 1960. The idea of the tailcoat had been proposed by Bruto, since -as he said- one had to have the suit on because perhaps with the constant change of ministers during the government of Arturo Frondizi, he could be elected to hold office. In that program, a poster appeared with the phrase: "Don't blame the mirror who has an ugly face", showing itself to the camera. Directed and scripted by Guillermo Fernández Jurado, in 1962 he ventured into El televisor , starring Blanca del Prado, who performed her best cinematographic work in this film. Tato siempre en domingo was maintained until the mid-60s on Channel 11 with a variable cast, including comedians Fidel Pintos, Raúl Ricutti and Federico Manuel Peralta Ramos, who played a character who interrupted the Tato's monologues to recite poems or leave messages that nobody understood, respectively. In 1966, after the overthrow of the radical Arturo Umberto Illia, he broke audience records with his Sunday monologue, saying: "You will be waiting for me to talk about the one that was armed But I'm not going to talk about the one that was built and the one that's going to be built much less'. Between 1971 and 1973, he worked with Jordán de la Cazuela, whom he considered his best librettist, and with whom he maintained a friendship, until he died in a plane crash in Europe. In the 1970s he returned to the Teatro Maipo with revue shows and between 1971 and 1972 he was in charge of conducting Por siempre Tato , where he performed an excellent monologue about the return to the government of Perón.

"The monologue has a key: it's kind of a political report; I read the headlines of the newspapers and I tell the news on stage by adding a nasty comment. But we always need to update the information: a Thursday political joke doesn't make us laugh Friday."

Tato Bores, 1963

Alternating various means and with great support from the press, in 1972 he starred with Norman Briski in the comedy Disputas en la cama, also known by its alternative name: The Divorced, prohibited for persons under 18 years of age. In 1973, Jordán de la Cazuela succeeded César Bruto in Say yes to Tato, on Channel 13, a channel where a year later, in 1974, he hosted Give credit to Tato, with Aldo Cammarotta in the script. That same year, a press secretary of Isabel Perón ordered Bores off the air, taking advantage of the excuse of the national mourning for the death of former president Juan Domingo Perón, for which he was excluded from state television. In 1975 he appeared at the Teatro Estrellas with his show Hello, Tato , alongside Cristina Allende. In addition, the following year, he headlined at the Teatro Del Globo with Ana María Cores Pobre Tato, both with a book and music by Jorge Schussheim and direction by Lía Jelín. In 1976, the military dictatorship known as the National Reorganization Process, the shortage of work for artists began, many of whom had to go into exile due to death threats.

"...I'm not afraid to think, I'm afraid to become another asshole more than by the fact of being notorious it is believed that the public is interested in his opinion. Why does an artist or notorious guy have to go diagnosing, pulling the precise? Do you know more than a mason, than a collector? Please let's stop jorobar..."

He returned to television in 1978 with Tato para todos, broadcast by Canal 13. In that cycle he recorded an imaginary telephone chat for the section Hello, Mr. President with the ex-president (de facto) Jorge Rafael Videla, which did not go on the air. The event was a matter of national concern, and instead of the conversation, the comedian spoke with his writer, who from the United States asked him about certain jokes, to which he responded negatively because they were prohibited. He was a forerunner, along with Mirtha Legrand, of eat in front of the cameras Bores shared tables with guests such as Rodolfo Crespi, Raúl Alfonsín, Antonio Gasalla, Fernando de la Rúa, among others.

Active member of the Argentine Association of Actors (AAA), the first president on TV (led by Tato) was the aforementioned Frondizi. After Bores said that Argentina lacked the most necessary school of all: that of presidents, Arturo Frondizi called to congratulate him. Meanwhile, President Alejandro Agustín Lanusse invited him to his daughter's wedding after the TV presenter complained on his show that he had not been previously invited. José María Guido, President of the Nation between 1962 and 1963, met with him, his writer and other humorists of the moment to eat in Olivos, a fact that days later a radio commentator used to denounce the lack of seriousness: " What can you expect from a president who sits at the table with a group of Argentines who satirize national anguish". However, the politician who frequented his program the most was Carlos Menem, who attended three times during his first presidency (1989-1995), which is why Tato Bores had to clarify: & # 34; We are not friends & # 34;. In 1979 a bomb was activated in the shield of his house, with a card in his name, which was deactivated by members of the Explosive Devices division.

In January 1982, he performed with Nélida Lobato in the play La mariposa, at the Teatro Maipo. In the early 1980s, he filmed two picaresque films with his friend, Alberto Olmedo: Shared Apartment and Amante para dos , both produced by Aries Cinematográfica and directed and Screenplay by Hugo Sofovich. These would be the last two films he starred in, since in 1984 he made a cameo for Sálvese quien poda, where he did not get paid and did not appear in the credits and in 1995 he was seen briefly in 1000 boomerangs . Returning to Channel 13, he also interspersed América 2 with scripts written by Geno Díaz, Juan Carlos Mesa and Santiago Varela. For the theater, the public's favorite librettist was Jorge Schussheim. Since the end of the 1980s, his son, Alejandro Borensztein, worked with his father as a scriptwriter and director on several occasions, establishing the classic roller skates, the rain of little pieces of paper and black or white telephones, as well as the plate of noodles on the the end of the program, with which he invited his interviewees and the champagne with which he toasted, which were a classic of the program. On television, his next works were Tato percent (1981), Extra Tato (1983), Tato, que bien se TV (1984), Tatus (1985), Tato Diet (1988) and Tato on the verge of a nervous breakdown (1989), with which the decade ended. In several of his programs, sketches were also carried out with Roberto Carnaghi - who played a highly corrupt official who perfectly illustrated the government ethics of those days, for which he won a Martín Fierro award for Best Supporting Actor -, Mirtha Legrand, Vicente La Russa, Gabriela Acher - who played a woman who was pregnant for a long time because her child did not want to be born in Argentina -, among others. In 1986 he starred with Carlos Perciavalle, nicknamed "El Rey del Café-Concert", in the theatrical show La Cage aux Folles, at the Metropolitan Theatre, for several seasons until 1988. In 1987 a radical official considered that Tato's jokes were not convenient at election time and his contract was not renewed until 1989, when he returned with the support of Channel 13.

Starting in 1988, his sons Alejandro and Sebastián took over the authorship and production of the Tato cycles. His new ideas were considered innovative and even daring, such as the & # 34; vigilante toilet & # 34; and the songs written by Charly García. Starting in 1991, his son Alejandro decided to leave television, so Sebastián would be in charge of everything. With the company Artear, he led one of his last great cycles: Tato de América (1992), which obtained high audience ratings. In one episode he dressed up as Christopher Columbus, referring to the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America, and it was that program that caused him the controversial censorship that he suffered that same year.

He was distinguished with the Konex Award - Diploma of Merit for his career throughout the decade on two occasions (1981 and 1991).

The censorship of 1992

With the presidency of Carlos Menem, the absolute consecration of Tato Bores took place. Tato de América, mentioned a fine that the Supreme Court of Justice was making him pay. Servini de Cubría had been fined an amount considered "symbolic" by public opinion since it was 60 pesos (a modest sum). The judge filed an appeal so that this fragment was not broadcast and it was censored by the Federal Civil and Commercial Court of Appeals. Respectively, the official would have filed a lawsuit against the transmission in which Helmut Strasse, another Bores character, wondered in the year 2492 about the traces of Argentina, a country that had disappeared 500 years before. While a shield with the image of Servini de Cubría was displayed, an announcer asked: "Myth, legend or reality? Here is a record of a fine that this lady had to pay, a receipt for 60 pesos; considering the seriousness of her faults, it can be assumed that this was quite an important value for that time... & # 34;. In September of that year, a ruling by the Court revoked the ban and authorized the broadcast of the objected fragments.

Due to the delicate situation that was being experienced as a result of this censorship, the event was finally immortalized thanks to a group of artists, who in solidarity with the comedian met in the main studio of the program, to sing a song in chorus subject with sarcastic tinge. In this way, musicians, journalists, actors and radio and TV professionals such as Enrique Pinti, Chico Novarro, Luis Brandoni, Marta Bianchi, Luis Alberto Spinetta, Bernardo Neustadt, Mariano Grondona, Luisina Brando, Patricia Sosa, Cipe Lincovsky, Chunchuna Villafañe, Julián Weich, Jorge Guinzburg, Fabián Vena, Sebastián Borensztein, Reina Reech, Juana Molina, Miguel Ángel Solá, Roberto Carnaghi, Hugo Arana, Darío Grandinetti, Juan Leyrado, Pappo, Soledad Silveyra, China Zorrilla, Gabriela Toscano, Magdalena Ruiz Guiñazú, Mónica Gutiérrez, Fernando Bravo, Juan Alberto Badía, Mario Pergolini, Nicolás Repetto, María Laura Santillán, Pichuqui Mendizábal, César Mascetti, Mónica Cahen D'Anvers, Víctor Hugo Morales, Alejandro Dolina, Ricardo Darín, Charly Alberti, Gustavo Cerati, Zeta Bosio, María Eugenia Molinari, Guillermo Gauna, Pablo Marcovsky and María Belén Aramburu, among others, met in the studio where the episodes of Tato de América were recorded, where (under the watchful eye of Tato) performed an improvised rhyme a capella that said: "Judge Barú Budú Budía, Judge Barú Budú Budía, Judge Barú Budú Budía is the greatest thing there is", in support for the comedian and in repudiation of censorship, in what became a memorable episode for Argentine television.

Last years and death

In November 1992, the Deliberative Council of the City of Buenos Aires declared him an "Illustrious Citizen". In 1993, at the age of 66, the actor made his last television series: Good Show, on Telefe, which began with a replica of the cover of the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, by The Beatles, made with local figures. Due to problems that occurred, he finished his season (generally from May to November) earlier than the contract explained, in 1994. Around that year, during an operation for a herniated disc at the Mater Dei clinic, he was informed that he would not be able to return to work.

He used to spend his vacations in Punta del Este (Uruguay). A bone cancer kept him away from artistic activity for more than a year. The disease caused him intense physical pain and due to mobility problems, he had to use a cane while undergoing check-ups at the Cantegril sanatorium in the Uruguayan city. He settled in Buenos Aires and died on January 11, 1996 in his apartment in Palermo, accompanied by his family. His remains were closely veiled at his home and buried in the Garden of Peace, located at km. 32 of the Pan-American route. Among those present were, in addition to their relatives, the artists Roberto Carnaghi, Cipe Lincovsky, Eladia Blázquez, Leonor Benedetto, Magdalena Ruiz Guiñazú, Lana Montalbán, Liliana Caldini, Adolfo Castelo, Pedro Saborido, Omar Quiroga, Constancio Vigil (son), the model Paula Siero, the president of the Argentine Association of Actors, Juan Borrás, among others.

In 1999, three years after his death, his two sons Alejandro and Sebastián, together with the producer Emilio Cartoy Díaz, published a compilation of his latest works, which was broadcast by Canal 13 under the name La Argentina de Tato, reaching 14 audience rating points, that is, seen by around a million and a half viewers, only in the greater Buenos Aires. His daughter is the actress Marina Borensztein.

In 2002, an exhibition was held at the Recoleta Cultural Center in honor of him. In 2006, the Buenos Aires Legislature sanctioned the law by which the square located on Avenida Figueroa Alcorta and Avenida de los Ombúes was named Tato Bores, in Parque 3 de Febrero, in Palermo. In 2008 the writer and journalist Carlos Ulanovsky published a biographical book about Tato, with the help and information provided by his relatives. In 2013 the Government of the City of Buenos Aires honored him by including a statue in his honor on Avenida Corrientes at 1300, at the gates of the Metropolitan Theater, where he is seen represented in his classic character, sitting at his desk on the phone and smoking a cigar.

Scriptwriters

Tato knew how to choose valuable Argentine comedians to script his monologues: Landrú, César Bruto, Aldo Cammarota, Jordán de la Cazuela, Juan Carlos Mesa, Carlos Abrevaya, Santiago Varela,[1] the aforementioned Adolfo Castelo, Jorge Schussheim, Pedro Saborido, Constancio Vigil (son), Omar Quiroga, and in recent times his own sons Alejandro and Sebastián Borensztein.

Television

Filmography

• 1000 boomerangs (1995)
• Thank you master (1993)
• Save whoever can - cameo - (1984)
• Lover for two (1981)
• Shared Department (1980)
• Deputies in bed (1972)
• Holidays in Argentina - filmed in 1961 - (1965)
• A Summer Night Trip (1965)
• Property (1962)
• The television (1962)
• The assault (1960)
• History of a Letter (1957)
• Nightlife (1955)
• Married and Miss (1954)
• For four crazy days (1953)
• This is my life. (1952)
• Bad people (1952)
• Road to crime (1951)
• The immortal comedy (1951)
• Champion by force (1950)
• A sin for a month (1949)
• The snail (1948)