Pedro Infante
Pedro Infante Cruz was a Mexican ranchera singer and actor whose career spanned the golden age of Mexican cinema.
Infante was born in Mazatlán, Sinaloa, and raised in nearby Guamúchil. He died on 15 April 1957 in Mérida, Yucatán, while en route to Mexico City when his plane crashed due to engine failure.
From 1939 until his death, Infante acted in over 60 films and recorded over 350 songs. His 1952 ranchera album Cuando sale la luna was rated No. 56 in a 2024 ranking of the 600 greatest Latin music albums of all time. For his performance in the movie Tizoc, he was posthumously awarded the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the 7th Berlin International Film Festival.
Childhood and early career
Pedro Infante was born 18 November 1917 in Mazatlán, Sinaloa, the son of Delfino Infante García, who played the double bass in a band, and Maria del Refugio Cruz Aranda. He was the third of his parents' fifteen children, nine of whom survived. Although the Infante Cruz family stayed for some time at Mazatlán, in early 1919 they moved to Guamúchil, where he was raised. As a teen, Infante showed talent and affection for music, made his own guitar in a carpenter shop, played in the Luis Ibarra Orchestra led by his father, and formed his own band called La Rabia in 1933. He managed to learn strings, wind, and percussion instruments in a short time, having received music lessons from Carlos R. Hubbard.He won a charro suit in an amateur contest at the Colonial Theater, singing Vereda Tropical. In 1937, he became part of the Orquesta Estrella de Culiacán and was a singer, violinist, and drummer for a year and a half.
His wife, María Luisa León was somewhat well-off. According to her memoir Pedro Infante en la intimidad conmigo , she convinced him to move to Mexico City for better career opportunities in radio. In 1938, at the age of 21, he auditioned for a position at the radio station XEB, with Julián Morán accompanying him on piano. Ernesto Belloc, the station's artistic director at the time, advised Infante to continue his career as a carpenter, as he was nervous during the audition. Nonetheless, he auditioned the following week and was hired to sing on the air three times a week.
In Mexico City, he sang the songs of composers including Alberto Cervantes, José Alfredo Jiménez, Cuco Sánchez, Tomás Méndez, Rubén Fuentes, Salvador Flores Rivera , René Touzet and others. His first musical recording, El Soldado Raso, was made on 19 November 1943 for the Peerless Records Company. Infante first appeared as an extra in the movie En un Burro Tres Baturros, or the more correct and succinct transliteration, "Three Baturros on a Burro.” His career as an actor in leading roles started with La Feria de Las Flores, literally translated as "The Flower Carnival," in 1943.
In that same year, Mexican writer Carmen Barajas Sandoval, a friend and neighbor of Infante's wife, offered to introduce them to Jorge Negrete, a singer he admired. Barajas, the aunt of the child actress Angélica María, worked at the Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Producción Cinematográfica, S.T.P.C.. She convinced Negrete to recommend Infante to the producer Ismael Rodríguez and others. As a result, he was invited to appear in different pictures, such as Vuelve el Ametralladora.
While married to María Luisa León, Infante met the dancer Lupita Torrentera Bablot, with whom he had three children: Graciela Margarita, Pedro Infante Jr., and Guadalupe Infante Torrentera. Irma Infante was born from his marriage to young actress Irma Dorantes.
Actor
Infante acted in over 60 films, 30 of them with his brother Ángel. His career spanned the golden age of Mexican cinema. He appeared in such motion pictures as:- Tizoc, along with María Félix, gained him the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the 7th Berlin International Film Festival, posthumously. The film itself won a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Film in 1958. The Silver Bear and the Golden Globe are housed at the Museo API de Pedro Infante in Isla Arena, Campeche, Mexico, as well as the Ariel award.
- The massive migration from the countryside to the cities during the 1940s fed the required labor force for rising manufacturing industries. This urbanization created the "working neighborhoods" and the culture of "la vecindad", and found in Pedro Infante an identifiable icon for these, the new urban working class, with his character Pepe el Toro in the melodramatic trilogy made up of Nosotros los Pobres, Ustedes los ricos, and Pepe el Toro, costarring with Evita Muñoz "Chachita".
- He worked with Sara García 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.
- The Mexican child star María Eugenia Llamas, who was only four at the time, made her screen debut with him in the 1948 film Los tres huastecos as "La Tucita", a screen name she used ever since. She played with him again under the screen name La Tucita in his classic 1949 film comedy, "Dicen que soy mujeriego".
- One of his better roles was that of Juventino Rosas in the movie "Sobre las Olas", 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.
Musical interpretations
Corazón, El Durazno, Dulce Patria, Maldita Sea Mi Suerte, Así Es La vida, Mañana Rosalía, Mi Cariñito, Dicen Que Soy Mujeriego, Carta a Eufemia, Nocturnal, Cien Años, Flor Sin Retoño, Pénjamo, and ¿Qué Te Ha Dado Esa Mujer?. He sang "Mi Cariñito" to his frequent on-screen grandmother, Sara Garcia, so many times in so many of their movies together, that it was played at her funeral.
The world-famous song Bésame Mucho, from the composer Consuelo Velázquez, was the only melody that he recorded in English and he interpreted it in the movie A Toda Máquina , with Luis Aguilar.
Plane crash and death
Death
Infante's hobby was aviation, logging 2,989 flight hours, under the pseudonym Captain Cruz, which then led to his death on the morning of 15 April 1957. Infante had survived two prior plane crashes, the first one occurred in 1947, and another in 1949 in which he had received an injury to his forehead that left him with a metal plate. According to Wilbert Alonzo-Cabrera, his biographer, the actor was co-piloting a Consolidated B-24D, which had been converted from heavy bomber to freighter in San Diego, California. On the day of the crash, he was on his way to Mexico City from Mérida, Yucatán to challenge the ruling that annulled his marriage with Irma Dorantes. The air traffic controller, Carmen León, was the last person to hear Infante's voice. The plane crashed five minutes after taking off from Mérida, Yucatán, in southeast Mexico. An engine failed on takeoff, causing the plane to spiral to the ground, killing two on the ground as well as all three on the plane, Infante, pilot Víctor Manuel Vidal Lorca and Marcial Bautista. A 19-year-old woman named Ruth Russell Chan, who was on the ground at the time of the crash, also died.Infante's death was announced by radio personality Húmberto Sánchez-Rodríguez, of radio station XEMH of Mérida, after one of the firefighters discovered a bracelet engraved with the name "Pedro Infante", plus the winged insignia that symbolized his aviator license. This was around 8:15 am; at 11:12 am, Manuel Bernal, of Mexico City radio station XEW, gave the news saying: "this Monday, 15 April 1957, Pedro, our beloved Pedro...this has been confirmed, has died in a tragic accident in Mérida, Yucatán". His remains were later identified by the gold bracelet he wore. Additional identification was done during the autopsy by Benjamín Góngora, from the metal plate in Infante's forehead that he received after his injuries in the 1949 crash.
The death of Pedro Infante caused an unprecedented outpouring of grief in Mexico and Latin America leading to reports of suicides, faintings, and nervous breakdowns among his fans.
Two days later he was laid to rest at the Panteón Jardín cemetery amid 300,000 people who had gathered for the closed casket funeral after a tribute at the Jorge Negrete Theater. Rodolfo Echeverría, who was Secretary-General of the National Actors Association at that time, delivered Infante's eulogy. Infante died intestate.
Homages
In 1983 the Los Angeles, CA radio station KWKW, which was at the time broadcasting a Pedro Infante hour airing songs as well as readings of fan letters, organized a campaign to change one of Boyle Heights' street names to Pedro Infante Street. Later it was decided Euclid Heights would become Pedro Infante Street, and the unveiling of the street sign was held in August 1983.Infante was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on 1 August 1993. His star is located at 7083 Hollywood Boulevard.
On 2 April 2001 Infante was inducted into the International Latin Music Hall of Fame in an awards ceremony that also included Xavier Cugat and Ruben Blades. The event was held at the Hostos Center For The Arts And Culture, located in the Bronx, New York City.