Marisol ended up being who she was and all of us, that Pepa Flores – her real name – has been living underground since 1985, around Malaga, land of her childhood, short in time, rich in hardships and a lot spanish
If the United States had Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz, Spain had its Marisol, child prodigy, discovered by the producer Manolo Goyanes while watching on television the trade union and folklore demonstration of the May Day of 1959 at the Santiago Bernabéu – television show unforgettable, endless and infectious, tribute to His Excellency the Head of State, Generalissimo Francisco Franco–. The girl was eleven years old and was part of a choir of the Women’s Section, where she already sang and danced with great grace.
Said and done: Goyanes named her Marisol – her real name seemed ugly to him -, took her to live in his house as one more member of his large family – quite a palace compared to the corral in Malaga – and film after film launched Marisol to meteoric, exceptional fame, thanks to the naturalness that this girl gave on the screen.
“All the girls wanted to be like her but we were fat and had pimples, while Marisol…” points out Esperanza Aguirre, one of the fifteen witnesses in the documentary. The first film – Un rayo de luz (1960) – was already a great success, with the public, the box office and the regime. The Francos were amused by Marisol. Light and color, sunshine from Spain, a country to which tourists began to arrive, even in bikinis. Did Goyanes exploit that girl? The documentary passes without making any blood of anything or anyone – why? – although any viewer – released in cinemas on May 10 – will come to the conclusion that nowadays it would have been a case of child labor exploitation.
Goyanes exploited the phenomenon with business vision by creating a very active fan network, which he nurtures with a thousand and one tricks. The girl’s life consisted of dinners with old men, filming – Ha llegado un ángel, Tómbola, Marisol en Río – and trips halfway around the world when even Tato didn’t know Palma de Mallorca here. And not just anywhere. Thus, he took part in the famous Ed Sullivan show on CBS, live from a theater in New York – he coincided in the program with Harpo Marx – and toured Japan to promote Me conformo, number one on the list of sales of the archipelago. long pasta
And the girl became a woman, as he said. Without conveying much enthusiasm in the images, rather resignation, Marisol marries in 1969 with… Carlos Goyanes, son of the producer, who was not happy about the wedding for reasons that the documentary ignores. They didn’t complain badly, but the couple de facto separated in 1972. And then, with the departure of the Goyanes house, the transformation began. He continues to make films but it doesn’t work, because of the erotic imperative of some of the films and despite the prestige of directors like Camus, Saura or Bardem.
And Antonio Gades, dancer and seducer, appears, bursts in – of course Cristina Hoyos leaves it with very little in the documentary!-. Two people still married (Gades and Maruja Díaz). Pepa Flores loses the unconditional favor of the people, the same people that preferred her enslaved and Marisol. It wasn’t the Figo thing at Camp Nou, but it was the beginning of an irreversible distancing.
The couple wears the world as a hat and communism as a flag. Marisol looked like a Francoist: Pepa Flores, a Marxist. Following the last executions, in September 1975, they took refuge in Altea. There, one morning in 1976, after leaving her daughter María at school, Pepa Flores discovers in a newsstand the cover that consecrated the magazine Interviú. She naked! One million copies sold. “He didn’t charge a penny”, admits César Lucas, the photographer. Someone must have paid, but this is not clear in the documentary.
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