Word: gaona
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...double superlative may not be as illogical as it sounds. The Blue company features Mexico's "Flying Gaonas, the first family of the air"; Tito Gaona, who performs the triple somersault, is regarded as the greatest "flyer" in circus history. "Death-Defying Jose Guzman" rides a motorcycle up a wire to the roof of the auditorium, carrying with him a trapeze on which his wife Monique does acrobatic maneuvers. For a finale, Ringling's "human missiles," the Zacchinis, are fired from a cannon almost simultaneously. In the South, the Red company's program includes Sweden...
...World War II, a scandalous, enigmatic fictional scamp named Pito Perez suddenly loomed on the Mexican literary landscape. He was modeled after a real-life picaresque oddball named Jesús Pérez Gaona, and was immediately hailed as a personification of the national character. Bloody, absurd, splendid, his story seemed to mirror Mexico. The Futile Life of Pito Perez -his equivalent U.S. name would be something like Penny Whistle Jones-was not so much an instant bestseller as an immediate national classic. Its author, José Rubén Romero, became a figure of renown* But strangely, until...
Tedious, backbreaking cape and sword lessons with Rodolfo Gaona, "Mexico's best and one of the three greatest matadors* of all time," taught Franklin that bullfighting was grinding work. He learned to respect the brave bulls, too. "But what enthralled me most," says frank Sidney Franklin, "was the absolute idolatry in which the crowd held the fighters." Extroverted, extravagant, foolish and flamboyant, Franklin surf boarded through the '20s on this idolatrous wave, bathing himself in a thunderous surf of resounding...
...After Gaona married Carmen Moragas, one of the most beautiful women of the Spanish stage, resentful aficionados pelted him with cushions and bottles. He swore never to fight in Madrid again. Dark-eyed Carmen soon left him to become the great & good friend of Alfonso XIII, but Mexican legend has since reversed the story: it was the Indian boy who got the king's girl...
Retired from the ring since 1925, Gaona now spends much of his time managing his Mexico City real-estate holdings and listening to the wild flamenco music of the Spanish gypsies, on which he has made himself an authority. Each year he follows the bullfighting season from Spain to Mexico, and like many another oldtimer rates the past over the present. Growls Gaona: "In my day the bulls were so smart that they spoke English...