Word: lara
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...When Lara visited the pre-Olympic meets in San Salvador in 1935, the head lines declared: "Agustin Lara arrived, accompanied by Mexico's Minister of the Interior." Last week Agustin Lara was hard at work on a job which seemed a natural for him - a theme song for Lupe Velez' Mexican film appearance as Emile Zola's celebrated prostitute, Nana...
...Lara's real life would make a movie to remember. Brought up in Coyoacán by a spinster aunt, he spent a rather solitary childhood writing poetry and tinkling at the piano. He attended a military school and, before he was 19, fought with Pancho Villa. Mustered out, he went to Mexico City and began his musical career as a whorehouse pianist. Today many of his songs reveal an intimate knowledge of bordello sentiment. Another permanent acquisition was a deep knife gash running upward from the left corner of his mouth. After witnessing a shooting affair which left...
Intimate Hour. He got four pesos a day in a café, where he married the cashier. His playing attracted a well-known singer named Maruca Perez, and Lara moved on to the famous El Retiro restaurant near the bull ring. He began writing music for revues at the Teatro Lirico, in 1932 was signed by Mexico's leading radio station for a program well named the Hora Intima, This has become Mexico's most popular radio feature...
...Some of my songs," says Lara, "are the fruit of inspiration, some of hunger." Only a few of the 800 are top-notch Lara. But these combine a distinctive Latin melodic gift with true poetic quality. With a kind of soft, confessional stridency, little hollow-eyed Lara whispers his songs to the women of Mexico. He pictures them in brothels, on their knees beside confessionals, in the arms of lovers, in frustrated spinsterdom. He is by turns caressing and despondent, lunar and neurotic...
...actuality, 43-year-old Lara takes a rather objective view of women. He divorced his wife a decade ago and has since lived alone in a luxurious rented house in Mexico City's suburb of Chapultepec. He affects Byronic collars, horn rimmed harlequin spectacles, and usually looks fatigued. He is proud of a sumptuous gold hand-carved wrist watch given him last New Year's by President Avila Camacho. Its twin was presented to President Roosevelt...