2023-10-07 04:02:11
Mirtha Legrand in Lunch with the Stars
The origin of Mirtha Legrand’s lunches has already been told several times, but as our great national diva says: the public is renewed. And that’s why we continue narrating it.
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In the 60s, Mirtha was an established star of Argentine cinema and with her husband, Daniel Tinayre, they went to Channel 9. “It was a Saturday when from the fish tank of Studio 9 we followed the program Sábados de la Bondad, hosted by Héctor Coire -producer Omar Romay, son of Alejandro Romay, recalls for Teleshow. As usual, my dad invited the participants to go upstairs and share a few minutes before me after his interview on the program. Mirtha and Tinayre arrived in the middle of the afternoon. She is beautiful, as always; super elegant, with a hat. She greeted everyone. I don’t remember if she competed for a charity institution or if she was promoting a play that had her as the protagonist at the time.
Although Romay clarifies that he cannot specify the exact date of the meeting, he does specify that “that Saturday the idea of the lunches was born, or the opportunity was created for my father, Mirtha and Tinayre to promise each other a new meeting the following week, when “They surely finalized the beginning of the new project.”
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With that cyclopean memory that characterizes him, Carlos Rottemberg, theater producer and personal friend of Mirtha, adds a piece of information: “Romay suggested that she do Lunch with the Stars with a table with 12 guests. Mirtha was not convinced by the idea and she believed that the program would be ephemeral, but she finally accepted, although she asked for fewer guests.
Today, Rottemberg humorously defines himself as “Mirtha’s oldest” producer. He has signed an unconditional pact with the driver since the day Daniel Tinayre, whom he was a very good friend of, asked him the night before she died: “Take care of her.” He spent 21 seasons accompanying her, from October 8, 1990 to February 11, 2011, when he left that role because “I preferred to privilege my excellent personal relationship, avoiding in the future any professional spark that we did not even hide. “It was a good decision: today we are more friends than ever.”
The first broadcast of Almorzando… was on June 3, 1967. At the table, seated as guests, were the writer Beatriz Guido, the screenwriter Alberto Migré, the actor Duilio Marzio, the channel’s director, Alejandro Romay, and the Daniel Tinayre himself. The driver was served a chicken leg and immediately her husband, knowing her taste, ordered that it be exchanged for a breast. “There I felt more comfortable: I felt something more familiar and homely,” Mirtha would say.
Mirtha Legrand signs her contract, supported by Alejandro Romay and Samuel Yankelevich
Although the world was in convulsion, the lunches passed peacefully on the 9 screen. In November 1972, Mirtha tried to explain in a broadcast the difference between the Justicialist Party and the Peronist Party, Romay interrupted the lunch and ordered her not to continue talking about politics. . A kind of suspension continued where Mirtha was supplanted by Osvaldo Marconi as the driver. The public did not support the change, it seemed that the cycle was coming to an end. However, Chiquita returned the following year with its “pink rococo roses” and the “vueltita”.
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In 1974, after Perón’s death, the program ended abruptly, and although Mirtha met with then-president Estela Martínez de Perón, she did not return to the screen. In June 1976, Legrand returned with his shows, this time on the Channel 13 screen. The first program was tuned to 1,400,000 televisions. In ’79 she went to the then ATC, where she was seen in full color for the first time, and in ’80 she returned to 13.
At the end of 1981 he again signed a contract with ATC, but the following year the channel broke the agreement arguing that his salary exceeded the 40 thousand dollars imposed as the maximum limit for his figures. Mirtha sued the station and won the lawsuit for 500 thousand dollars, but “I never received a peso and I was going to donate it to some entity.” She spent several years without a screen; She dedicated herself to organizing parades in the provinces and, knowing the importance of the medium, organizing special entertainment for the press.
Mirtha Legrand at a lunch with Sergio Renán, Raffaella Carrà, Jorge Porcel and Norma Aleandro
He enjoyed the screen again in 1987, but at that time an unusual situation occurred. Her lunches from the Alvear Hotel were broadcast by 80 provincial channels but none from the Federal Capital. In 1989, and thanks to the efforts of the indefatigable Daniel Tinayre, the lunches returned to the ATC screen but the program changed its name: it was called Mirtha para todos.
In 1991 she returned to Channel 9 after 23 years. Six years later Romay sold the channel to the Australian Prime Television, which did not renew the diva’s contract. In 1999 she moved to América TV, in 2001 she went to Channel 7 to return to América in 2002 and stay there until 2013. In 2014 she found her on Channel 13, where she remains until today.
Those who passed by Mirtha’s table are not counted in dozens, or even hundreds: they are thousands. Among them – and several times – is Eleonora Wexler, who with her usual cordiality tells Teleshow: “It was always an event to go to Mirtha’s program. The first time I went, if I’m not mistaken, was when I was doing Como vos y yo. I remember that my doubt was whether one was eating at the time she was speaking. The first time I was there I told her that when she was eight years old she imitated her and said: ‘Little pink Rococo flowers.’ Mirtha has an incredible memory and she remembers everything, everything. I always felt very comfortable in their programs.”
Chiquita, in a broadcast of Having Lunch with Mirtha Legrand (Télam)
Nancy Pazos is another of the personalities who sat at one of the tables. “The first time she invited me, what I remember most are two things. First, she was on Channel 7, or whatever she was called at the time. Second topic: I was very young and wrote politics in Clarín. In the 90s, you finished reading the note and at the end was the name of the person who wrote it, and I was one of the first female journalists to sign the newspaper. Then one day Mirtha asks the production to invite me. At that time it was not normal for a print journalist to go on TV, and even less so for me, who was not known: I did not have a TV face or anything like that.”
Upon receiving the invitation, Pazos humorously recalls that her mother told her: “Nancita, now you have arrived!”, an anecdote that she later told on the diva’s program. “I was very funny writing notes, with a lot of color and at the table she told me: ‘Oh, I thought I was going to be a 50-something year old lady!’, that is, the age I am now, when at that time At the time I was 20 something.”
Once again she was summoned to one of the lunches that were broadcast from Mar del Plata. “We traveled with Raúl Alfonsín. The production arranged a plane to go and return, and since ours was delayed due to a storm, they had to wait for us.” The journalist claims that they invited her about “15, 20 times,” and one piece of information serves to corroborate this: “Every time a participation ended, they gave you a watch, which in turn I gave to someone in my family. Today, my whole family has one.”
In April 1987, in an interview with Gente magazine, it was Mirtha who revealed some secrets about her program. The journalist asked if any guest tried to seduce her and she responded: “Domenico Modugno. She kept telling him: ‘But are you married? Are you really married?’” In the same report, the diva said that one of her most moving moments was “when Rita Hayworth came. She didn’t even know she had been on my show. Not even in Buenos Aires. Not even in Argentina. She never knew. She was destroyed.”
Mirtha Legrand with Diego Maradona
He defined the first time Maradona was on his program as “an endearing moment.” “He arrived very late and I asked him why. He confessed to me that he had gone out to buy a little suit to appear on my program.” Alfredo Alcón every time he went he asked him “Are we going to play visitors?” And when he told Ernesto Sábato that they weren’t inviting him because they didn’t have his phone number, the writer replied, sarcastically. “Oh no? If I appear in the guide.”
When asked by journalist Ricardo Parrota if she remembered a disturbing moment, Mirtha responded: “José Rucci’s visit. Suddenly I stared at him and asked him if he wasn’t afraid. He stayed looking at me. I insisted to him: ‘Aren’t you afraid of being killed?’; ‘Yes he told me he. I’m afraid’. At that moment I felt chills.”
But without a doubt the most emotional thing was when with an open heart, the great national diva became proud. “I have helped people be happier. My program served that purpose. He saved lives, he taught people how to heal. Programs like the ones I did with Dr. Favaloro saved lives. Mistakes? Of course I made them, I made mistakes, but I also put up with a lot of things. Pressures. ‘Bring this one, don’t bring the other one.’ I suffered a lot with all that.”
Reflective, she assured that the lunches she would like to forget are “the one with Silvana Suárez and the one with Cecilia Rossetto”, and in 2009 the three that she remembered for something special were “the one I had with the Kirchner couple in Calafate, another with Anthony Quinn and a third with Dr. René Favaloro.”
Since the first broadcast of the lunches, 56 years have passed, and the anecdotes are innumerable. The time they surprised Narciso Ibáñez Menta for his birthday and brought him a cake with lit candles that turned into a puff of fire. At that moment the actor received a phone call from his wife, to whom he calmly commented: “I’m leaving you because the channel is on fire,” and he hung up. In one broadcast the Midachi were in charge of serving the table and in another, the Les Luthiers finished the lunch by placing the chairs on top of the table. In one program Fernando Peña pointed a gun at her and in another, Silvia Süller confessed to the Caniggia brothers that she had had a love relationship with her father, Pájaro Caniggia.
The image of then-president Carlos Menem sharing a dance with Fairuz, the Arab dancer, still remains in the memory of Argentines. In 1991, Mirtha questioned Eduardo Duhalde with: “Tell me vice president, are you a drug trafficker?” And in 2003, before the astonished gaze of the Kirchner couple, she said: “Some say that left-handedness is coming with you.” Although she never hid her sympathies for Mauricio Macri, sitting at his table and already as president, she did not hesitate to blurt out, “I think you don’t see reality…”.
Mirtha Legrand with Carlos Menem (ARGENTINE NEWS)
Another historic broadcast was on November 7, 1994 when, dressed in black, she cried her grief over the death of her husband. In the living room she was accompanied by Mariano Grondona, Tato Bores, Enrique Pinti, Delia Garcés, Leonardo Favio, Hugo Moser, Marikena Monti, Osvaldo Miranda and Irma Córdoba. She also spoke by phone with Carlos Monzón, Susana Rinaldi and Pinky. One million one hundred thousand people followed her in her homes while more than one hundred journalists, photographers and cameramen recorded the moment on the floor.
From that June 3, 1967, when the lunches began until this Saturday, where once again its classic cycle will return to the air, with The Night of Mirtha Legrand, Argentina knew five different currencies, was governed by 20 presidents and passed through the Ministry of Treasury 48 officials, but Chiquita is still in force. Because as Omar Romay reflects: “Mirtha is a unique case, who surprises us every day with her enthusiasm and professionalism. The most important thing is no longer those details of the past, but the legacy that Mirtha transmits to us every day in which she is willing to give us one more hour of her effort, passion and commitment to work and dedication. followers of her”.
Having lunch with Mirtha Legrand
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