Fans of Tango King Want Star to Shine On.

Devotees of tango titan Carlos Gardel are doing their darndest to gain a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for a man they compare to James Dean, Al Jolson, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Julio Iglesias and Maurice Chevalier.

The problem is, hardly anyone north of the Panama Canal had ever heard of Gardel when the legendary Argentinian crooner, composer and actor died in a plane crash in 1935.

Local emigres have been working toward a shot at sidewalk immortality for Gardel, known to his fans as Carlitos, since 1985--the 50th anniversary of his death.

But the Gardel name has yet to ring any bells at the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, which is responsible for the Walk of Fame. The Chamber, after all, is looking to honor stars who will attract the young American tourists that make up the bulk of the Walk’s business.

“He’s been deceased so long, and an awful lot of deceased people don’t get in,” said Johnny Grant, head of a secret committee that sifts through hundreds of nominations and comes up with no more than 20 honorees a year.

Gardel, the son of an unmarried French immigrant washerwoman, grew up in the slums on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. As a youth, he sang for centavos at the open-air Abasto market, moved sets at the opera and won his first acclaim as a performer of Gaucho-style country music.

After taking up the tango and changing his image to that of a sleekly-coiffed man-about-town, he made records that sold wildly as the slinky touch dance caught the fancy of the international elite.

Hailed by singers from Bing Crosby to Placido Domingo, dozens of his albums and CDs are still in print. A recently published discography was titled, “Time Goes On, Carlitos Remains.”

Even now, admirers often put lighted cigarettes between the fingers of the grinning statue that marks his grave in Buenos Aires.

Gardel’s tenor voice was the first and greatest vehicle for the tango, the sexy and soulful lament that rivals grain, beef and hides as Argentina’s greatest export. His voice has yet to be surpassed among tango singers, said Luis Riccheri, Argentina’s consul general in Los Angeles.

“Today you can listen to the radio in Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and you will find they still have records played by this guy who left 60 years ago,” said Riccheri. Elvis-like sightings have been reported over the years, and his fans like to say, “He’s singing better every day,” whenever Gardel’s name is mentioned. Said Riccheri, “It’s a crazy attitude, but it’s there.”

Gardel never made it big in the United States.

His height was modest and so were his looks, at least by U.S. standards, the entertainment industry daily Variety said in 1935. “Carlos Gardel was tops in his own field...” Variety said. “It is a bit hard for the average non-Latin to figure out just why.”

And letters to the Hollywood Chamber from local officials such as Los Angeles City Councilwoman Laura Chick do not appear to have advanced Gardel’s cause much. Chick wrote at the request of a constituent.

“I get a lot of letters from politicians,” Grant said. “If he’s going to get it, it’s because the board thinks his achievements have gotten it for him.”

Grant may know his board, which is made up of anonymous representatives from radio, music, movie, television and theater.

But he does not know the devotion of Gardel’s fans, organized as the Comite Gardeliano de California (Carlos Gardel, Presidente Honorario y Eterno).

“You always go back to your first love,” their hero sang in one of his most popular tangos, and so they have. Having picketed at Hollywood and Vine and threatened to start their own Walk of Fame in downtown Los Angeles, they are now trying to get the help of actor Robert Duvall, who nurses a passion for all things Argentinian.

In a neat little bungalow in La Canada, the group’s chairman, Enrique Zayas, presides over all things Gardelian, his study a shrine to Gardel. “I am an American,” said Zayas, who emigrated after the fall of Juan Peron in 1955. “I am very busy with the church and I volunteer for the city. But one piece of my heart I keep for Argentina.”