Libertad Lamarque; Legendary Latin American Actress, Singer

Libertad Lamarque, one of the most beloved entertainers in the Spanish-speaking world and an indefatigable singer and actress who was still performing at 92, has died.

Lamarque, who had been appearing as the mother superior in the Mexican TV soap opera “Angelface,” died of respiratory failure Tuesday in a Mexico City hospital.

“I feel best when I’m working,” she said in a recent Mexican television interview, explaining why she refused to retire.

Just this year, Lamarque received the Mexican equivalent of an Oscar from the Mexican Academy of Cinema Arts and Sciences in recognition of her lifetime achievement. Last May, she was honored with a retrospective of her films at the Hispanic Film Festival of Miami and received special recognition at the festival’s Golden Egret Awards presentation.

A decade ago, Miami added Lamarque, known as “the queen of melodramas,” to its Walk of Stars for Latino celebrities.

As an actress and one of the most popular tango singers ever, she made more than 60 motion pictures and 2,000 recordings, performed on stage and in television, and maintained a lasting appeal for eight decades.

Born Nov. 24, 1908, in Rosario, Argentina, Lamarque was the daughter of a militant anarchist who was in detention at the time of her birth and requested that the baby be named Libertad, the Spanish word for “liberty.”

On stage from the age of eight, she made her official professional debut in 1923, when she was 15, in the stage show “Madre Tierra.”

Her first motion picture was the 1929 silent film “Adios Argentina,” and three years later she starred in Argentina’s first sound film, “Tango.” She became a leading lady in such 1930s films as “Help Me to Live,” “Bewitching Kisses,” “The Law They Forgot,” “Honeysuckle” and “Closed Door.”

Lamarque recorded her first songs, “Chilenito” and “Gaucho Sol,” on the RCA (later BMG) label in 1926. She was still with the same company in 1991 when she released her popular album “Nobody Goes Away Completely.”

Known for romantic, soulful tangos, boleros, waltzes, milongas, and Mexican rancheras, she sang myriad hit songs, including “Nostalgia,” “When I Return to Your Side,” “Inspiration” and “In This Gray Afternoon.”

Noting Lamarque’s extraordinary success in Argentine motion pictures, Paramount tried to lure her to Hollywood in 1940 with a seven-year contract. She turned it down.

“At the time I was very scared because I didn’t think anybody knew me in the U.S.,” she told The Times in 1993 when she was in Los Angeles to accept Celebrando magazine’s first lifetime achievement award. “I also said no because I didn’t speak English, and that was also frightening.”

Lamarque, who never learned to speak English, continued her work in Argentina in the early 1940s.

But in 1944, her career and her life took a sharp turn when she was filming “The Circus Procession.” As the story goes, she argued with and slapped a young actress named Eva Duarte who later became known worldwide as “Evita,” the enormously influential wife of President Juan Peron.

When Duarte became the first lady, she forbade Argentine radio stations and movie studios to employ Lamarque or to play her music. Lamarque always denied that the incident had happened, but her career in Argentina clearly ended when Peron came to power.

She moved to Mexico in 1946, and again her career skyrocketed in films, records and concerts. A part of the Mexican cinema’s Golden Age of the 1940s, she acted with movie legends Jorge Negrete, Dolores del Rio, Pedro Infante, Arturo de Cordoba, Jorge Rivero and Julio Aleman.

Her best-known Mexican movies include “Music School,” “Grand Casino” and “I, Sinner.”

Lamarque’s base in Mexico City put her closer to the vast entertainment markets of the United States. She sang at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 1947.

She also performed frequently in Los Angeles in the latter days of vaudeville shows at such venues as the Million Dollar Theater and the Mayan Theater. Her films were shown regularly in Los Angeles.

Called “America’s Sweetheart”--meaning the sweetheart of all Latin Americans--Lamarque served as an inspiration to Spanish-speaking people.

“Libertad Lamarque makes real the dreams of many Latin Americans,” Celebrando editor Yolanda Medina said in presenting Lamarque the 1993 award. “With great effort, much faith, and thoroughly convinced of what she wanted out of life, she managed with great dignity to lift herself up from poverty and ignorance--she is self-taught--until she attained the place she now occupies as a living legend.”

Lamarque is survived by a daughter, Mirtha Romero Lamarque.