Sara García

Sara García
García in No basta ser madre (1937)
Born	Sara García Hidalgo (1895-09-08)8 September 1895 Orizaba,Veracruz Mexico
Died	21 November 1980(1980-11-21) (aged 85) Mexico City, Mexico
Resting place	Panteón Español Mexico City
Other names	La Abuelita de México
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1917–1980
Spouse	Fernando Ibáñez ​ ​ (m. 1918; div. 1923)​
Children	María Fernanda Ibáñez

Sara García Hidalgo (8 September 1895 – 21 November 1980) was a Mexican actress who made her biggest mark during the "Golden Age of Mexican cinema". During the 1940s and 1950s, she often played the part of a no-nonsense but lovable grandmother in numerous Mexican films. In later years, she played parts in Mexican telenovelas.

García is remembered by her nickname, La Abuelita de México ("Mexico's Grandmother").

Life and career

1895–1917: Childhood

The house where García was born at Orizaba, Veracruz

Sara García Hidalgo was born on 8 September 1895 at Orizaba Veracruz. Her parents were Andalusian, Isidoro García Ruiz, an architect, and his wife Felipa Hidalgo de Ruiz in 1895. They moved from Havana, Cuba. to Veracruz. Her father was hired for various jobs there. Sarita was the only survivor of their eleven children.

In 1900, a storm caused the Santa Catarina river (which separated the family house from Sara's school) to overflow and knock down the bridge that crossed it. The children could not return to the other side of the river until the evening. Don Isidoro believed that he had lost his only daughter. The anguish caused him to suffer a stroke days later. Doña Felipa decided to sell her business, a papier-mâché factory, and travel to Mexico City to intern her husband into the Sociedad de Beneficencia Española de México (Spanish Welfare Society of Mexico). He died shortly after arriving. However her mother was contracted as the housekeeper there.

At age 9, Sara entered the prestigious Las Vizcaínas school as an intern. In 1905 a typhus epidemic invaded Mexico. Sara became infected and infected her mother Felipa, who died. She remained in the charge of the director of the institution, Cecilia Mallet,. Her good behavior and excellent grades allowed García to stay in school. The director of Las Vizcaínas noticed her great sensitivity and artistic inclination and directed her into painting. She also became a teacher and she had her students perform plays.

1917: Film debut in silent films

Sara started her film career at age 22 when she was still a teacher. One day she decided to stroll by the Alameda and discovered the newly founded Azteca Films studios. She was curious, and came in. She was fascinated by everything she saw. From that moment she thought that she could also act, even if it was only in the theater. One day, watching Mimi Derba filming, (the first Mexican film diva,) an actor and official of Azteca Films noticed her curiosity and invited her to participate in what would be her first film En defensa Propia "In self-defense" (1917). After that she began auditioning in the theater where she started getting small roles. Her diction and voice gave her prestige and she became part of the most outstanding companies of that time: Mercedes Navarro, Prudencia Grifell and the sisters Anita and Isabelita Blanch. In one of her tours throughout the Mexican Republic, she met Fernando Ibáñez, whom she had seen during the filming of "La soñadora" (1917).

1918–1947: Golden Age of Mexican cinema and La Abuelita de México

In 1918, she married Fernando Ibáñez. They toured throughout Mexico and Central America, until at a stop in Tepic, she gave birth to a girl, whom they named Fernanda Mercedes Ibáñez García. Sara decided to take care of her daughter, and stopped touring. Her absence bothered Fernando, who began to get involved in several affairs, then became entangled with the head of the company. Sara divorced her husband and left with her daughter. Years later her ex-husband became sick, and returned home. Sara cared for him, even paying his expenses, until his death in 1932. Established firmly in the theater, she began to be called to work in the cinema. Her daughter Fernanda also ventured into the cinema with the movie "La madrina del diablo" (1937) in which she played Jorge Negrete's girlfriend. Outside the sets, Negrete courted her, though Sara disapproved. The romance ended abruptly and the following year (1938) Fernanda married the engineer Mariano Velasco Mújica, leaving to live in Ciudad Valles, Tamaulipas. A little more than two years later Fernanda became ill with typhoid fever and died on October 17, 1940. Due to her strong personality Sara survived her daughter 40 years.

García in Los tres García (1947)

García would later continue her extensive career in film and sacrificed her beauty when she decided, at the age of 40, to have her teeth removed so that her mouth would look like that of an older woman. She thought that thus she would be able to star as self-sacrificing ladies and better personify the roles they gave her.

Film actress Emma Roldán suggested Sara García for the role of Doña Panchita, an old woman, in the 1940 film Allá en el trópico ("There in the Tropics"). The film's director Fernando de Fuentes considered García too young for the part (indeed she was only in her mid 40s) but Roldán replied, saying "Sara is an actress, and actresses don't have an age". For the screen test, Sara García had a wig made for her. At the time of the screen test, the director asked the crew of her whereabouts and when they answered that she was the woman in front of him, the director was shocked: Her wig, lack of teeth, and performance had touched him. It is in Fernando de Fuentes' Allá en el trópico where Sara García won her title of la Abuelita de México (Mexico's Grandmother).

García playing as her grandma persona in the film La abuelita (1942)

In 1942, Sara García co-starred with Joaquín Pardavé in El baisano Jalil, a comedy film in which she portrayed the wife of a Lebanese-immigrant family, one of the marginalized communities that settled in the La Lagunilla neighborhood of Mexico City. She starred again with Pardavé in a similar comedy, El barchante Neguib (1945).

She then started a long series of films, co-starring with the brightest stars of the Mexican cinema, such as Cantinflas, Jorge Negrete, Germán Valdés "Tin-Tan".

She often starred as the grandmother of famous Mexican actor Pedro Infante. Her most remembered film with him is the 1947 Los tres García where she also starred alongside Abel Salazar and Víctor Manuel Mendoza, playing the role of their grandmother with a strong, naughty and authoritarian attitude.

1947–1980: Multiple films, Telenovelas and final works

Sara García in a publicity photo, c. 1950

García continued working with Pardave and appeared with him on El ropavejero "The junkman" (1947) and in Azahares para tu boda "Orange blossoms for your wedding" (1950), which were her last jobs with him. Garcia's nature was also deeply irreverent, and she showed it in films like Doña Clarines (1951), in which she makes fun of her grandmother's character, something she repeated in Las señoritas Vivanco "The Misses Vivanco" (1959) and in El proceso de las señoritas Vivanco "The process of the Misses Vivanco" (1961), in both she acted with Prudencia Grifell and was directed by Mauricio de la Serna.

In that decade she worked in both film and television, appearing in multiple soap operas such as "A Face in the Past" (1960), "La gloria Quedo atrás" (1962), and "La Duchess" (1966), in which a lottery ticket seller wins the jackpot and uses that money to get her daughter back, whom she had given up to her millionaire in-laws in the past.

In that decade we also saw her in the pages of a comic-book adventure story entitled "Doña Sara, la mera mera", in which she was dressed as the character she had made famous in Los tres García and Vuelven los García. In the 1970s, her grandmother character took part in films such as "Fin de fiesta" (1972), by Mauricio Walerstein, and Luis Alcoriza's "Mecánica Nacional" (1972), in which she utters some of the most famous insults of our cinematography. They were still charming, because they emanated from the mouth that had represented so much of Mexico's moral society.

In the 70s she appeared as Nana Tomasita, who looked after Cristina (Graciela Mauri) in the long-running telenovela Mundo de juguete (1974) and as a meticulous old woman from the "Caridad" segment, directed by Jorge Fons, in "Faith, Hope and Charity."

Personal life

During her tenure with the College of Las Vizcaínas, she met Rosario González Cuenca, the daughter of a family that her parents had met on the ship from Cuba to Mexico. Years after their meeting, both of them reunited after García divorced Fernando Ibañez. At that time Rosario also was divorced. They began living together. Rosario acted as Fernanda's aunt. (Fernanda was Sara García's daughter.) Ulisex said that Rosario became Sara's female lover, as well as her assistant and business manager. García lived the rest of her life with her.

Of her co-stars, she adored Pedro Infante, but she couldn't stand Jorge Negrete. She hated Jorge because he had fallen in love with her daughter Fernanda. Many close friends affirm that she was a strict mother-in-law as well as not approving the relationship between Jorge and her daughter.

Later years and death

Mausoleum of Sara García and her daughter María Fernanda Ibáñez located in the Panteón Español in Mexico City

García had her own television show in 1951, Media hora con Abuelita, but it failed and was cancelled. She returned to television in 1960 when she obtained a role in Un rostro en el pasado which was her first of eight telenovelas. These included Mundo de juguete in 1974, which as of (early 2006) was the longest-running telenovela in history, and Viviana with Lucía Méndez in 1978.

On 21 November 1980, Sara died at the National Medical Center in Mexico City at the age of 85, due to a cardiac arrest that arose from pneumonia. Days before she had been hospitalized after being injured by falling down the stairs of her house.

García was buried alongside her daughter in a mausoleum at the Panteón Español cemetery in Mexico City. While she was being buried, the song "Mi Cariñito" ("My Little Darling/Beloved One") was played. This song was the one that Pedro Infante sang to Sara several times. In particular, he sang it drunk and tearfully, as a lament after Sara’s character died in the movie Vuelven Los Garcia (The Garcias Return). It is said that the song was sung at her funeral by Lucha Villa.

Legacy

In Mexico, García represented a grandmotherly figure due to her many roles as a grandmother in the movies she appeared in, and in 1973 she signed a commercial agreement to allow the chocolate company La Azteca use her image on Mexico's traditional Abuelita chocolate. La Azteca was later purchased by the Nestlé brand in 1995, who continued to use her image on the same brand.

Filmography

Telenovelas

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1960	Un rostro en el pasado		3 episodes
1962	La gloria quedó atrás		3 episodes
1966	La duquesa	La duquesa (Duchess), Raquel	3 episodes
1967	Anita de Montemar		3 episodes
1968	El padre Guernica
1968	Mi maestro
1972	Telenovela mensual
1973	Mi rival	Chayo	19 episodes
1974-1977	Mundo de juguete	Nana (Nanny) Tomasita	221 episodes
1978	Viviana	Doña Angustias Rubio Montesinos	3 episodes

Television shows

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1951	Media hora con la abuelita
1957, 1959	Secreto de familia		4 episodes

Documentaries

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1940	Recordar es vivir
1963	La vida de Pedro Infante
1976	México de mis amores

Cinema of Mexico

Sara García in La abuelita (1942)

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1917	En defensa Propia		Extra
1917	Alma de sacrificio		Extra
1917	La soñadora		Extra
1927	Yo soy tu padre		Extra
1934	El pulpo humano
1934	El vuelo de la muerte	Doña Clara
1934	La sangre manda	Vecina (Neighbor)
1934	¡Viva México! (El grito de Dolores)	Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez
1936	Such Is Woman (Así es la mujer)	Viuda (Widow)
1936	Marihuana (El monstruo verde)	Petra
1936	Malditas sean las mujeres	Señora de Ambrosaliet
1936	No te engañes corazón	Doña Petro
1937	Las mujeres mandan	Marta
1937	La honradez es un estorbo	Doña Refugio
1937	No basta ser madre	Sebastiana del Puerto
1938	Por mis pistolas
1938	Pescadores de perlas	Juana
1938	Dos cadetes	Dolores
1938	Padre de más de cuatro	Doña Gertrudis
1938	Perjura	Doña Rosa
1938	Su adorable majadero	Mariquita
1939	El capitán aventurero	Catalina, corregidora
1939	Los enredos de papá	Petra
1939	Calumnia	Eduviges
1939	Papacito lindo	Remedios
1939	En un burro tres baturros	Manuela
1940	Miente y serás feliz	Constancia
1940	Allá en el trópico	Doña Panchita
1940	Mi madrecita	Madre
1940	Here's the Point'	Clotilde Regalado, Leonardo del Paso's mistress
1940	Father Gets Untangled (Papá se desenreda)	Petra
1940	Father Gets Entangled Again (Papá se enreda otra vez)	Petra
1941	Cuando los hijos se van	Lupe de Rosales
1941	¿Quién te quiere a ti?	Seducer's mother
1941	La gallina clueca	Teresa de Treviño
1941	Al son de la marimba	Doña Cornelia Escobar
1942	Las tres viudas de papá	Petra
1942	Dos mexicanos en Sevilla	Gracia
1942	Regalo de Reyes	Doña Esperanza
1942	La abuelita	Doña Carmen
1942	Historia de un gran amor	Doña Josefa
1942	El baisano Jalil	Suad
1942	El verdugo de Sevilla	Doña Nieves
1943	Resurrection (Resurrección)	Genoveva
1943	No matarás	Aurora
1943	Caminito alegre	Antonia Goyena
1943	Toros, amor y gloria	Irene
1944	Mis hijos	María
1944	La trepadora	Doña Carmelita
1944	El secreto de la solterona	Marta
1944	El jagüey de las ruinas	Doña Teresa "Mamanina"
1944	Como yo te quería	Remedios Mantilla
1945	Escuadrón 201	Doña Herlinda
1945	La señora de enfrente	Lastenia Cortazano
1945	Mamá Inés	Inés Valenzuela
1946	El barchante Neguib	Sara
1946	¡Ay qué rechula es Puebla!	Doña Severa
1947	Sucedió en Jalisco (Los cristeros)	Doña Engracia, abuela (Grandma)
1947	El ropavejero	María
1947	Los tres García	Doña Luisa García viuda de García
1947	Vuelven los García	Doña Luisa García viuda de García
1948	Los que volvieron	Marta Ortos
1948	Mi madre adorada	Doña Lolita
1948	Dueña y señora	Toña
1948	Tía Candela	Candelaria López y Polvorilla "Tía Candela"
1949	Dicen que soy mujeriego	Doña Rosa
1949	The Perez Family (La familia Pérez)	Natalia Vivanco de Pérez
1949	Eterna agonía	Doña Cholita
1949	Novia a la medida	Doña Socorro
1949	El diablo no es tan diablo	Doña Leonor
1949	Dos pesos dejada	Prudencia
1950	Yo quiero ser hombre	Tía Milagros / Doña Tanasia
1950	Mi preferida	Doña Sara
1950	Si me viera don Porfirio	Doña Martirio
1950	Azahares para tu boda	Eloísa
1950	Mi querido capitán	Pelancha
1950	Yo quiero ser tonta	Atilana
1951	La reina del mambo	Tía (Aunt)
1951	El papelerito	Doña Dominga
1951	Doña Clarines	Clara Urrutia 'Doña Clarines'
1951	La duquesa del Tepetate	Chonita, Duquesa del Tepetate
1951	Acá las tortas	Dolores
1952	La miel se fue de la luna	Doña Martirio
1953	Misericordia	Benigna
1953	Por el mismo camino	Tía Justa
1953	El lunar de la familia	Doña Luisa Jiménez
1953	Genio y figura	Doña Luisa
1953	Los que no deben nacer	Clotilde
1954	Los Fernández de Peralvillo	Doña Conchita Fernández; doña Chita
1954	El hombre inquieto	Doña Fátima Sayeh
1955	Sólo para maridos	Concordia
1956	El crucifijo de piedra	Laura
1956	La tercera palabra	Matilde
1956	El inocente	Madre de Mané
1957	La ciudad de los niños	Doña Juliana
1957	Pobres millonarios	Doña Margarita del Valle
1958	El gran premio	Soledad Fuentes Lago (Doña Cholita)
1958	Con el dedo en el gatillo	La abuela	Episode: El anónimo
1959	Los Santos Reyes	La anciana
1959	Las señoritas Vivanco	Hortensia Vivanco y de la Vega
1959	Yo pecador	Nana Pachita
1961	El proceso de las señoritas Vivanco	Doña Hortensia Vivanco y de la Vega (as Doña Sara Garcia)
1961	¡Mis abuelitas... nomás!	Doña Casilda
1961	El buena suerte	Doña Paz
1961	Paloma brava	Doña Popotita
1961	El analfabeto	Doña Epifanita
1962	El malvado Carabel	Tía Elodia
1962	Las hijas del Amapolo	La abuela
1962	El caballo blanco	Doña Refugio
1962	Ruletero a toda marcha	Doña Sarita
1964	Las Chivas Rayadas	Doña Pancha
1964	Los fenómenos del futbol	Doña Pancha
1964	Nos dicen las intocables	Doña Cucaracha
1964	Héroe a la fuerza	Doña Prudencia
1965	Canta mi corazón	Abuela
1965	Escuela para solteras	Doña Bernarda
1965	Nos lleva la tristeza	Doña Marina Guerra viuda de Batalla
1966	Los dos apóstoles	Doña Angustias
1966	Joselito vagabundo	Doña Guadalupe
1967	Seis días para morir	Doña Mercedes
1967	Un novio para dos hermanas	Seňora Cáceres
1967	Las amiguitas de los ricos	Viejecita
1968	Sor Ye Ye	Madre María de los Ángeles	Co-produced with Spain
1969	No se mande, profe	Doña Claudia
1969	Flor marchita	Paula la nana
1969	El día de las madres	Doña Carmen
1970	¿Por qué nací mujer?	Doña Rosario
1971	La casa del farol rojo	Doña Sara Morales viuda de Mendoza
1970	La hermana dinamita	Madre Ana
1972	La inocente	La abuela
1972	Fin de fiesta	Doña Beatriz
1972	Nadie te querrá como yo	Abuela
1972	National Mechanics (Mecánica nacional)	Doña Lolita
1973	Entre Monjas Anda el Diablo	Sor Lucero
1973	Nosotros los feos	Doña Sara García viuda de García y García
1973	Valente Quintero	Elvira Peña
1974	Los Leones del ring	Doña Refugio
1974	Los Leones del ring contra la Cosa Nostra	Doña Refugio
1974	Fé, Esperanza y Caridad	Anciana	Segment: Caridad
1974	El hijo del pueblo	Vicenta Aurelia Fernandez; Chenta
1977	Como gallos de pelea	Doña Altagracia
1977	Nobleza ranchera	Altagracia
1978	La comadrita	Doña Chonita
1979	La vida difícil de una mujer fácil	Doña Amalia
1979	Como México no hay dos
1980	Sexo vs. sexo	Señora dueña del club de Can-Can (Lady Owner of Can-Can Club)

Cinema of the United States

García along with Liliane Montevecchi in The Living Idol (1957)

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1957	The Living Idol (El ídolo viviente)	Elena	Co-produced with Mexico

Cinema of Italy

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1964	Los dinamiteros (L'ultimo rififi)	Doña Pura	Co-produced with Spain

Cinema of Spain

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1961	Lovely Memory	Dona Sara

External links

• Sara García at IMDb
• Sara García at the Cinema of Mexico site of the ITESM (in Spanish)