Carmen Sevilla - Telecupon

A young Carmen Sevilla

This is another classic Morancos clip. Here, they parody bullfighter-copla bolero flamenco chanteuse Rocio Jurado, known as La Mas Grande (another frequent personality in this blog) (minute 3:10). She calls her torero Hortera, a playful pun on the pronunciation of his surname, Ortega Cano. Hortera means someone with no taste, tacky and overdone. There are other puns on the plaza as the place where the bullfight takes place, she says her body is his plaza, and on the word corrida, but that is going to a place not apt for the faint of heart!

If you go to minute 6:45, a priceless imitation of Carmen Sevilla's appearances in the Telecupon lottery prize winner announcements. The faded andalusian singer/dancer/movie star (bit part in "Anthony & Cleopatra" and in 1950s films about Andalusian themes) and singer of Lola Flores' generation, is beloved for her mental wanderings - wrong words, names, places, and dates, appearances in her bedroom slippers, andalusian diction, and general ignorance. Of course, Sevilla has adopted this lovable persona in her old age. She knew that her days as star of andalusian-themed films were over, she actually was really beautiful, and had a lovely voice. But once Franco died, the taste for orientalist films featuring sexy (within the limits set by censorship) supine, and ignorant southerners entertaining "señoritos" (upper class men) was more or less over.

The Telecupon is riveting. Everyone seems to play the lotto, buying tickets from blind persons who sell them as a means of having a job, then the money goes to the organization called ONCE which helps the blind. (this is why you see people with sunglasses sitting outside hawking lotto tickets in Spain.) The lovely azafatas (stewardesses) have a particular style for picking up the ball with the numbers, as they turn them over in their fingers to make sure you got the figure. Sevilla acts as a burlesque foil to the young beauties, with her doddering monologues and her parody of an uneducated andalusian maruja (housewife).

An actual Telecupon prize announcement is below.

Here are Ortega Cano and the late Rocio Jurado:

Their televised wedding spectacle featured a Goyesque wedding gown and veil, worn by the imposing and much older diva and the skinny bachelor bullfighting promise.