Jorge Perez Evelyn, is the first Argentine man in to achieve fame acting as a vedette between the famous. In Argentina a "vedette", was a roll exclusive only for women until Jorge turned everything upside down, to the pleasure of the public.
As the proverb says, "blood is thicker than water".
Jorge Perez Evelyn does not to be called as drag queen, impersonator or any other additional qualification. He is simply an actor and that is the right way to call him. "Jorge Perez Evelyn" which is the artistic name that Jorge Perez uses for the stage, it could be acting as a man or acting as a woman, is an artist from third generation.
Until present time, the actor is named as "Jorge Perez Evelyn" by most of the press and adds.
Jorge Perez Evelyn mother HILDA BOBASSO was a vedette and actress and Jorge Perez Evelyn grand mother ANITA BOBASSO was a famous tango singer and actress. Both, mother and grand mother have shared stage in many occasions with a large trajectory acting together in Brazil.
Anita Bobasso, Jorge Perez Evelyn Grand Mother
October 20, 1896 | January 5, 1996
Hilda Bobasso is Jorge Perez Evelyn's mother name that she used most of the time as an actress or when working with her mother Anita Bobasso but she was also known by the name of HILDA DEHIL. A name that was chosen by her producer when acting as a "vedette" in the musicals and Las Vegas style revues' shows, reason why it is very easy to find both names in different publications.
Hilda Dehil ( also known as Hilda Bobasso)
February 26, 1917 | September 8, 1978
Jorge Perez Evelyn narrative:
.Lizzi Tagliani and Costa are currently dominating stages and entertainment programs, much as Cris Miró and Flor de la V were among the leading stars of show business in the 1990s, a figure shone in the 1970s who established a precedent for beyond the binary in the field of spectacle. This is Jorge Perez Evelyn, a fictional figure created by Argentine actor Jorge Pérez in the years leading up to the previous dictatorship of civic-military power. The interpreter would ultimately be forced into exile as a result of persistent threats and a looming danger, and the actor's aura would gradually fade until she lost the notoriety and notoriety she had gained—until this point.
In tune with a society that increasingly questions the binary model, there is instead a growing interest in recovering the life and work of individuals who, free and pioneers, knew how to move beyond the limits imposed by the heteronomy, as is the case of Jorge and his creation, recently converted into a cult object by the hand of various cultural productions, from photo exhibitions to a podcast and a docuseries project. But, who is him and how did he give rise to Jorge Perez Evelyn , the star that captivated Calle Corrientes and who was one of the survivors of Argentina's darkest period, thanks to his promptitude by running away from the theatre after finding a dead sentence letter in his changing room.
Jorge tells us that he has loved art since he was a little child while speaking with me from his residence in Florida, in the United States, where he has moved on the beginning of the 2016's,
after residing for many years in New York.
Younger age
Otto Weber, the ballet master, began his artistic training of the student when he was just eight years old, and it continued alongside his academic studies. I went to National Buenos Aires and completed secondary school there to avoid having to complete an additional year of work to enroll in a university. But ultimately I didn't go there; I went straight to the Academy of Actors. He explains I come from an artistic family," highlighting his mother and grandmother in particular. Both actors mother and grand mother,(his mother Hilda appeared in iconic theaters like the old teather Politeama), Bataclan, Marconi, Ateneo and others, were the first to introduce him deep inside to the world of the theater, which fascinated him at first sight. "Even though they had a lot of mental freedom, they didn't want to pursue the same career as them. They worried about giving me a really good education. They believed that if I committed myself to the same, my life wouldn't be of the standard to which I was accustomed. "I think I was the only one at that time who had that luck," the performer says, referring to the almost zero opportunities that the country's travesty and transgender artists had at the time of his and the other performers' appearances on the major stages.
Les Girls from Brazil
Additionally, he acknowledges that the company Les Girls was another significant influence: "I didn't think of Evelyn until I saw this group of Brazilians perform in 1972; they were quite in style at the time. For the first time, men wearing women's clothing appeared. What a great idea to create a vedette character, I thought. Les Girls Group composed by Suzy Parker, Teo Montenegro, Claudia Pimienta, Yeda Brown, Ira Velazquez, Akiko.
It was in a cabaret called "La luna" ( The Moon), in Bahía Blanca where a very young Jorge put on his long blond hair and went on stage transformed into Evelyn, singing the popular bolero "Quizá, quizá, quizá" ( Maybe, maybe, maybe). "They told me that I looked like a girl dressed as a femme fatale. I started to play the character softer, in a more neutral style, Evelyn was maturing", she recalls while the video call allows her to proudly show a large number of photographs of those years that she treasures, where a radiant Evelyn can be seen, surrounded by glitter and feathers, wearing dresses, catsuits, tights and corsets.
Success and censorship
It was 1972 when, after a series of shows in the interior of the country and back in Buenos Aires, he began to perform at the cabaret Can Can in Pasaje Seaver. There he would meet the show business journalist Leo Vanés who would give him his first opportunity in the mythical avenue, proposing him to be part of the musical "Los vecinos de Corrientes" at the Café Teatro Popea; where Corrientes Street saw the brilliant debut of Jorge Perez Evelyn in "Verdísimo" followed by "Los Vecinos de Corrientes" and then star for a third musical "Una Noche de Locura".
Gerardo Sofovich attended one of the performances and he was so impressed by Evelyn that a few months later the producer was summoning Jorge to star in his new revue "Corrientes de lujo" together with leading figures such as Estela Raval and Chico Novarro. After what meant the biggest milestone of his career in the country, the first alarm signal would come. "Gerardo proposed Alberto Olmedo and me to make the film Mi novio el travesti. The project was presented and the censor banned the word travesti in the title. Some time later I was told that I would not be able to star in it because the censor didn't want me either and that they were going to replace me with Susana Giménez. At that time machismo was so disgusting", she recalls how her participation in the film directed by Enrique Cahen Salaverry was truncated and, despite the changes in cast and plot, it was finally released in 1975.
"The original libretto was very different from the one that was finally filmed. It ended with my character and Olmedo's character with flowers on their heads in a car with a sign that said 'newlyweds,' refers to what could have been an innovative ending for the cinema of the time and especially for the picaresque comedy genre and which, instead, chose to reaffirm the prevailing homophobia and transphobia.
Despite the frustrated attempt to venture into the film industry, Jorge continued to shine on the stage of the cabaret Sans Souci with the show produced by Sofovich. It was at the exit of a performance that he would receive the second warning, this time more direct and violent, that his presence was not well regarded by the power of the day. "The commissioner was so mad at me that he sent me to be arrested by force, when I was turning around Corrientes Avenue and Pellegrini to go to my house in Barrio Norte. When I arrived at the police station, he told me 'I had you brought here' and he unzipped his zipper and pants. Nothing else happened because Gerardo pulled me out. You can imagine how I got home, scared, trembling, thinking what would happen to me the next day. The other boys were prisoners and abused in the dungeons", says Jorge.
This traumatic event, together with the sudden cancellation of a play in which he was going to participate, and the traumatic note left on his desk reading "you are the next", pushed Jorge to never step again in an Argentina's stage to never to return,
He left the country together with his mother ( that was very scare about Jorge safety),and his partner at the time, with an stop over in Rio de Janeiro as requested by Brazilian producer "Hugo de Freitas" for a campaign to be use for a future presentations in that country after Venezuela, where television impresario Joaquín Riviera was waiting for him. Caracas became the first destination of an international career that would include other cities.
Madrid was welcoming Jorge by very well known artists representative of name "Francisco Bermudez" who was also managing "Los Beatles" back then. Jorge arrived encouraged by one of his best friends in the artistic environment, actress Libertad Leblanc. Europe major destinations have seen Jorge Perez Evelyn, including Italy, and that would last until the early 2000s when he decided to leave the stage."
Eternal brilliance
Although Jorge hung up Evelyn's wig several years ago to focus on other extra-artistic projects, both the person and the character continue to be active in the memory of many people, for example, among the transvestite transvestite community. "They include me with them because I marked an era for the community, I helped to break things. I am the basis of their history, they tell me. I could have been kidnapped and killed in Argentina. And more than having a name, I was an example of something that the military did not want. It was too much what I achieved in those obtuse times", he says about how he was invited to be part of the podcast Archivo de la Memoria Trans, made jointly with Futurock and the Kirchner Cultural Center in an attempt to reconstruct through twenty testimonies the history of the collective from the post-dictatorship to the present day.
Jorge Perez Evelyn, Actor Recovered
In addition, Evelyn's image was recently recovered in two exhibitions, "Temporada fulgor" at Malba, and "Inventar a la intemperie" at Parque de la Memoria. Both included black and white portraits of Jorge Perez Evelyn taken by photographer Luisa Escarria, founder along with her sister Chela of the emblematic Foto Estudio Luisita, responsible for having immortalized the most popular figures of the Buenos Aires magazine of the sixties and seventies.
Finally a platform is also seeking to vindicate the figure of Jorge Perez Evelyn. to make a series about gender persecution in Argentina during the military era," he says about the project, which still can not advance much because it is in the development stage but will be focused on his personal experiences.
Its easy to follow Jorge Perez Evelyn active in Facebook Page.https://www.facebook.com/jorgeperezevelyn/
July 2023. Gustavo Ravanes
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