It was supposed to be called Pelito para la vieja, but its creators changed the title at the last moment because it was an obsolete phraselittle marketing Finally they opted for the sonority of the first word, which referred to hair, to hormonal awakening.
With that childish audacity, little hair arrived on Channel 13 six months before the resumption of democracy. It was a child-boy cycle that paved the way for an industry capable of replicating the faces of success on posters, stationery and souvenirs. It also acted as an incubator for teenage stars: Adrián Suar, Gustavo Bermúdez, Julián Weich, Pepe Monje grew up under those rays.
Most of its actors are unaware that the cycle (conceived by Eduardo Thomas and Máximo Soto and directed by Eduardo Mazzitelli) found inspiration in the film The Pal Street Boysa two-sided youth drama, at the same time based on the novel by the Hungarian Ferenc Molnar (1906).
First as a unit, on Saturdays from 19:00 to 20:00, and then as a daily strip, the “father” phenomenon of Violin key and possibly “grandfather” of Amigovios e roller coaster It has opened up a specific niche. It was not strange that in that pre-internet era with the boom of autographs and cameras, the Police had to intervene. In the flurry of theater tours across the country, for example, fans formed human funnels and child stars had to be loaded into the bus through the window.
The casting in December 1982, on Channel 13, brought together 2500 candidates, overwhelmed employees and several comrades disappeared. Jorge Pollini, then Arturito in fiction, the current doctor who made his debut in front of the camera at the age of 11 gives an account of it. “The line from via San Juan went all the way around Cochabamba until it reached Lima,” he explains. “My mother ended up in the hospital with high blood pressure after being in the sun.”
Pollini was one of the “cast” who in that row of hell heard the maternal ultimatum and was encouraged into the trap of advancing several positions. “I lived in La Plata, it was very embarrassing and I was filtering until I entered and the producer and creator Jorge Palaz interviewed me. Not to mention that I lived so far away and that they didn’t choose me, I left the phone number of one from the Capital. There was a second test, there are 250 left and the last call has come”.
noelia it didn’t pass through the difficult filter of the looks of those producers. She was a child celebrity when she was summoned. protagonist of Anniethe Lola Membrives musical in which he had won the casting, his little face and reddish hair were recurring in Billiken or Anteojito.
“My mother, my manager, made sure that one day when I was invited to the Stone and nose we met Jorge Palaz. He asked me if I wanted to join little hair and I said yes, because it was my favorite show”, says the actress who lives between Spain and Argentina and who later participated in series such as sight to sight. “I don’t forget the first scene I did: my hair was red, my dress was red, with a sweater that my mother sent me to knit, and my cheeks were red because I had Adrián Suar in front of me, which was bigger.”
Noto was little Silvia, she lived in fiction a love story with Emiliano Kaczka and did her homework during breaks, between sets. “I didn’t feel like it was exploitative. I ended up being a bishop,” she warns.
Resignation and awkward silences
While Carlitos Balá, already king of childhood, was promoting his new film A madman in actionthat April of 1983 a clarion praised the premiere of little hair. “In general, television programs for children are a collector of dubious messages – the critic BL began his article (signed with initials) – In front of this desolate landscape, two islands rise which contemplate the person of the boy and respect him, Festilindo and Pelito “.
Pelito’s axis was the gang, a group with pre-teen problems that brought to light themes such as menstruation, physical changes, sexual awakening and other themes that the filmmakers of miss teacher they preferred not to put it on the table.
Paula Dougan is the actress who has managed to bring several gems out of oblivion. Already in the early eighties I was a privileged person who had the novelty of the video recorder and collected VHS which is slowly becoming digitized. Now an interior designer, she was 13 when she was faced with the dilemma of jumping by Like people (Channel 9 fiction with Nora Cárpena and Guillermo Bredeston) verso little hair.
“I had started little singer, I started high school in 1983, I didn’t want to do television anymore, but Jorge Palaz talked to my rep and in principle he agreed that there would be five episodes. I was happy to the end,” recalls the woman who played Pelusa, the blonde with curlers that Gustavo Bermúdez’s (Federico) character tried to win over, but ended up falling in love with Hernán (Julián Weich).
“It was another era, Jurassic, another dimension, without cell phones, I tell my 19 and 20 year olds and they don’t believe it”, series. A girl from Olivos, thanks to that little television job, her parents, who managed the monthly income, were able to buy a Fiat 600 to take her to the recordings in Constitución and pay for a private school. The gains have been great, but so have the setbacks.
“I used to get on the bus and they didn’t make me pay for the ticket. Or I’d go to the hairdresser and they’d tell me ‘it’s nothing’. Respecting registration and school was a great sacrifice and in my adolescence I suffered so much popularity. I couldn’t walk down the street , I went to the beach in Pinamar and they followed me. Parental supervision? Yes, many families knew each other, we continue to maintain ties with many families, but come to think of it, the environment was something strange, stalker. The cameramen could say things to us girls and at the time no one realized it wasn’t right.”.
Pollini was one of the few who stood up and was able to slam the door when the conditions of his contract did not allow him basic issues of children’s rights How to go on a graduation trip. “In 1985 I asked permission to travel with my seventh year to Córdoba, and as they answered me that there was work to be done, I chose to go with my classmates and resigned. My name continued to appear in the credits, but I haven’t been around any longer,” he says.
“I had already changed shifts at school due to recordings, I had no intention of resigning myself to something as unforgettable as the trip. There were parents who could have been in the records, some stopped working and started living off their children’s income. And some have allowed their son to drop out of school.”, he complains. “Luckily my parents have always guided me and I experienced it as something magical, well. Not even that time could be compared to the present, they were times without so many dangers, I went back to my home in La Plata alone, I called my mother from the landline on the 13th, I was waiting for the bus at Plaza Constitución and she calculated my return after an hour and a quarter, I traveled standing, or I sat on the steps of the bus, then to the driver. I would hand out autographs to all the children of drivers.”
Emiliano Kaczka still gets excited when he sees that little one of just over a meter win the marathon of that race that can be seen in the presentation of the program. He arrived at the story without looking for it, after accompanying his sister Analía (who would have been the imaginary little Bichi) to a casting.
“I thought it wasn’t up to me to act, but when I got in line there was an avalanche, I managed to get back and I had a talk with Palaz”, says the current lawyer, Guido’s brother, who after a long time pauses decided return to the narrative of two years ago.
“I was able to handle so much exposure, because the ones who generated the hysteria were Suar and Bermúdez, the greatest. One season in Mar del Plata we did theater in the same room as Alberto Olmedo, who starred in ‘ the bug was to blame.” The girls chased both Adrián and Gustavo who once took refuge in my father’s car, a BMW. When they discovered them, they started moving and hit the car. I don’t forget my father who suffered, holding his head”.
For 1985 there was a new selection of “new faces” with the intention of selecting “Pelito 1986”, but the cycle didn’t have much life. María Laura Santillán made her cell phone realizing that tide that was exploiting the Lasalle de Cangallo theater at 2200. Program ended that World Cup year to make way for another milestone in 1987, Violin key, by Jorge Maestro and Sergio Vainman.
warned Palaz, the man behind the phenomenon. “Parents who get so much anxiety about putting a child in television don’t know how much damage they can do to the child and how they can derail him from what a kid his age really should be. We want to see what degree of health parents have who, attracted by the light of the small screen, want to pass on the lack they have lived with on their children”.
Four seasons lasted the product which experienced several secret revolutions behind closed doors, such as the day two teenagers from the cast went missing. Legend has it that during a recording stop in Martínez Damián Canavezzio invited Pollini to the San Isidro racetrack without notifying any adults. They were about to paralyze a country.
The boys got on a cameraman’s bike and lost track of time. When they returned two hours later, they found that a search operation had been organized between parents, actors and technicians in the process of filing a complaint and requesting an investigation into their whereabouts.
Claudia Flores, Leandro Martínez, Solange Mathou, Gabriel Bauducco, Karina Terén, Natalia Di Salvo and many others who moved out of focus and even the lights were part that TV with flimsy decoration and robust rating. A model united them: that air of natural aesthetics which was at the antipodes of those produced Rebellious way. There was no need for straightened hair or other niceties. Pelito left his mark beyond the scalp.
Source: Clarin
