Manuela Cal Fariñas

The actress MIMÍ CAL was born in the Jesús María neighborhood of Old Havana.

She made her debut in 1916 with A. Pous's company, where she performed until 1926—the year the great actor from Cienfuegos died—accompanying him on his tours abroad.

Later, she joined Lecuona's companies, in the premieres of El cafetal (1929, Cipriana), El batey (1929, Guadalupe), María la O (1930, Caridad Almendares), Lola Cruz (1935, Ña Regla.

She was married to the "negrito" Manuel Colina, with whom she formed the duet Mimí-Colina. Both toured all the stages of the island and performed successfully in Mexico (1924), Panama (1931), among other Spanish-speaking countries.

After becoming a widow, she married Leopoldo Fernández. In the 1940s she appeared in the cast of La tremenda corte, playing the character "Luz María Nananina," which earned her enormous popularity.

Around 1962 she settled abroad, where she continued acting alongside "Trespatines," from whom she had already divorced.

A popular Cuban comic actress on radio, theater, and television. She was part of the cast of the program La Tremenda Corte, alongside Leopoldo Fernández and Aníbal de Mar.

Mimí Cal was born in the town of Regla, in Havana. She began her intense artistic career very young, in Havana cabarets, where she sang and danced rumbas. Her talent, combined with her beautiful figure as a Creole mulatta, made her one of the sensations of Havana's nightlife in the early republic.

She performed throughout nearly the entire island, in several Latin American countries, and in Spain, where she made a favorable impression. By the early 1930s, she was very well-known to the Cuban public, especially those who frequented theater halls. During that period she met Leopoldo Fernández "Tres patines," with whom she formed a partnership both professionally and personally, in a marriage that lasted sixteen years.

She achieved resounding success with her interpretation of the character "Nananina" in La Tremenda Corte, a radio program that first aired on January 7, 1942, through RHC Cadena Azul. The author of the original idea and scriptwriter for the program was Castor Vispo. The quality of its scripts and the high performance standards of the cast earned La Tremenda Corte the distinction of being the best radio comedy produced in Latin America. This program, heir to the tradition of Cuban bufo theater, was a vehicle for bringing to radio the trilogy of "the Spaniard, the Black man, and the mulatta."

Each broadcast parodied situations in a correctional court where the characters interacted. Aníbal de Mar played the Tremendous Judge, who served as counterpart to the character "Tres Patines" (Leopoldo Fernández); while Adolfo Otero played "the Spaniard Rudecindo Caldeiro y Escobiña" and Miguel Ángel Herrera played the "Secretary."

Wordplay and double meanings delighted the radio listeners, whose success grew thanks to simultaneous theater presentations. It is estimated that more than three hundred sixty episodes of La Tremenda Corte were recorded, many of which are still heard on Latin American radio stations.

"Nananina" gave Mimí Cal great popularity. Her interpretation of the mulatta, a prototype of the Cuban stage introduced to radio by Alicia Rico, set standards not only in radio but also in theater. Leopoldo Fernández's acting excellence also contributed to the artist's success, as his character achieved maturity in the dialogues with "Tres Patines."

The quality of her performances earned her a privileged place on the roster of RHC Cadena Azul as a comedy company actress, belonging to an exclusive group hired under a special salary arrangement ("with program arrangements"), rather than a fixed rate.

In May 1947, only three other actresses at RHC Cadena Azul enjoyed such exclusivity: Sol Pinelli, Marta Martínez Casado, and Eva Vázquez. At that time, when television had not yet appeared, radio salaries were drastically divided into high and low, and that difference was much more pronounced at major stations; the salary arrangement that Mimí Cal came to enjoy demonstrates the esteem of the public and her employers.

During that era, radio programs were done live with an audience in the studio, which required actors to have broad command of acting skills, improvisation, singing, and dancing. This way of working, characteristic of Cuban radio in the first half of the twentieth century, was useful to the artist in enriching her theater performances and in nightclubs where she also performed.

La Tremenda Corte moved to television, which arrived in Cuba the following decade, by which time the popularity of Mimí Cal, Aníbal de Mar, and Leopoldo Fernández grew enormously. Another program born in radio that later moved to television with high ratings was Pototo y Filomeno, in which Mimí Cal served as a complement to the wit of the duo of Aníbal and Leopoldo, in a secondary but equally prominent role.

Among her major successes on the small screen was her work as host, alongside José Antonio Cepero Brito, on Detrás de la Fachada, a weekly humorous program with scripts by Marcos Behmaras, whose plot developed scenes of daily life of tenants in a large apartment building. Mimí Cal played the supporting role until 1957, when she was hired to work in Puerto Rico; she was then replaced in the program by Eloísa Álvarez Guedes and later by Consuelito Vidal.

She ventured into film in several movies that were very successful at the box office. Inspired by the success of La Tremenda Corte, in 1945 a film of the same name was made, produced by the company Refrescos Materva, with the same cast that performed in the radio program. El vigilante Chegoya, another film that featured Mimí Cal, was produced by Publicidad Borbolla in 1949. It featured comedians Leopoldo Fernández, Aníbal del Mar, Rolando Ochoa, and Jesús Alvariño.

But the most acclaimed of her films was Olé Cuba (1957), where she again shared the screen with Leopoldo Fernández and Aníbal de Mar (in the roles of Pototo and Filomeno). The film, directed by Manuel de la Pedrosa, showed some characteristics of Cuban society and culture of the time, with particular emphasis on popular music. The cast also included "Chino Wong," Julito Díaz, Teté Machado, and Miguel Herrera, among others. In the opening scene, Pototo and Filomeno, aboard a small boat, rescue Rafael Alcántara (played by Miguel Herrera), a Spanish stowaway attracted by the dream of knowing Cuba.

After 1959, when the media were nationalized by the Cuban revolutionary government, Mimí Cal left for the United States of America, where her artistic career continued to flourish. In Miami she worked with Leopoldo Fernández in the show Se Escapó el Loco con Pototo, and in other theatrical presentations.

Mimí Cal died in Miami in 1978.