# Marcos Isaac Behemara 

**Date of death:** November 16, 1966

Playwright, writer, and Cuban screenwriter for humorous radio and television programs. First writer of the popular program Detrás de la Fachada.

He was born in 1926 in Jovellanos, Matanzas, where he spent his childhood and part of his adolescence. He later moved to the Cuban capital, where he graduated as an Accountant from the School of Commerce.

He debuted as a radio scriptwriter at twenty years of age. In a program on the Unión Radio station, owned by Gaspar Pumarejo, he exploited political satire with a subtle touch, as allowed by the atmosphere of the time and the interests of the station owners. His talent and political concerns led him to the Mil Diez radio station, of the Popular Socialist Party, to which he had belonged since age 17. There he served as head of programming and took on the script for the program Radio Locuras, where he made extensive use of sound effects, a display of characters, and tricks to provoke laughter. This program had great public acceptance and placed his name among the indispensable figures of Cuban radio and television of the era.

His most outstanding area of work was humorous programs; for example: El show de Garrido y Piñero and the classic Detrás de la fachada, of which he was the first writer, before Carballido Rey. Shortly before 1950, he began writing for Radio Progreso the police series Héroes de la justicia and the dramatized news program Actualidad mundial.

The names of the characters in his texts are a sample of Marcos Behmaras's sense of humor: Tom Isaboy, Jack Bodrio, Creolina Zabaleta, Dolores Fuertes, Lily Palanquín, Megaterio González, Güinfredo Zeppelín, Polín Mechado (for Corín Tellado), Charles Ketchup, Goyito Pachorra, Pedro Vistilla, Hermenegildo Canallón Yarini, Ketty Guapachá, alias Sabor; Ciriaco Babilla, Margolis Mofeta, alias Bola de Churre; Ventajo Cambalache, Güindemaro Tardío, alias Cámara Lenta; Estreptococa Mapangre, alias la Serpiente; Quintiliano Despilfarro, Jenofonte Polilla, Hal Laporra, and countless others. Even the titles of his works prepared the reader for what was coming: Can the hot dog defeat the Russians? or A Black Man Mistreats a Peaceful White Citizen. In Supertiñosa, the star CIA agent is named Pancho Tareco, which is nothing more than a mockery of the real comic book agent Clark Kent.

He carried on his artistic and political life with equal intensity, sometimes even mixing them together. For several years, he wrote for the publication Mella, a graphic medium of the Socialist Youth, from whose pages he lashed out at the government in power with masterful use of political satire. There, in 1955, he created the character "Pucho," protagonist of the comic strips Pucho y sus perrerías, with his script and drawings by Virgilio Martínez Gaínza. It was a kind of co-authorship that they signed with the pseudonym "Laura." The canine character would urinate on the injustices committed by the regime in power. This creation cost Behmaras being detained and registered by the police forces of Fulgencio Batista's dictatorship.

Another caricatured character created by this duo was "Supertiñosa," a formidable satire of "Superman," where "Pancho Tareco," star agent of the CIA, appeared, a parody of Clark Kent. Despite the fact that political responsibilities absorbed much of his time, almost to the end of his life, he continued collaborating with Revista Mella, where he published three humorous supplements.

When in the early years of the sixties, the revolutionary forces were engaged in a fierce confrontation with the bourgeois press and counter-revolutionary propaganda, one of the most aggressive opposition publications was Selecciones del Reader's Digest, which directly attacked the new order established; then Behmaras had the idea of making a parody which he titled Salaciones del Reader's Indigest. The new publication reproduced in the form of satire the type of article that normally appeared in the reactionary magazine and some of its sections.

Shortly after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, the mass media were nationalized by the government in order to have an ideological apparatus of unquestionable power. In this context, specifically starting July 2, 1960, Behmaras became administrator and director of the Radio Progreso national network. His fundamental mission consisted of transforming a predominantly commercial station into a vehicle for the satisfaction of growing popular needs. He also played a fundamental role in the creation of Radio Habana Cuba on May 1, 1961.

His ventures into television had their starting point on the very day of the inauguration of the second Cuban television station. On December 18, 1950, when the first experimental broadcast of Channel 6 was made from the CMQ Televisión studios, Marcos Behmaras brought the first dramatic program to the screen. It was an adaptation of an English detective story, which was performed by actor Alejandro Lugo. This program continued to air after that date, under the name Tensión en el Canal 6.

Later he writes for Channel 4, the series El hombre flaco, whose lead roles were played by Reinaldo Miravalles and Maritza Rosales. In addition to the originality and creativity of his humorous and suspense scripts, Marcos Behmaras deserves credit for creating dramatized continuity programs for television. He earned this merit in the last years of the 1950s with the creation of the novel Mamá, premiered by CMQ Televisión in 1958. The novel obtained high television ratings and remained on the air for almost two and a half years, a time rarely surpassed. The three weekly broadcasts, between May 12, 1958 and August 31, 1962, went out "live." The success of Mamá was closely related to the quality of the cast of actors, which included the great actress Ana Lasalle and young talents like Miguel Navarro, and also a large technical staff.

The scripts written by Behmaras were distinguished by the use of simple language, adorned by Creole wit, which served to recreate the everyday life of a humble Cuban family of the time. The work combines a humorous setting with moments of profound drama. The television novel was received not only with approval by the public, but also by specialized critics.

Another of his contributions was the introduction of the narrator in television, which until that moment, since its invention by Félix B. Caignet, had only been used on radio. The first time there was a narrator on the small screen was when, in the program Detrás de la fachada, the character played by Consuelito Vidal commented on and narrated situations that were developed by the actors, while remaining invisible to them. Something very similar to the aside employed in theater.

On May 24, 1962, when the Cuban Institute of Broadcasting was founded, he assumed the vice presidency for television and, with it, the direction of the entire television system of the country. While in office, he strove to raise the cultural level of the products that the medium offered to audiences. In this effort, he proposed the presentation of works of universal literature in the space La Novela; he also created the block of children's programs and the space Teatro ICR, in which great classics of the stage were adapted for the small screen.

His passion for theater led him to write the work La cortina de bagazo, which premiered in 1960 under the direction of Paco Alfonso. It was about the visit to the Island of a Yankee reporter named "Mike Matraca," who only knew about Cuba what he had learned from Hollywood films. He had previously received a mention in the ADAD contest with the play La muerte desembarca (1948) and was at the head of the Teatro (1951) group that functioned at the headquarters of the Sociedad Cultural Nuestro Tiempo.

Almost until the end of his life, he dedicated himself to the humorous genre, not only on television, but also in print media. From its creation in 1965, he directed the supplement El sable, of the newspaper Juventud Rebelde, which promoted the harmonious relationship between graphic art and humor. Much of his work appeared unsigned.

He died on November 16, 1966 in a car accident while returning from a work trip from the eastern part of the country. He was 40 years old. With the fatal accident, Radio and Television lost three extremely valuable lives, in the prime of their faculties.

Among them was an appreciated and recognized director and one of his most talented and irreplaceable values for all time. Cuban culture lost in Behmaras one of the most sensitive and ingenious creators who expressed himself through the media.