2023-10-14 05:36:00
Miguel Ángel Álvarez was a 27-year-old young man when he had the great opportunity of his life and he did not waste it. The year was 1964 and they called him to be part of an Argentine television classic that lasted for three decades as Operación Ja-Já. The program had an emblematic sketch, The Coffee Table, which later led to the classic Controversy at the Bar. There, as Javier Portales (his stage name) stood out in this creation by Gerardo and Hugo Sofovich alongside greats such as Juan Carlos Altavista, Jorge Porcel, Alberto Olmedo, Carmen Morales, María Rosa Fugazot, Mario Sánchez, Luis Tasca, Adolfo García Grau, Rolo Puente, Fidel Pintos…
The mere mention of Pintos brings to mind those memorable scenes where the comedian spoke like no one else at the table regarding why the dollar was rising, already in those years. There the classic argument broke out between Portales and Minguito Tinguitella played by Altavista, while Fidel put his right hand inside his jacket, implying that he had a gun.
Another milestone in Javier’s career was the always remembered sketch with Olmedo as Borges and Álvarez (El Negro had baptized him that way because that was his real last name) in He doesn’t touch the button. As occasional partners, Silvia Pérez, Divina Gloria, César Bertrand, Vicente La Russa and the “stop the presses” paraded, and the appearance at the end of an outstanding Beatriz Salomón with her “they called from Channel 9 to contribute new ideas for a program…”. Some milestones in a career that he had everything.
He was from Córdoba, born on April 21, 1937 in Tancacha, a livestock farming town located in the center of the province. He used to travel to Rosario to start his acting career in radio theater, until as a teenager he settled in Buenos Aires to continue trying his luck. And he had it by obtaining a place in Fifth National Year, with texts by Abel Santa Cruz, accompanied by Julio de Grazia and Santiago Gómez Cou. That program for the family helped him become more popular and was invited by the Sofovich brothers to the bar table that made history.
Alberto Olmedo and Javier Portales, or Borges and Alvarez
Of course, his always growing and positive career contrasted with his private life, which caused him numerous troubles until he died abandoned in poverty with the only company of his son Javier Ángel. Although they had been estranged for some time, she was the one who accompanied him and assisted him during his last tragic days, when the center’s lights had gone out and no one approached him anymore.
His first wife was Yolanda Vitulano, mother of his only son Javier, from whom he separated in the early 60s, when the child was very small. Immediately, she met Delia Novoa, her partner for more than two decades until the relationship exploded when Portales was discovered while maintaining a parallel relationship.
Javier Ángel suffered from Delia, he didn’t want to see her even in figurines because whenever he might he put her aside. Her father, who was in love with her at the time, allowed it to avoid friction. The couple traveled around the country and the world and they took him little or nothing, with a recurring excuse: “You are doing poorly at school, you come back when you are better.” But even if his grades improved, that never happened. Because of this mistreatment that he had received as a child, he was a little happy when he was already a well-educated young man, he had little relationship with his father and almost none with Delia, and he found out that she had discovered him with someone else.
Javier Portales and Gerardo Sofovich
The lover in question was the screenwriter Marina Gacitúa, a couple of decades younger than the actor. In the mid-’90s, Portales was experiencing a moment of splendor beyond having suffered like no one else the death of his teammate, Alberto Olmedo, which occurred in 1988. According to Javier Ángel, his father and Marina were discovered while having a coffee near the San Martin Theater. The meeting reached the ears of Delia, to whom he was legally married. It might be said that at that precise moment the debacle began for Portales in his life and in his health.
Delia waited patiently for him in the home they shared, a 500-meter apartment on Dean Funes and Venezuela. When she arrived, she told him straight out that she had found out that he was cheating on her. She kicked him out of the apartment, and when he reached the exit door, she even threw some of her belongings out the window. It was not such a recurring fictional scene from the picaresque of the time, this was regarding real life. Portales, humiliated, had to rest occasionally in his brand new Ford Sierra until he found a new home. Furthermore, his ex filed a million-dollar divorce suit once morest him and not only did he receive a fortune in cash but he benefited because the magistrate who intervened ruled that he would receive 17 percent of everything Javier received from the contracts signed through the union. of Actors.
Beyond having caused a financial debacle, Portales continued with his budding romance with Marina. Her son, who had ventured into the world of cinema as a creditor and other roles, warned her that neither she nor her family “would close him down.” He insisted on the theme of mistrust, especially when they shared tasks at the theater, where she worked as a librettist. Javier Ángel told his father that with a talent like his, that in addition to his role as a comedian he had been the author and director of an emblematic work like The Frying Pan for the Mango, he might not continue at the mercy of a women. I tiredly repeated to him that he had made Chekhov, Shakespeare, lots of films and was even awarded the Podesta Prize for his great career. But his father did not listen to him, he only had eyes and heart for Marina when he began to suffer problems with her health.
Javier Portales and his son Javier Ángel
It was in his villa in Francisco Álvarez, in the west of the Buenos Aires suburbs, when he slipped and fell on his back. The studies showed that he suffered from a herniated disc that became more complicated and caused him to suffer abuse. He suffered from severe back pain and even had to use a wheelchair to get around. They operated on his spine, but far from recovering, his situation worsened worryingly. That is why he decided to travel to Cuba in search of recovering his mobility. Upon his return, and following intense physical therapy treatment, he suffered his first stroke. He wanted to return to Cuba but his physical condition prevented him from doing so. He then suffered another stroke and three heart attacks that left him on the verge of death several times.
Meanwhile, the relationship with Marina Gacitúa, who lived with him and his little daughter, was breaking down more every day. “They were with him out of interest, she and her family. They had taken over her assets and even her bank accounts,” Javier Ángel denounces, and assures that she was in the United States when her father suffered the stroke and that when she found out she did not return immediately. Meanwhile, Portales was torn between life and death at the Diagnostic Institute. When he was discharged and arrived at his home, they placed him in another room. “With the excuse that he was quadriplegic,” his son recalls, and contrasts his version.
“She did it so that he wouldn’t notice when she arrived or left, until around 2000 she left home, left him to his fate and settled in San Telmo,” he says with pain. “My old man didn’t have a handle. I warned him, but he didn’t pay attention to me, he didn’t listen to me. It was strange, because I don’t deny that he loved women and he did anything when he fell in love, but he liked money more… I say that he was careless or he was neglected, whoever reads will understand me. It’s very sad for a guy who made millions, he amassed a fortune.
Javier Portales died at the age of 66
Beyond the millions of pesos or dollars that Javier may have had, when his son took care of him two years before his death, the debts multiplied and so did the health problems. He was bedridden with numerous expenses for doctors, medications, diapers, colostomy bags because he had an unnatural anus, and insulin because of the advanced diabetes he suffered from. The situation was chaotic. And his son says that he even had to sell his own apartment to be able to continue with the treatment. But his body might no longer resist, and death surprised him at the age of 66, on October 14, 2003.
Today, at 62 years old, Javier Ángel – who rents an apartment where he lives with his eternal companion, Susana – remembers him with a smile, beyond recognizing that his father ignored him for much of his life. He says that he does not hold a grudge once morest him, on the contrary, he shamelessly confesses that he loved him, loves him and remembers him in his own way. “I miss his perfume when he came home. “Sometimes I hear the door noise and for a moment I think it’s him,” he says affectionately and with smiles. What he wants most is to bring his play La Frying Pan for the Mango to the theater, the ownership of which is the only inheritance he received from his father: “I would love for a producer to call me to re-release it one day and thus give it the pending joy it deserves.” , longs.
To talk regarding Portales is also to talk regarding Olmedo, whom Javier Ángel met and also loved very much. He says that El Negro, on a trip that the three of them took through Spain, took him as a trusted man. “He gave me all the responsibilities so that I might decide where to go, how to go, what we might do.” And he reflects out loud and with a hint of sadness: “Look how talented he and my old man were, the money they won, and how they both ended up, tragically…”.
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#years #sad #death #Javier #Portales #poverty #loneliness #pain #oblivion