Delia Amadora García[1] Gerboles was born 13 October 1919 to Gabriel García and Amadora Gerboles in Buenos Aires, Argentina.[2] She was a student of the Labardén Children's Theatre and trained at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música y Arte Escénico (National Conservatory of Music and Performing Arts) and the Comedia Nacional at the Teatro Nacional Cervantes. Claiming she had always been a "theater rat",[1] and performed her first role at age 8,[3] she trained with students like Zully Moreno, Nury Montsé, Fanny Navarro, and Malisa Zini.[1] Students received a small monthly stipend and participated in plays to hone their skills many taking pseudonyms. Between the performances of Mandinga en la sierra and Cyrano de Bergerac, María Luisa Zambrini became Malisa Sambrini and Delia Gerbolés became Delia Garcés.[4] One of her teachers, Cunil Cabanillas, gave her her first professional role in a small part of the 1936 production of Locos de verano, a play written by Gregorio de Laferrère.[5]
Garcés starred in "La maestrita de los obreros"[11] in 1942 directed by her husband with Oscar Valicelli, Felisa Mary, Orestes Caviglia, among others.[15] In 1943, she made Casa de muñecas[1] and was highly praised for her portrayal of "Nora" in the film which was directed by Ernesto Arancibia.[11] Filming began in 1944 for La Dama Duende in which Garcés starred, directed by Luis Saslavsky, in an elaborate film based on a seventeenth-century Spanish play by Pedro Calderón de La Barca. With the exception of Saslavsky and Garcés, all the other facets of the play were done by the Spanish émigré community.[16] Garcés won her third Premios Sur Best Actress award from the Argentine Academy of Cinematography Arts and Sciences in 1945.[17]
That same year, Garcés formed her own theatrical company and in March premiered the first play of Homero Manzi and Ulises Petit de Murat, La novia de arena, at the Odeón Theater. In her troupe, besides herself were: Alba Castellanos, Orestes Caviglia, Margarita Corona, Enrique Alvarez Diosdado, Alita Román, Domingo Sapelli, and Milagros de la Vega.[18] Having completed a run of the play, her company continued at the Odeón and performed her "farewell" theatrical production in Argentina, Claudia by Rose Franken. After the performance, due to the political situation with Juan Peron's government, she and her husband planned to leave Argentina.[19] But, they stayed and in 1946, she performed La eterna ninfa at the Odeón[20] and filmed Rosa de América directed by her husband with Orestes Caviglia, Antonia Herrero, Elsa O'Connor, among others.[21] She earned praise for her roles in El gran amor de Bécquer (1946) and El hombre que amé (1947)[11] and in 1948, she performed in the play El otro yo de Marcela which was so successful that it led to a film by the same name two years later,[20] in which she sang and danced.[11]
In 1951, Garcés and de Zavalía went to Mexico and she made one of her most memorable films there in 1951[2]-1952. In Él directed by Luis Buñuel,[22] she played Gloria, the wife of the jealous and paranoid Francisco, played by Arthur Cordova. The film, though released in Mexico in 1953[2] and presented at the 1953 Cannes Film Festival,[23][24] was not released in Argentina until 1958.[2] Almost immediately, in March, 1953, she began work on Lágrimas robadas in Mexico with Andrea Palma under the direction of Julián Soler.[25]
Garcés then did a tour of Latin America which included Chile, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela and Puerto Rico covering the plays Casa de muñecas, Leocadia, Nina, Tesá, La voz de la tórtola, El balcón de Julieta all with her husband, and La llave en el desván by Alejandro Casona, before arriving in Spain.[26] She began filming Rebeldía under the direction of José Antonio Nieves Conde which was based on the play La luz de la víspera by José María Pemán.[27]
In 1958, she and de Zavalía had a season at the National Theater of Paris, performing as the Buenos Aires Theater Company in the production of La Carroza de San Sacramento by Prosper Mérimée and El Límite by de Zavalía.[29] That same year, she starred in a television series on Channel 9, Lo mejor de nuestra vida, nuestros hijos, directed by Alberto Migré based on stories by Julio César Barton.[30] She and her husband also performed at the Teatro Nacional Cervantes in both 1958 and 1959, completing No es cordero... que es cordera and then doing several guest appearances the following year.[31] In 1961, Garcés starred in La doncella prodigiosa, a play by her husband, de Zavalía at the Teatro Nacional Cervantes under the direction of Fernando Labat.[32]
She joined the board of the National Endowment for the Arts and worked with them throughout her retirement.[11][33] In 1982, she received the Premios Leopoldo Torre Nilsson[36] In 1995, she received the Premio Pablo Podestá[37] and a room at the Tita Merello Complex on Suipacha Street was named in her honor by the Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts to acknowledge her stature in Argentine film.[3][38] On 29 October 2001 she won the first ACE Platinum Lifetime Achievement Award ever presented by the Asociación de Cronistas del Espectáculo (Association of reporters of Show Business)[11]
^ abcdefgPérez Leira, Lois. "Delia Garcés: A diva galega do cine latinoamericano". Enciclopedia da emigracion galega. (in Spanish). Santiago de Compostela, Spain: Secretaría de Estado de Inmigración y Emigración Galicia, España. Retrieved 15 June 2015.
^ ab"1941 Premios Anuales". Academia de Cine (in Spanish). Buenos Aires: Academia de las Artes y Ciencias Cinematográficas de la Argentina. 31 May 2014. Retrieved 16 June 2015.
^ ab"1942 Premios Anuales". Academia de Cine (in Spanish). Buenos Aires: Academia de las Artes y Ciencias Cinematográficas de la Argentina. 31 May 2014. Retrieved 16 June 2015.
^ ab"1945 Premios Anuales". Academia de Cine (in Spanish). Buenos Aires, Argentina: Academia de las Artes y Ciencias Cinematográficas de la Argentina. 31 May 2014. Retrieved 16 June 2015.
^"Rebeldía · España-Alemania 1953". Cervantes Virtual (in Spanish). Spain: Fundación Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes. Retrieved 16 June 2015.
^ abPosadas, Abel (1994). Carlos Schlieper (in Spanish). Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina. p. 61. ISBN950-25-3166-3. Retrieved 16 June 2015.
^Sierra, Patricia (April 2007). "Un poco de historia... Radio El Mundo". Radio Teatro Hoy (in Spanish). Buenos Aires, Argentina: Radio El Mundo. Retrieved 16 June 2015.
^ abMartinez, Marcos; Lopez, Alejandra (6 April 1997). "El boom de los nuevos cines" (in Spanish). Buenos Aires, Argentina: La Nacion. Retrieved 17 June 2015.