runette, very pale, with dark eyes and a porteña look and lineage, impulsive and passionate, Herminia Franco, actress and singer with a unique voice, appeared in different movies.

She was the daughter of the actor José Joaquín Franco and Juana Ernesta Morandi. Her two sisters were actresses, Eva Franco, one of the most outstanding actresses in the Argentine theater and Nelly Franco, a very good actress but with a short career.

Eva, in her memoirs, commented that Herminia’s career began when at only three years old, she stepped onto the stage of the Franco’s company and started to dance, causing all the chorus girls to lose the beat. From her childhood she devoted herself to theater. The Francos were a family of artists. Herminia used to play roles as young lady and, according to some articles published in journals of the time, she was much sought after by different theatrical casts.

Herminia enjoyed a very good career in the movies. El Negro Agustín Ferreyra, movie director, was the one who discovered in Herminia her porteña essence and her profile as singer, by making her protagonist of two of his motion pictures: Sol de primavera, in which she sings the title song of the movie and in Muchachos de la ciudad, in which she sings “Así es el tango [b]”, accompanied by the Elvino Vardaro orchestra, in which Aníbal Troilo played bandoneon. The movie has the emotional content necessary to portray a woman who sings at a cabaret in Buenos Aires.

In La ley que olvidaron she appears as Belena Alurralde, a ‘well-to-do girl’ and even though she does not sing tangos in the movies, she is the one who inspires those that Libertad Lamarque sings in it: “Canción de cuna” and “Solo mía”. She also appears in other movies connected with tango like: Bartolo tenía una flauta, Cuatro corazones, Adiós pampa mía and El cantor del pueblo.

In the movie El cantor del pueblo, Herminia takes certain phrases like: «I’m also an artist and a love affair never damaged my artistry» and «Women like me always leave a mark» as if they were her own.

The movies showed her as a beautiful, sensual, flashy woman but also wicked, challenging and resentful, the opposite of what she was in real life.

Herminia had a characteristic typical of some male and female singers in tango, like Sofía Bozán or Carlitos Gardel: they were jesters. Relatives and people who knew her say that she was quite cheerful and that she liked to play practical jokes.
Tango was always present in her life. When she was a child she had the chance of hearing tangos sung by her sister Eva, María Luisa Notar and Azucena Maizani.

The latter was chosen by José to sing in different theatrical plays and variety shows. Tango and cabaret caused in Herminia, a sort of suggestion from which she was never able to move away. She knew the essence of tango, which allowed her to convey emotion and feeling through her voice, attaining a certain fascination in her listeners.

Herminia was married to the Spanish tenor singer Juan de Casenave and, later, the actor Floren Delbene was her de facto spouse. With the latter she worked in many movies and on the radio.

The Crónica jornal commented: «Many people were surprised when the beloved Herminia Franco decided to embark on the art of singing, taking a break in her activity as a stage and movie actress». She began to sing at the Casino Rousses and for many years she appeared at the Maison Dorée, a piano bar on Viamonte Street. She sang at the Karim cabaret, where also other female singers, like Ruth Durante, successfully appeared.

About her career as singer, the book El tango después de Gardel, by Humberto Barrella, states: «Among the many names that appeared in the tango events of 1956, a figure from the theater and the movies, Herminia Franco, added hers as female singer. Herminia recorded “Fumando espero” and “Loca” for the Pampa label, in her only recording experience. The musical backup was under the direction of the Edgardo Donato orchestra, one of those which was very active with of the Pampa label».

“Fumando espero” was one of Herminia’s creations, in which she plays different vocal tricks. Rodolfo Graziano, a theater director, told me that Herminia appeared onstage with a cigarette in “Fumando espero” and made quite a show mimicking this. But she did not smoke. Roberto Quirno thinks that “Fumando espero” was her 'signature tune,' and says that she sang it in the program Tropicana Club of TV's Channel 7 and in the movie Hay que bañar al nene. There are several renditions of this tango made by male and female singers, but I think that the one sung by Herminia is as personal a rendering as the one by Rosita Quiroga.

“Loca” was another of her great creations. This tango was sung by her sister Eva in the sainete (one-act farce) El tango de la muerte, in 1922.

Herminia had a good voice but not much vocal power. But her strong field was somewhere else, it was her interpretation, her use of nuances and her way of acting and feeling tango. Eva used to say about her, «She had a beautiful voice and she sang with feeling...»

Rodolfo Graziano told me that when he saw Herminia singing at a Festival at the Teatro Cervantes he was impressed by her way of singing and her physical attitude when she impersonated a famous artist who arrived at the tenement house at the time of the party in the play El Conventillo de La Paloma.

Herminia appeared at the cabaret Karim at that time and switched to the Teatro Cervantes to appear as singer of the cast. In the play she sang the tangos “Fumando espero” and “El choclo”. Rodolfo says that she was very seductive and quite sociable. She was fond of making jokes, she was wandering around the dressing rooms chatting and had a very good relationship with her team mates. «She was a beautiful human being».

Herminia was a special woman, because she could have been satisfied with her successful career as theater and movie actress, but instead she risked everything for her dream of being a singer, a behavior that deserves to be highlighted.

What most people, with whom I have talked, highlight are her eyes. For many of them, they reflected tango. Her way of looking had attitude, was expressive and spontaneous. She died due to an irreversible sclerosis which had been progressively worsening.

She knew how to skillfully handle that duality that tango has, love-hate, happiness-sadness, clarity-confusion. We always say that for a porteño, tango is mostly feeling and she, porteña to the bone, felt that the lyrics of “Así es el tango [b]”, summarized that truth.

Acknowledgements: To Nelly Franco, Sarita Garfinkel, the theatrical director Rodolfo Graziano, the Biblioteca Teatral Alberto Mediza of La Plata and Marcelo Lorenzo of the Archivo del Teatro Cervantes.