page_title: Tita Merello
section_title: Exile and underground (1955–1958)
hierarchical_section_title: Tita Merello / Biography / Exile and underground (1955–1958)
caption_attribution_description: Tita Merello, 1952
context_page_description: Tita Merello was a prominent Argentine film actress, tango dancer and singer of the Golden Age of Argentine Cinema. In her 6 decades in Argentine entertainment, at the time of her death, she had filmed over thirty movies, premiered twenty plays, had nine television appearances, completed three radio series and had had countless appearances in print media. She was one of the singers who emerged in the 1920s along with Azucena Maizani, Libertad Lamarque, Ada Falcón, and Rosita Quiroga, who created the female voices of tango. She was primarily remembered for the songs "Se dice de mí" and "La milonga y yo".
  She began her acting career in theater and may have made silent films. She debuted on the first sound movie produced in Argentina, ¡Tango!, with Libertad Lamarque in 1933. After making a series of films throughout the 1930s, she established herself as a dramatic actress in La fuga, directed by Luis Saslavsky. In the mid-1940s, she moved to Mexico, where she filmed Cinco rostros de mujer, which earned her an Ariel Award from the Mexican Academy of Film. She returned to Argentina and starred in Don Juan Tenorio and Filomena Marturano, which were subsequently taken to the theater.
context_section_description: Though Merello was not political, her success under the Perón regime made her a target and she was accused of trafficking Ceylon tea by an investigating commission. Fleeing to Mexico to escape, she thought she might never work again. There were many artists whose careers came to an end, many who believed that "laughing either at or with a working-class" person would never be possible again. There were no protections in place for artistic expression, leaving artists vulnerable to the whims of whomever was in power.
  She tried to settle in Mexico, but was unable to find work. Merello returned to Argentina at the invitation of Hugo del Carril and worked in an amusement park. As she was banned from working in mainstream theater, she worked out of sight of the censors with del Carril, with the pianist and composer Héctor Stamponi, and by recording music with Francisco Canaro.
  At one point, she worked for a time in the circus and in 1957, she returned to Mexico and did a television production of Eugene O'Neill's Before Breakfast (Antes del desayuno). In 1958, when Arturo Frondizi was elected to the Argentine presidency, Merello was able to return to the country and resume work in movies and the theater.
caption: Tita Merello in 1952
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