Leopoldo Fernández
Leopoldo Fernández, known on stage as Pototo and to millions of listeners as Tres Patines, was a Cuban actor, singer and comedian, considered one of the most influential Spanish-language humorists of the twentieth century. He was born Leopoldo Augusto Fernández Salgado on 26 December 1904 in Matanzas province and grew up in Güines in a humble family; his father was a tobacco worker. He left school young to help support his family, delivering bread and working as a telegraphist, cigar maker and fortune-teller, until in 1926 he founded his own theatre company with friends. That year he also toured Cuba with Blanquita Gómez, and through the 1930s he became established on the island's theatre circuit. Mass stardom came in the early 1940s, when the radio network Cadena Azul hired him and Aníbal de Mar for a new programme. The Spanish writer Cástor Vispo created the scripts and characters of La tremenda corte, launched in 1941, in which Fernández played José Candelario Tres Patines, a small-time rogue forever in trouble with De Mar's judge. Its success was immediate, it was heard daily as far away as Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Panama and the Dominican Republic, and it is still broadcast today. Fernández said many characters were drawn from real Cuban types. On stage he and De Mar were also the duo Pototo y Filomeno, and Fernández formed a celebrated partnership with the actress Mimí Cal as Nananina. He appeared in the films Hotel de muchachas (1951) and ¡Olé, Cuba! (1957) and recorded comedy albums. He kept working in Cuba after 1959; by March 1962 his company had played 70 weeks in a row at Havana's Teatro Nacional. That April a performance was broken up, his theatre was closed, and later that year he left Cuba with 1,170 refugees on the cargo ship Shirley Lykes. He always denied the popular story that a joke about hanging a portrait had sent him to prison. In exile he worked in Mexico, recording the album Tres Patines y El Señor Juez with De Mar in 1968, and in Peru, where in 1969 he starred in the Panamericana Televisión series El Guardia Tres Patines with Antonio Salim. In Puerto Rico he met the actress Vilma Carbia, his second wife. In 1971 he settled in Miami. In 1976 he launched the radio show Los Problemas de Trespatines, with Carbia as his wife, heard on stations across the United States; in 1977 his company played five months at Hialeah's Teatro Lecuona; and in 1980 he returned to film with Misión 3K3, co-directed with his son Polito. His last stage season, Pototo odia a las mujeres, ran until October 1984. He never received royalties for the endless rebroadcasts of his work. Leopoldo Fernández died in Miami on 11 November 1985, and Cuban soil was placed on his coffin.
