Susana Giménez

In the winter of 1969, an unknown model turned toward the camera at the Iguazú Falls, shouted "¡Shock!" to a catchy tune and sent sales of Cadum soap soaring across the Southern Cone. That commercial suddenly fixed a face in Argentina's collective memory. María Susana Giménez Aubert was twenty-five years old, had a young daughter to support and had no intention of going unnoticed.

Her move to the big screen came right away, without passing through drama schools or conservatories. Directors of the era were looking for commanding presences for light, fast-paced comedies made for the downtown theaters of Buenos Aires. She brought an unusual mix of striking photogenic appeal and self-deprecating humor that disarmed even the most cynical male viewer.

And audiences responded by filling the theaters.

The Mud of La Mary and Popular Cinema

During the first half of the 1970s, she worked at a frantic pace alongside popular comedians such as Alberto Olmedo and Jorge Porcel in films like Los caballeros de la cama redonda and A los cirujanos se les va la mano. These were low-budget productions designed to pack summer movie theaters with slapstick and vaudeville-style comedy. But in 1974, director Daniel Tinayre broke that routine by handing her the script for La Mary.

The film adapted a sordid novel about sexual obsession and crime in a working-class neighborhood in Buenos Aires Province. Her co-star was Carlos Monzón, the world middleweight boxing champion, a man with no acting experience but an enormous physical intensity on screen. The shoot was a powder keg of friction and real passion that made the tabloids when the secret romance between the two co-stars blew up their private lives.

Tinayre directed two untamable figures who multiplied the projected box office by ten after weeks of wrangling with state censorship boards. Critics scorned the film's melodrama, but Giménez held her own against the raw magnetism of the boxer without falling apart in a single shot.

That relationship ended in a public breakup four years later after several violent episodes and an unbearable living situation. By then, the actress had realized that her public image sold better on her own than as the companion of any sports icon.

The Midday Show and the Stage

Musical theater served as a bridge for her during the 1980s. In 1986, she starred in the Argentine adaptation of Sugar alongside Ricardo Darín and Arturo Puig at the Teatro Lola Membrives in Buenos Aires. The production sold more than three hundred thousand tickets over three consecutive seasons, a commercial record hard to match on the Buenos Aires stage during those years of hyperinflation.

A year later, in 1987, the state broadcaster ATC aired Hola Susana, an openly admitted version of Raffaella Carrà's Italian format. The show started with a shoestring budget at noon and ended up taking over the late-night slot when it moved to Canal 9 and later to Telefe.

The formula was simple but deadly. There were phone calls with million-dollar giveaways, interviews with international stars such as Sophia Loren, Alain Delon or Rod Stewart, and a host who turned her own absent-minded moments into unintentional gags. If she asked on air whether dinosaurs were still alive, the audience didn't punish her; on the contrary, her image as a wealthy yet down-to-earth woman was shielded from any criticism in the media.

But the real business was in the phone lines.

Telecom companies brought in staggering sums from every call to the premium-rate numbers that funded the studio prizes. Giménez controlled the percentages of each advertising contract and negotiated her own salary directly with network executives, without delegating to intermediaries.

Late Fiction and Closing Numbers

After decades bound to the demands of live television, in 2015 she returned to the stage with Piel de Judas under the direction of Arturo Puig. The production had a season run in Punta del Este between 2022 and 2024, the Uruguayan city where she established her tax residence and her主要 home.

Her return to film and series was selective and deliberately self-parodying. In 2022, director Martín Piroyansky persuaded her to join the absurdist comedy Porno y helado, produced for Prime Video, in which she played Roxana, an eccentric woman with a grotesque fetish for buying used condoms.

It was a brief appearance, filmed in just four shooting days in Montevideo.

In September 2024, Telefe scheduled her return with a series of special programs in the prime-time Sunday slot. The network's advertising rates set a cost of four million pesos for every second of commercial airtime during her broadcasts, the highest ad price on Argentine television that quarter.