Hebe Camargo Brazilian Actress Born 1929 in Taubaté

Early life

Hebe Camargo was born on 8 March 1929 in Taubaté, in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. Her parents, Esther Magalhães Camargo and Sigesfredo Monteiro de Camargo, were both of Portuguese descent. Her full name was Hebe Maria Monteiro de Camargo Ravagnani.

She started out in music during the 1940s, performing with her sister Estela as a duo called Rosalinda e Florisbela. Their repertoire in nightclubs included sambas and boleros. Camargo later put the singing career aside to give more time to radio and the new medium of television, and she was invited by Assis Chateaubriand to attend the first live broadcast in Brazilian television history, held in the Sumaré district of São Paulo.

Career

Her singing led to film work. She appeared in comedies starring the actor Mazzaropi, and in one of them she was paired with the singer Agnaldo Rayol. In the 1950s she turned to television as a presenter, working on a series for TV Paulista. In 1955 she took part in O Mundo é das Mulheres ("The World Belongs to Women"), a program aimed at women viewers that aired five times a week from Rio de Janeiro and is described as the first of its kind on Brazilian television.

During the 1960s she moved to the Rede Record network, where she held a successful program for many years. On 10 April 1966 the network began airing a Sunday show built around her interviews, which carried sponsorship from the airline Varig. Over the following two decades she appeared on almost every major channel in the country, including Rede Record and Rede Bandeirantes. After a long break, she went back to interviewing in 1980.

Her longest association was with SBT, where she worked from March 1986 to December 2010. There she presented Hebe, one of the longest-running programs on the network, and the show Fora do Ar. A spin-off, Hebe por Elas, ran in the early 1990s. She also took part in telethons and comedy specials, and she starred with Ronald Golias and Nair Bello in Romeu e Julieta. On 22 April 2006 she marked her thousandth program on SBT.

Her recording career continued alongside television. Albums include Sou Eu (1960), Hebe comanda o espetáculo (1961) and E Vocês (1963), followed by releases in 1964, 1965 and 1967 and later titles such as Pra Você (1998) and Hebe Camargo & Convidados (2001). EMI issued a collection of her greatest hits in 1995. In 2007 she joined the Cansei movement, a protest critical of the Brazilian government.

Recognition

In Brazil, Camargo is widely known by the nickname "Queen of Brazilian Television." She received a long list of honors. These include the title "The Face of São Paulo" in 1990, citizen status from the São Paulo city council in 1994, a tribute in Portugal in 2002, a special award from the magazine Contigo! in 2007, and an honorary professorship from the Universidade FIAM-FAAM in 2009. In 2010 she received the Latin Grammy Trustees Award. She also held two national orders, the Order of Cultural Merit and the Order of the Southern Cross, and critics' groups and the Brazilian Academy of Letters named her best interviewer and best auditorium-program presenter.

Her life has been the subject of later productions. A stage musical, Hebe, O Musical, directed by Miguel Falabella, was performed in 2018, and the 2019 film Hebe: A Estrela do Brasil, with Andréa Beltrão in the title role, told her story. An exhibition at Farol Santander in São Paulo in 2019 looked back at her career.

Personal life

Camargo was married twice. Her first marriage, to Décio Capuano, lasted from 1964 to 1971 and ended in divorce. In 1973 she married Lélio Ravagnani, and they remained together until 2000, when she was widowed. She had one child.

Camargo died on 29 September 2012.