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Ernesto Vilches' biography

Ernesto Vilches (Ernesto de Vilches Domínguez de Alcahúd) was born in 1879 February 6th, but some biographies speak about 1876, in Tarragona (Cataluna) when the king of Spain was Alphonse XII. But during his youth he was living in Cartagena, important military port in the Levant Coast. His father was journalist. Ernesto Vilches seemed to have been soldier in the Philippines Islands during the last months of the Spanish sovereignty (1898). And he returned to his native country after some years spent in Central America, Mexico and USA (New-York). At the beginning of the twentieth century he became actor in Madrid in the « Teatro de la Comedia » and founded then his own theatre company with José Tallaví. And he obtained in particular a very great success when he produced himself in the first time of the piece of Jacinto Benavente, « La Malquerida », in 1913. And he was during about 12 years a very successful couple for the stage with the comedienne Irene López de Heredia. They both played in all the stages of the Hispanic world. Antonio Vilches worked with them as company director and player.

In 1909 he appeared in his first film of somes minutes,« Aventuras de Pepín », by Francisco Oliver. 8 years later he wrote the story board and played with his favorite partner Irene in « El golfo » (1917) by José de Togores. But this film, of course a silent film, was not a success. So Vilches prefered to return to the stage.

In spite of this, in 1930 he went to Hollywood to be one of the Spaniards of having played in the first spoken films which have been made directly in the Spanish lenguage. And he had the main part of « Cascarrabias » (1930) by Cyril Gardner. This detective melodrama was adapted from a play by Horace Hodges and Thomas Wigney Percyval (« Grumpy »), spanish texts by Josep Carner Ribalta. In the female parts there were the mexican actresses Carmen Guerrero et Delia Magaña.

Ernesto Vilches in "Cascarrabias" (1931)
One of the first Spanish spoken film

Then Ernesto Vilches is the exotic hero of Wu Li Chang, title part of a film produced by the Metro-Golwyn Mayer company with, as director Nick Grinde who was helped by the Chilean director Carlos F. Borcosque. This one filmed again Vilches in 1931 in « Su última noche » with the very beautiful Spanish actress Conchita Montenegro, the Argentin actor Manuel Granado (better known as Paul Ellis), Maria Alba and Juan de Luna. We haven't to confuse it with the film with the same title made in 1945 by Carlos Arévalo and Alfredo Mayo in the main role.

Maria Alba and Ernesto Vilches in " Su última noche" (1931)

And we haven't to forget « Chéri-Bibi » adapted from Gaston Leroux's novel, where Ernesto Vilches has played the title-part and has had as partner María Fernanda Ladrón de Guevara.

Ernesto Vilches is Chéri Bibi in 1931

In Ernesto Vilches decided to film « El comediante » (1931). He wrote the storyboard, directed the film where he was playing the main part. He was helped by Leonard Fields. It was the first production of John H Auer. In this period Ernesto Vilches made fortune several times and a lot of money very quickly. He was very busy in his professional life as in his sentimental life, constancy during all his life in fact. But his nature and his artistic requirements have exasperated the US producers and he only played in two films in 1933 and 1934 : « La noche del pecado » (1933) by Miguel Contreras Torres with Virginia Zurí and the Cuban Henrique Herrera for his first part in the cinema and « El desaparecido » by Antonio Graciani with Fortunio Bonanova.

So Ernesto Vilches decided to return to Spain where he founded a new company. Between the members there is a young man who has just finished his military service and who has preferred to leave his university studies to try a stage career. His name was Alfredo Mayo.

In 1935 Ernesto Vilches filmed a third cinematographic version but the first one with sound, of a successful play becoming for the screen « El 113 », the story of an honest father, sentenced to the jail in spite of being innocent and without enough proof by because of the naive testimony of his little daughter Suzanne (Juanita Poveda). For this film the Spanish director was helped par the Mexican cineaste Rafael J. Sevilla.

El 113 by Ernesto Vilches (1935)
with Alfredo Mayo

But Spain, chronically in a political instability, entered in a terrible civil war in 1936 (July). Ernesto Vilches seemed to have refused to support the rebels army forces and the civilian supporters, but also the partisans of the Republic. And he preferred to cross again the Atlantic Ocean but to go to Argentina. There, he filmed in 1937 a comedy « Una prueba de cariño » (premiere in Buenos Aires in June of 1938). Then he played in about twenty films working with Libertad Lamarque and the French-argentine actor Georges Rigaud or with the directors Luis Salavasky and Benito Perojo, between the most famous. And he got an appreciable success in « El que recibe las bofetadas » (1947) by Boris H. Hardy with Narciso Ibáñez Menta. After he went to Mexico where he has been directed in particular by Tito Davison, Julián Soler and Rafael J. Sevilla for « Una mujer con pasado » (1949) with the young Gustavo Rojo. At the beginning of the fifties he took part in some international productions in South America and in Spain as « Marta » by Francisco Elías (1954) with the bullfighter Mario Cabré and in « Sucedió en mi aldea » by Antonio Santillán. But during a stay in his native Catalonia, Ernesto Vilches, this adventurer of the stage and the screen was hit by a taxi. He died two days later in the hospital in Barcelona; it was the 8th of December of 1954.

Ernesto Vilches ' filmography