Tito Guízar on Radio Row

Spanning over seventy years, Tito Guízar’s performing career on stage and set, as well as in recording, broadcasting, and television studios made him familiar with audiences not only in Mexico, but throughout the Americas. ¹ Closely tied to his most famous film, Fernando de Fuentes’ Allá en el Rancho Grande (1936), Guízar’s stardom is enmeshed within complex cultural (trans)nationalisms. At least in part due to the film’s place in traditional Mexican film historiography—it is considered to be the box office hit that made possible the industrialization of national sound film, which, soon thereafter, led to the so-called Época de Oro—Álla en el Rancho Grande is frequently bound by the constraints of the paradigm of National Cinema. Recently, however, its transnational horizons are increasingly coming into question by scholars. ² Guízar’s participation as José Francisco in the film has come to overshadow previous and subsequent work in other media industries, principally in Spanish-language United States and Argentina. ³