Málaga, 22 Mar After a childhood and youth of hardship, José Luis López Vázquez became an unrepeatable genius with marathon days of work that, however, did not stop feeling “real dread that the phone would not ring”, as his son, José Luis López Magerus, has revealed. The recognition of “El bosque del lobo” (1970), by Pedro Olea, as a Gold Film by the Malaga Film Festival served this Tuesday to pay tribute to López Vázquez a few days after the centenary of his birth. His son recalls how he attended the shooting of the film in which he was participating at that time, “at lunchtime he made television, then returned to the shooting, and then he went to the theater, where he had a performance at 7 and another at 11, seven days a week”. Although he admits that as a father “he suffered from many things due to lack of time”, according to López Magerus, as an actor he was “unique, of overwhelming versatility, generous with his teammates and with the team, without any excessive ambition and humility above all else”. “I wasn't aware of his greatness. He was plain, observant and listener, he went by subway and bus, and there he soaked up people and then applied it,” says his son, who believes that his father “made a food cinema and another a little more interesting”. He reveals that at home “he didn't like to talk about his work and he was very sparse” and that one of the things that hurt him the most was not being able to play the lead role in “The Executioner”, which was going to be for him but eventually fell to Nino Manfredi for co-production reasons. “He realized the magnitude of the film and agreed to have a twelve-minute role on screen. Berlanga and Azcona named José Luis the protagonist of 'The Executioner' by my father”, reveals López Magerus. For his part, José Sacristán has described López Vázquez as “a gifted man with the ability to encompass all genres, all media and everything within his reach” “Cinema is above all gaze, and in the depths of his gaze each and every one of the feelings that can exist in a human being, from tenderness to the disturbing and almost scary,” said Sacristán. Regarding the possibility he had of working in the United States, Sacristán believes that López Vazquez “would have cost him in a language that was not his own, and Hollywood is like a supermarket with genuine products from the land, in which from time to time there is an exotic product.” “López Vazquez would not have sold a thread on the shelf of the Hollywood supermarket, so he was right not to go, because this was his place,” Sacristán concluded. In this regard, Monica Randall points out that if she had worked there “she would have gotten a couple of Oscars”, but perhaps López Vázquez was born “too early”, at a time when “nobody cared about English”. “It was great, but naturally great. When you grow up, everything seems very easy,” says Randall, who still wonders “how did a man who didn't look like it had so many men inside.” Pedro Olea directed him in four feature films, including “El bosque del lobo”, in which he was “fascinated” by his work “in such an uncomfortable film, living in very rare places in Galicia”, and in which López Vázquez “behaved well”, despite the fact that the director thought “that as a star he would demand comforts he didn't have”. When asked about his method, López Vázquez explained that “he silently locked himself in a room, studied the script and took notes, for when the director said 'action' to know what to do,” Olea said. “The most important thing in the direction of actors is the choice of actors”, emphasizes Olea, who with López Vázquez understood “perfectly always”, he says. And Olea reveals that, at Fernando Fernán Gomez's funeral in November 2007, López Vázquez took his arm in a moment and said: “Pedro, the next one is going to be me”. He died two years later. Jose Luis Picon
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