Lilián de Celis had a very uneven career both as an actress and as a
singer. However, at one point she was immensely popular in Spain on the
strength of a few recordings, one film and several stage musicals.
Lilián Ángela de Celis Collia was born in Fíos, Parres, province of
Asturias, in Spain, on January 31, 1935. Very little is known of her
family or her early years, but by the mid 50s she was a voice and music
student at Madrid's Conservatory.
In those days, Maestro Indalecio Cisneros was the musical director for
a successful radio show titled "Aquellos Tiempos del Cuplé" (Those
Times of the Cuplé) which took a nostalgic look at the songs that were
popular during "la belle époque." The show had a basic format: in each
edition it featured different vocalists who would sing the required
songs or "cuplés" while a couple of sentimental senior citizens
remembered the good old days.
On a visit to the Conservatory, Maestro Cisneros heard Lilián and
invited her to sing in the show. The young woman made a favorable
impression on the listeners and was asked back to perform becoming part
of the regular cast. As her popularity increased, Miss de Celis was
signed by Discos Columbia and recorded some of the songs she performed
on the radio show. Shortly after that, she married Columbia's musical
director Maestro Manuel Monreal. However, after these auspicious beginnings,
the broadcast was canceled and the singer's future became uncertain.
But not for long.
In 1956, film producer and director Juan de Orduña was having trouble
launching his own "cuplé" project. It has not been proven if Mr. de
Orduña was influenced by the nostalgic radio show featuring Lilián, but
the fact remains that he was working on a film which exploited the
nostalgia for "la belle époque" and the "cuplés" in much the same way.
The musical was titled El último cuplé (1957) and its filming was plagued by financial
woes since no investor wanted to touch it. That in spite of the fact
that the film star was beautiful Hollywood starlet Sara Montiel, the Spanish
actress-singer who had by then secured a promising career in the US
(Vera Cruz (1954), Serenade (1956), Hölle der tausend Martern (1957).)
"El Último Cuplé" was finished somehow and by the end of 1957 it was
the highest grossing film in the history of Spanish cinema creating a
veritable "Saritamania" in Europe and Latin America. The soundtrack
from the film was a huge success and the songs by Montiel were
dominating the hit parades everywhere. Sarita Montiel had become a
national treasure for Spain and in 1958 she was brought back from
Hollywood to star in La violetera (1958), a high budget production which exploited
the same elements as "El Último Cuplé" with a nostalgic "belle époque"
setting and lots of songs from that era.
Actually, Spanish cinema turned exclusively to nostalgia musicals and
the producers were looking desperately for singers who could produce
the same results on the screen as Miss Montiel. It was natural that
someone would remember Lilián de Celis' radio show and the singer was
hired immediately to star in Aquellos tiempos del cuplé (1958). The publicity launched her as
"Sarita Montiel's rival" and a national debate over who was the better
singer of "cuplés" made headlines. It was true that Lilián possessed a
better trained voice and that she was a good looking lady but she could
not compete with Sarita, who substituted vocal prowess with a fresh
eroticism that made history by defying the strict censorship of the
Franco regime. Writer Terenci Moix stated: "Montiel brought eroticism to
Spanish cinema and for that she deserves a monument."
It must also be taken into consideration that Sarita's photogenic
beauty and charisma hypnotized moviegoers like no one else before or
after her, so while "La Violetera" was stopping traffic at a theater on
La Gran Vía Avenue, Miss de Celis' film ran quietly at another nearby
theater. The same thing happened with their recordings. Montiel's sold
like hot cakes while de Celis were purchased by the curious or "the
purists" who sustained their preference for Lilián's more traditional
and conservative sounds. The controversy has lasted through the years.
However, it was obvious to the industry that Lilián de Celis could not
compete, less surpass the cinema appeal of her sexually charged
"competitor" so the singer turned to the stage where she had a mild hit
with a musical revue aptly titled "Aquellos Tiempos del Cuplé." Other
revues followed which kept her busy in Spain between 1959 and 1960 when
she was called again to star in the film Los claveles (1960), a spruced-up version
of the zarzuela (operetta) which did not produced satisfactory results.
The same can be said of her following three films Alma aragonesa (1961), Las estrellas (1961) and
the movie filmed in 1963 Júrame (1964). We would have to hire a private
investigator in Spain to find somebody who saw those films or even
heard of them. None of her movies after "Aquellos Tiempos del Cuplé"
were released in America.
In 1963 Lilián decided to try her luck in Mexico (as Montiel had done
some years before), but again there's not much information about her
activities there. She probably worked on the stage for a while and then
took fourth billing in a low budget musical film called Los apuros de dos gallos (1963). Later
in 1965 she appears in the weird transsexual-themed film Me ha gustado un hombre (1965) (she
was given third billing on this one), a movie considered "one of the
worst ever since Ed Wood's Glen or Glenda (1953)". She disappears from film credits
for 10 years and makes a much-touted comeback in Spain with Yo fui el rey (1975),
which did not impress anybody and is her last film to date. Her
filmography also boasts another title, Canciones de nuestra vida (1975), an anthological film
made of film clips from other movies.
From then on, Miss de Celis turns fully to stage and night club work in
Spain. She also shows up occasionally on television singing one of her
nostalgic "cuplés" or on gossip columns trying to revive the old
controversy of who is a better singer, Miss Montiel or her... It was
ironic that Lilián accepted in 1992 an one-time invitation to sing one
song on Sara Montiel's television show "Ven al Paralelo." In order to
dispel any notion of rivalry, Montiel introduced de Celis as "the
original cuplé singer ... she really knows how to sing." Observers
could not help but notice that on this show Lilián's one song was
preceded and followed by Montiel's four songs, comedy sketches and
numerous appearances in different gowns as if to say "do not forget who
is boss here..." In 2005 Lilián de Celis made the headlines again due
to the showing of her films at a Festival in her homeland of Asturias.
One can only hope that in the near future her filmography becomes
available on DVD to give everybody the chance to judge her entire body
of work.
