Maruja Pais: Tango Singer and Actress of Buenos Aires Radio

Maruja Pais worked Buenos Aires radio from two sides: she sang tango, and she acted in radio drama. The old Club de Tango calendar of tango anniversaries, the Efemérides tangueras, gives her a short entry. It names the two stations where she sang and notes that she was also an actress in radio drama. Film records add two screen credits from the late 1940s. Beyond that, very little about her has been published, and this page sticks to what can be checked.

What the calendar says

The November page of the calendar places her birth on 27 November 1906 in Buenos Aires and calls her a cancionista, the usual word for a female tango singer. She sang, it says, on Radio Nacional and on Radio El Mundo, and alternated that work with acting in conjuntos radioteatrales, the companies that performed radioteatro, drama written and staged for radio.

The film database cinenacional.com gives the same date and place of birth, 27 November 1906 in Buenos Aires. Neither source gives a date of death.

Two stations

According to the tango historian Roberto Selles, writing on Todotango about tango on radio, Radio Nacional was later renamed Radio Belgrano, and in the 1930s it was one of the stations that carried the programme Tangos, autores e intérpretes, presented by Héctor and Luis Bates. Radio El Mundo, Selles notes, was founded in 1935. Her time there therefore belongs to 1935 or later.

The calendar does not say which orchestras accompanied her, what she sang or whether she recorded. We found no discography for her in the sources we could open.

Two films

According to cinenacional.com, a Maruja Pais born on that same date is credited in two Argentine films, both directed by Antonio Momplet. The database lists no character name for her in either:

• La cumparsita (1947), a musical drama starring Hugo del Carril, Aída Alberti and Nelly Darén, written by Alejandro Verbitsky and Emilio Villalba Welsh. It opened in Buenos Aires on 20 August 1947. Its title is that of the tango La cumparsita.
• Yo no elegí mi vida (1949), starring Arturo de Córdova, Olga Zubarry and Enrique Santos Discépolo, with a screenplay by Julio Porter based on a story by Discépolo. It opened on 14 June 1949.

Maruja Pais shares this background in radio with another cancionista from the same calendar, Norma Galán, and both belong among the lesser-known tango artists whose careers lived mainly on air.

What we left out

The English page published at this address in 2023 told a much fuller story: a stage debut in Montevideo in 1925, a discovery by the bandleader Antonio Scatasso, a role in Ivo Pelay’s musical comedy Fuegos artificiales in 1936 and a part in the radio programme El tribunal de la mujer. We could not find any of this in a source we were able to open, so none of it is repeated here. The same applies to the often repeated statement that she first sang on Radio Nacional in 1933.

Sources

• “Efemérides tangueras” (November), Club de Tango. Archived copy on clubdetango.com.ar (archive.org, 2012) (birth on 27 November 1906 in Buenos Aires, singer on Radio Nacional and Radio El Mundo, actress in radio drama).
• cinenacional.com, “Maruja Pais” (birth date and place, two film credits).
• cinenacional.com, “La cumparsita (1947)” (director, cast, writers, premiere on 20 August 1947).
• cinenacional.com, “Yo no elegí mi vida (1949)” (director, cast, screenplay by Julio Porter from Discépolo’s story, premiere on 14 June 1949).
• Roberto Selles, “Tango on Radio”, Todotango (Radio Nacional later Belgrano, the Bates programme, Radio El Mundo founded in 1935).