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1:27

this fall. When

1:51

I try to explain how I

1:54

feel that I still

1:56

need your love to all that

1:58

I've done. You

2:00

won't believe me All

2:04

you will see is a girl

2:06

you once knew Although she's dressed

2:08

up to the nines At

2:11

sixes and sevens with you

2:17

I had to let it happen I

2:20

had to change Can

2:22

stay all my life down at

2:24

heel Looking out of

2:26

the window Staying out of

2:28

the sun So

2:31

I chose freedom Running

2:34

around Trying everything new

2:37

But nothing impressed me at

2:39

all I

2:41

never expected it to

2:46

Don't cry for me Argentina

2:50

The truth is I never left

2:52

you Through my wild

2:54

days Mad existence

2:57

I kept my promise Don't

3:02

keep your distance So

3:08

Dominic, that was Madonna playing

3:11

Evita In the

3:13

Miami mix of Don't Cry For Me

3:15

Argentina Written of course by

3:17

Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice

3:19

Tom, what happened to Madonna's voice?

3:22

Could you tell? It was actually me Was

3:24

she singing a Spanish accent? Is that deliberate? No,

3:27

that was American Oh really, that was American Yeah,

3:29

it was an American accent, you could tell Could

3:31

you? Anyway, so today

3:33

we are looking at Eva Peron,

3:36

aka Evita And she

3:38

has a place in my heart And that particular track has

3:40

a place in my heart Oh that's nice Did you ever

3:42

see the film? I did So it came out

3:44

just after Christmas And you may remember in

3:46

the episode we did on Disco Yes I

3:49

mentioned that Sadie and I were great

3:51

habitués of love muscle Yeah At

3:54

the fridge in Brixton Yeah And

3:56

the film of Evita came out I think a couple of

3:59

days after Christmas And there was a rumor

4:01

that there was going to be a big Evita night

4:03

to celebrate it coming out at the fridge at Love

4:05

Muddle. And the rumor was that Madonna

4:07

herself was going to turn up. Cranky. So

4:09

we drove all the way back from where we'd been

4:11

staying Christmas to go to it, dressed up in our glad

4:14

rags and went to the night. What did you dress

4:16

as Evita? Yeah, Evita or Colonel Perron, I can't remember

4:18

one of the two. I mean, you would remember that, Tom,

4:20

so it suggests that you did dress as Evita. Anyway,

4:23

let's move on. And we went there

4:25

and of course Madonna didn't turn up.

4:27

But it was a brilliant, brilliant evening.

4:29

They'd sang that. They sang all kinds of other stuff.

4:32

And they had people in the crowds

4:34

with Perronist slogans waving it around. And

4:37

I remember thinking, this is completely

4:39

mad. What other figure from

4:41

South American history would inspire a night like

4:43

this? I'd go to a Simone Bolivar night.

4:46

They don't hold it back in Brixton. They

4:48

didn't have it. No. And

4:50

so as a result of that, I didn't really know anything about

4:52

Evita, but I read about her a lot over the following year.

4:55

Of course, the film and the

4:57

musical opens with Evita's funeral where

5:00

everyone is terribly upset. And of

5:02

course, 1997, which is

5:04

the year of Diana's death, was the perfect year

5:06

to be reading about Evita. That's true. It's a

5:08

good point. Tom, well, first of all, that is

5:10

a lovely story. Thank you. And it gives us

5:12

a wonderful insight, I think, into the cult of

5:14

Evita and Argentine history. But also,

5:17

Tom, you're in very good company. Do you

5:19

know who you remind me of? Who also

5:21

went out of their way to engage with

5:23

the cult of Evita, to go to a

5:25

performance that would be Evita themed in London

5:27

like you and somebody with whom you've often

5:29

been compared, actually. Would it be The Iron

5:31

Lady by the

5:51

way? Now,

6:00

if they can do that without

6:02

any ideals, then if we apply

6:04

the same perfection and creativeness to

6:06

our message, we should provide good

6:08

historic material for an opera called

6:11

Margaret in 30 years'

6:13

time. So you are the Iron

6:15

Lady of this podcast, aren't you? Are you

6:17

not? She's being harsh there, I think, Mrs.

6:19

Thatcher on Avita, because I think Avita did

6:21

have ideals. She did indeed. But I

6:23

mean, I think actually the parallels between

6:25

Avita and Mrs. Thatcher on one level

6:27

absolutely matter at opposite ends of the

6:29

political spectrum. But on the other, I'm

6:31

looking forward to this, the devotion to,

6:34

I suppose, to kind of taking centre

6:36

stage and playing the diva,

6:38

which is, of course, what the Andrew Lloyd

6:40

Webber musical is all about. It's kind of

6:42

playing with riffs of opera, the tragic heroine

6:44

and all that kind of thing. Yeah, of

6:46

course. And both Avita and Mrs. Thatcher were

6:48

very good at playing the diva. And

6:51

also both of them were simultaneously

6:53

loved and hated. They were. And it's

6:55

a perfect example of how a female

6:57

politician or political figure generally, I would

7:00

say, elicits stronger reactions than a man

7:02

does. Extreme reactions. Of course. But there

7:04

have been lots of female leaders indeed

7:06

in Argentina. Yeah. Christina Kirchner. Yeah. But

7:09

I think that Avita and Mrs. Thatcher

7:11

are probably the most diva-esque female political

7:13

leaders since the war, wouldn't you say?

7:15

Since the war of the 20th century,

7:18

I would say, Tom, but no question.

7:20

Yeah. Avita is easily one of

7:22

the most famous female public figures of

7:24

the 20th century, probably Mrs. Thatcher and

7:26

Indira Gandhi, I guess, or Golda Maya

7:28

in Israel. But they haven't had a

7:30

smash hit musical written about. No. And

7:32

the fact that she had a musical

7:34

written about her is very revealing. She

7:37

was a creature of show business. Because

7:39

she was an actress. Yes. As we

7:41

will discuss, it's not just her performance,

7:43

but her politics is enormously

7:45

informed by the soap

7:48

opera melodramas that she embodied on the radio.

7:50

And in that sense, I think there's actually

7:53

a comparison with Ronald Reagan in America. When

7:55

we did our Reagan series, we talked about

7:57

how Reagan's worldview, his sense of himself, the

8:00

message he took to American voters was really

8:02

strongly informed by his time in Hollywood. The

8:04

Hollywood thing wasn't a joke or an accident,

8:06

it was really important. And I

8:08

think it's exactly the same thing with Eva Peron,

8:10

that her show business background in the 1930s and

8:13

1940s actually is her politics in a

8:16

weird way. And that sort of

8:18

cult of the spectacle and

8:20

of performance and of sentimentality has

8:22

been at the heart of Argentine

8:24

politics ever since. So

8:27

a further dimension, which you don't get

8:29

with Thatcher and Reagan, which is the

8:31

Catholic dimension, because Santa Revita,

8:33

as she's hailed both in the musical

8:36

and on the streets of Buenos Aires

8:38

when she was the star of the

8:40

show, that is a

8:42

genuine expression. When she died there

8:45

were moves to have her canonized,

8:47

which the Vatican rejected for reasons

8:49

that we will explore. But obviously

8:51

the sense of drama that public

8:53

displays of Catholic ritual have is

8:55

something else that is a part

8:57

of the Evita mythos and just

8:59

makes her an amazing, amazing subject.

9:01

I agree, Tom. So that's

9:03

what we're going to do today. It reminds

9:05

me a little bit, we did an episode

9:08

about the Saint Catherine of Siena, who's suffering

9:10

and who's sort of self-mortification, who's visible suffering,

9:12

the fact that she embraces

9:14

people who are deeply, deeply ill and

9:16

all of that kind of thing. So there's

9:18

a thing, isn't there? She kisses a leper, Evita

9:20

kisses a leper. Yes. She

9:23

rushes forward and tries to swab her lips with

9:25

alcohol. She smashes the bottle. Yes. And she says,

9:27

no, you know, these are my people. You could

9:29

say she's the link between Catherine of Siena and

9:31

Diana, who you mentioned. She's also,

9:33

as I hope we will show, she's the

9:36

link between Catherine of Siena and Donald Trump.

9:38

Her politics are not the same as Donald

9:40

Trump's, but we will see how... She's all

9:42

about the vibe, isn't she? The vibe, the

9:44

style. Politics as style. So it's an amazing

9:47

story and we'll be doing it in

9:49

the course of this week. Evita's background,

9:51

her rise, her relationship with Peron, her

9:53

extraordinary death and the way in which

9:55

that becomes this public melodrama and then

9:58

the even more bizarre story. Absolutely

10:00

mad about what happens next to her

10:02

body, to her reputation, to her ghost,

10:04

and the attempts of people to basically

10:06

be a Vita in the 1970s in

10:08

the mid the chaos of Argentine sort

10:10

of politics with terrorism and bombings and

10:12

it is an amazing story. Let's start

10:14

obviously with the woman and her background.

10:16

So we are in Argentina in the

10:18

late 1910s and I think

10:20

you know we can't spend ages on all this

10:22

but just to give you four things I think

10:25

it's important to have in our heads about Argentina.

10:27

First of all Argentina is part excellence the country

10:29

of immigrants. So in her lifetime

10:31

its population almost quadrupled and

10:34

these are people who are quite poor

10:36

often coming from Italy, Spain and Germany.

10:38

During her early years probably a third

10:40

of the Argentine population had been born

10:42

overseas. They had arrived in Argentina because

10:44

it's the promised land, great hopes for

10:46

this wonderful new life, this utopian world

10:48

into which they are coming. Which is

10:50

a rich and prosperous country isn't it?

10:52

It's a very rich and prosperous country

10:54

but of course the thing is you

10:56

arrive somewhere with great ambitions you

10:59

are very easily frustrated if it doesn't work

11:01

out and you look for someone

11:03

to blame. Well in the words of Jimmy Nail, Eva

11:05

beware of the city. Jimmy Nail, I didn't think we'd

11:08

have Jimmy Nail on the podcast that's nice. Our friend

11:10

of the show Dan Jackson will enjoy that. Number

11:13

two Argentina is a country dominated by

11:15

one city Buenos Aires. Huge

11:17

port, it looks out to the

11:19

old world and particularly to Britain

11:22

actually. It's integrated into British imperial

11:24

economic networks and behind it

11:26

is this vast agricultural hinterland, the Pampas

11:28

which is where she comes from. And

11:30

a lot of the people who are kind of

11:32

the ruling classes, the oligarchic classes, are

11:35

either British or very influenced by Britain.

11:37

I mean that's how football becomes so

11:39

huge. Exactly, so football, polo, rugby, we'll

11:41

discuss some of this later on so

11:44

it's important to sort of remember that.

11:46

The third thing I think is that

11:48

Argentina uniquely, even in Latin

11:50

America, it looks to Europe, it sees

11:52

itself as a kind of a European

11:54

country. It had a very small population

11:57

of African slaves who ended up being

11:59

completely assimilated. the Indian indigenous population, so-called

12:01

Indian, largely extinct, but very few of them

12:03

left. So, they're very European, they're always looking

12:05

to Europe, but at the same time, they're

12:07

very conscious of being out on them, complete

12:10

margins, the very bottom of South America. And

12:12

there's a sense, I think, lots of sort

12:14

of political scientists have written about this. There's

12:16

a sense of a desire to emulate Europe,

12:18

and particularly Britain, but also a sense of

12:20

being snubbed and being forgotten and

12:23

put down. And I think that's really important. And

12:25

then the fourth thing is that Argentina has always

12:27

had a history of very deep division and inequality.

12:29

So, throughout the 19th century, during its

12:31

first century of independence, it

12:34

was torn apart by endless civil wars

12:36

between Unitarians, who were centralists in Buenos

12:38

Aires, and Federalists, the landowners who wanted

12:40

to keep their power out in the

12:42

provinces. And then later on,

12:44

you have a great deal of tension between

12:47

the old landed elites that based at the

12:49

polo set and the swelling mass of urban

12:51

workers. So, that's all you need to

12:53

know really about the background to Argentine politics. It's not all you

12:55

need to know, but it's all you need to know for the

12:57

purposes of the podcast. There

12:59

is more to say, isn't there? But

13:01

for now. So, Eva Peron, as she

13:04

becomes, is born in this nothing place

13:06

called Los Tollos in the sort of

13:08

middle of Argentina, 150 miles from Buenos

13:10

Aires in May, 1919. And

13:12

that means the tense, doesn't it? So, it's a

13:14

kind of an allusion to the kind of the

13:17

native encampment that had once been there. It is,

13:19

exactly. When she was growing up, there would have

13:21

been a handful of native people

13:23

living in hovels, sort of shacks outside

13:25

the village, and you would see

13:27

them at feast days kind of riding around in their

13:30

ponchos and stuff. But by and large,

13:32

it's a village of farm workers, farm laborers. There's

13:34

not a lot to do there, is there? There's

13:36

nothing to do. So, the big sport is cock

13:38

fighting. So, if you like cock fighting, I mean,

13:40

maybe that's good, but otherwise, if you don't like

13:42

cock fighting, there's literally nothing to do. I think

13:45

even if you like cock fights, then there are

13:47

better places to be. Yeah, it gets a bit

13:49

boring after a while. So, her father is a

13:51

man called Juan Duarte, who's 43, and

13:53

he comes from a town 20 miles away. And

13:56

he works as an estate manager. He's not

13:58

married to her mother. So he's

14:00

in his forties. Her mother

14:02

is a woman called Juana Ibarguren, who's

14:05

a Basque. Like Unai Emery, the manager

14:07

of Asenvilla. Oh, thanks. That's nice. Like

14:09

Unai Emery. Yeah. Or the former rules

14:11

manager, Julen Lopategi. Yeah. I mean, there's

14:14

loads of Basques in the world. Yeah.

14:16

They're everywhere, the Basques. Wonderful. Her mother

14:18

had met Duarte when she was probably

14:21

about 15 and bore him four children.

14:23

This is not unfortunate the last time

14:25

in this series that there will be

14:27

relationships with an alarmingly large age gap.

14:30

I think it's fair to say. Now Duarte

14:32

is actually married and has a family elsewhere.

14:34

He comes to this town Los Toldos to

14:36

work as a sort of farm manager and

14:38

has this very common in Argentina in those

14:40

days. He basically has a second marriage because

14:42

he's a long way from his first wife.

14:44

He's a long way from his first. And

14:46

at first the norm was this would be

14:48

with an indigenous woman, a native woman, but

14:51

over time it kind of evolves.

14:53

So he has Juana. Interestingly, she's

14:55

clearly a very proud, ambitious and

14:57

stubborn woman. Well, that will be

14:59

her Basque heritage, Dominik. Of course. They're

15:01

very proud people, the Basques. They are a

15:03

proud people. Proud and independent. Yes. She

15:06

takes his name, which is unusual. She calls

15:08

herself Duarte. People in the village don't like

15:10

her. It's not clear whether they think, you

15:12

know, she's sleeping with a big man. So

15:14

they envy her or whether they despise her

15:16

for doing this, maybe a bit of both.

15:18

She's kind of upwardly mobile, isn't she? And

15:20

with more than a hint of snobbery. Yeah.

15:22

And so the fact that she's simultaneously looking

15:24

down on people who have reason to look

15:26

down on her and there's nothing to do

15:28

except cockfighting. I mean, it's an absolute nightmare,

15:30

isn't it? It is. I mean,

15:32

essentially people are going to bitch about her. They are

15:34

indeed. And they do. Yes. Now, Eva's

15:37

birth certificate will come a little bit later

15:39

in a subsequent episode to the very complicated

15:41

issue of the birth certificate. What it seems

15:43

pretty clear is that her birth certificate was

15:45

later destroyed for reasons that we will explain.

15:47

But at the time, people who saw it

15:49

said that her surname was not given as

15:51

Duarte, her father's surname, but as her mother's

15:53

son, Ibargarin. And there was a lot of

15:55

gossip in the village. There had been a

15:57

massive row about this between the two of

15:59

them. which is why there's been

16:01

a big delay in registering Ava's birth.

16:03

She's the fourth child. She's got two

16:06

elder sisters and one elder brother, Juan.

16:08

And what is clear is that the

16:10

children and the mother insisted that they

16:12

would continue using Juan Duarte's name, even

16:15

though he didn't want them to, and they

16:18

weren't kind of legally entitled to. So right

16:20

from the start, there's a sort of a

16:22

taint, I suppose. Her parents are unmarried, but

16:24

then she's using a name that is not

16:26

her own. But also a sense of moving

16:28

up, of aspiring, of wanting

16:31

something better than what you were

16:33

born into. Exactly, yeah. There's also,

16:35

I think, a sense of resentment

16:37

and humiliation because when

16:39

Ava is not even one,

16:41

Duarte says, I've had enough of

16:43

my time working in this pathetic little town. I'm

16:45

actually going back to my real family. And

16:48

back he goes to his real family, which

16:50

is in a place called Chivalcoy. And is

16:52

that a family middle-class Dominic? If he's a

16:54

farm manager, it's not elite by any stretch

16:56

of the imagination, but it's certainly more middle-class

16:58

than the Ibargeren family. And so it would

17:01

inspire Evita to cry, screw the middle classes,

17:03

I will never accept them. My father's other

17:05

family were middle-class and we were kept out

17:07

of sight, hidden from view at

17:09

his funeral. So that's a moving rendition

17:12

from the musical. If you're going to

17:14

consistently recite things musical, it will become

17:16

tiresome. I'm speaking for the audience. No, but

17:18

that is an important aspect, isn't it? The

17:20

fact that he dies and

17:22

by custom, they should not be allowed to go

17:25

to the funeral. Exactly. Although I do think it

17:27

would be an editorial error to sing too much.

17:29

I think you are right to mention it. Thank

17:31

you very much. And kudos to Tim Rice for

17:33

summing it up so well. Well done, Tim Rice.

17:35

Because I think this is probably the single most

17:38

influential thing that ever happened to her in the

17:40

first 10, 15 years of her life. When

17:43

she's about six, her father is killed

17:45

in a car crash. And Juana, her

17:47

mother says, I will go to the funeral.

17:49

We will all go. Now

17:52

she dresses the children in mourning. They all go

17:54

to Chivalcoy. The wake is in progress and everybody

17:56

is absolutely horrified to see them. Of course. It's

17:58

not that they don't know they go. I

18:00

think they know they exist, but they

18:02

just, they do not want this basically

18:04

second family turning up. Spectres at the

18:06

feast. Yeah. And there's

18:08

a lot of arguing and eventually the

18:10

compromise is made that the

18:12

hearse will proceed to the graveyard and

18:15

they can walk, but right at the

18:17

back, not with the real family

18:19

in inverted commas. You know, there'll be a spectacle.

18:22

They will be publicly humiliated. I mean,

18:24

everybody's humiliated by this scene. It's a

18:26

reminder of the kind of the hierarchical

18:28

character of Argentine rural society. Right. It

18:30

is. So Eva must know

18:32

at that point, six, you're old enough to remember this

18:34

and for this to have an impact on you to

18:37

be aware at the very least that there are people

18:39

who despise you and who despise your mother.

18:42

And it is clear that for the

18:44

rest of her life, Eva, like her

18:46

sisters, had a tremendous sense of hurt

18:48

because of her parentage and because of

18:50

her background. So she never, ever admitted

18:53

it or talked about it. She

18:55

would just make these sort of coded references

18:57

to her outrage against injustice from as far

19:00

as I can remember, the existence of injustice

19:02

has hurt my soul as if a nail

19:04

was being driven into it from every period

19:06

of my life. I retain the memory of

19:08

some injustice tormenting me and tearing me apart.

19:11

And I think this undoubtedly lies at

19:13

the heart of it all. So

19:15

they go back to Los Todlos anyway.

19:18

She is a very skinny, small little

19:20

girl. They call her skinny La Flaca,

19:22

the thin one. They end up moving

19:24

eventually when she's about 10, 11

19:27

to a slightly bigger place called Hunin,

19:29

which is a kind of railway junction.

19:32

Apparently, Dominic derives from the Quetcher word

19:34

for planes. Oh, that's nice. So it's

19:36

kind of flat, isn't it? Not a

19:38

lot to do. Dusty sort of scruffy,

19:41

unpaved roads. It's Wild West. Yeah, a little

19:43

bit Wild West. She goes to school in

19:45

Hunin. One of the teachers remembers her later

19:47

and says a very beautiful little girl with

19:49

dark hair, skin like porcelain. A very self-absorbed

19:52

child with an intense inner life. Great sensitivity

19:54

and great vulnerability. Of course, you never know

19:56

with this how much this is back projection

19:58

to you. I mean... maybe that teacher

20:00

doesn't even remember at all. It

20:02

seems that they again were, you know, there's

20:05

no husband, no father, there's a slight sort

20:07

of cloud hanging over them. Some girls are

20:09

told you don't talk to their duates as

20:12

they're calling themselves. So the mother is calling

20:14

herself the widow duate. Exactly. And

20:16

she's still very keen on kind of projecting respectability

20:18

and she's raising her girls and

20:20

her son Juan to think of

20:22

themselves as respectable. Yeah.

20:25

But there's the challenge obviously of how do

20:27

you maintain that facade if you don't actually

20:29

have any money? No, I would say don't.

20:31

So the mother, she sows a lot, doesn't

20:33

she? And sewing machines will become a kind

20:35

of important icon for Evita later on. Yeah.

20:37

And she takes in lodgers. She takes in

20:39

lodgers and she cooks for them. And

20:42

this will provide a lot of

20:44

scope for anti-Evita propagandists

20:47

later on. Yeah. Because

20:49

the story, and it's one that Jorge Luis

20:52

Borges, the great writer who we've already mentioned,

20:54

he says that she was running a brothel

20:56

and that she was pimping out the girls.

20:59

I mean, this is simply not true at all, is it? No,

21:01

it's not true. There is no foundation for that whatsoever. It's

21:04

the opposite. I mean, big spoiler, Eva Peron, I think

21:06

was never a prostitute. I don't think it's often claimed

21:08

that she was, but I don't think she was. I

21:12

think they are actually quite the opposite. As

21:14

you say, I think they are obsessed with respectability.

21:16

Yeah. It is something that is always out of reach and

21:19

they're desperate to reach it. The thing that I think

21:21

Eva thinks about more than anything when she's growing up,

21:23

like a lot of people, is, you know, where are

21:25

we? We are in the 1930s. This

21:27

is the age of the cinema. So there's

21:29

a cinema, there were multiple cinemas actually in

21:31

Hunin. The great biography of Eva Peron by

21:33

Nicholas Fraser and Marisa Navarro. She says, you

21:35

know, every week they go and see these

21:37

films and on the films are images

21:39

of a European or North American life, depictions

21:42

of wealth and power, visions of great and

21:44

glittering cities, and most of all, of love,

21:46

love across class barriers, love and money, love

21:48

and furs, love and destiny. Yeah.

21:51

It is by this point, chiefly

21:53

American films. Yeah. The

21:55

Argentine film industry has basically been decimated

21:57

by the rise of speakeys and the

21:59

Americans. have kind of imposed a ban on the

22:01

sale of cine film. Well also I think the Argentine

22:03

film industry, those people who are sort of historians of

22:06

Argentine cinema may object to this, but I think there's

22:08

a sense that in the 1930s it's not

22:10

very good. Yeah, I mean it's in decline at

22:12

this point. Now, Eva is like

22:14

a lot of girls. She loves the

22:17

cinema, she loves music and dancing, she

22:20

dreams of a life in show

22:22

business and ultimately when she's 15

22:25

years old she persuades her mother

22:27

to let her move to Buenos

22:29

Aires to seek her fortune in

22:31

this world. Because you mentioned her

22:34

love of dancing and of course the

22:36

famous Argentine dance is the tango. Yeah.

22:38

And the story is that it's not her

22:41

mother who takes her to Buenos

22:43

Aires but a tango singer,

22:45

isn't that right? Yes, Agustín Magaldi who

22:47

was actually one of the biggest tango

22:49

singers in Argentina. AKA Jimmy Nail. Of

22:51

course it's Jimmy Nail in the film.

22:54

It's Jimmy Nail in the film, yeah.

22:56

And Magaldi looked nothing like Jimmy Nail

22:58

in reality. No, he didn't. But

23:01

also he's not a kind of classic tango

23:03

singer, is he? Because he's much more concerned

23:05

with social issues. He's very passionate about social

23:07

justice. And I always wonder whether this story

23:10

emerges because the themes of his songs

23:12

are seen to kind of map

23:14

on to Eva's later concerns. I

23:17

don't know what you think about that. No, I

23:19

think that's a fair point because his music, his

23:21

lyrics echo the themes of her rhetoric. Yeah. You'll

23:24

see this a lot. It's definitely a thing

23:26

in the musical, the Andrew Lloyd Webber music,

23:29

Tim Wright's musical. There's a story that Agustín

23:31

Magaldi came to Hunin to perform. He's a

23:33

great hit and then he takes her back

23:35

with him to Buenos Aires, effectively as his

23:37

mistress. But her biographers say this is

23:40

rubbish. First of all, there's actually

23:42

no evidence he ever came to Hunin at all. But

23:44

also, you know, he travels with his wife. His

23:46

wife comes on tour. It is highly implausible

23:48

that his wife would approve of him with

23:50

this very skinny, and she's

23:53

not exactly a bombshell young Eva.

23:55

His wife would smile meekly while he brings

23:58

her back with them to the Capitol. I

24:00

think that's very unlikely. What it actually

24:02

obviously expresses is, one, that suspicion that

24:04

you've already said that basically the family

24:06

are all prostitutes and that she only

24:08

advances because of her sexuality, which I

24:10

don't think is right at all. And

24:12

secondly, I totally agree with you. The

24:14

sense in some mysterious way, her life

24:17

and career must be bound up with the

24:19

tango, which is the one thing that people

24:21

know about Argentine culture in the early 20th

24:23

century. Tango, of course, is born in brothels

24:25

in the port of Buenos Aires. Then it

24:27

becomes a bit more respectable, goes to Paris

24:30

and so on. The tango is melancholy.

24:32

Its themes are generally love and suffering

24:35

and sacrifice. And actually, as we will

24:37

see, those are the themes of Eva

24:39

Peron's politics. They are rhetorical themes that

24:41

she goes on about. So she's undoubtedly

24:43

steeped in the world of the tango.

24:46

I mean, that music is playing all

24:48

the time. I mean, it is the

24:50

sound of Buenos Aires and the realm

24:52

of film is also that of great

24:54

cities like Buenos Aires. So obviously, if

24:57

you are the kind of girl who

24:59

doesn't want to be stuck in Hixville,

25:01

who dreams of the bright lights and you are

25:03

in the middle of Argentina, Buenos Aires is the

25:05

only place to go. So I think

25:07

we should take a break at this point. And when

25:10

we come back, we will follow Eva

25:12

to the Big Apple. Very good. What's

25:21

new at Buenos Aires? As Evita

25:23

famously sang when arriving in the

25:25

streets of the great Argentine capital

25:28

city and Dominic, she's 15. She

25:30

has no money. She has no

25:33

particular education or aptitudes. What is

25:35

life like for someone with no

25:37

particular skills turning up in this

25:39

massive city? Overwhelming, Tom. Terrifying, actually.

25:42

So Eva is one of many,

25:44

many people who are at this

25:46

point arriving in Buenos Aires from

25:49

the interior of Argentina, who are moving off the

25:51

land and into the city.

25:53

So Buenos Aires in the 19th century have

25:55

been quite a small place. It has expanded

25:57

massively. It's a city of immigrants. So it's

26:00

population about 2.5 million, rising towards 3

26:02

million, full of Italians and Basques who

26:04

have come across the Atlantic in the

26:06

last couple of decades. I guess a

26:08

way to think about it, especially for

26:10

American and Canadian listeners, it's basically a

26:12

combination of New York and Chicago. So

26:14

it's meat packing. I know you love

26:16

meat packing, Tom. And speakeasies. Yeah, two

26:18

things very close to your heart. It's

26:20

the center of the railway network, so it's full

26:22

of trains and stations. It's full of kind of

26:24

abattoirs. This is where they freeze the meat. This

26:26

is the meat on which Argentina has got rich

26:29

and they send it across the Atlantic. It's

26:31

full of banks. There's a stock

26:33

exchange. There are opera houses, all

26:35

built in a kind of European,

26:37

Baron Houseman, late 19th century Parisian

26:39

style. So it looks like, in

26:41

some ways, a sort of

26:43

alternative universe version of Paris in

26:46

which the elite behave as though

26:48

they're on Bond Street in London.

26:51

Now, obviously, most people are not part of

26:53

that elite. So there's a huge working class,

26:55

largely immigrant. The Italians and the Basques came

26:57

at the turn of the century. Now there

27:00

are lots of people like Evita coming from

27:02

the interior and they are

27:04

working in factories and shops on this kind

27:06

of outskirts of Buenos Aires and they're often

27:09

living in very, very poor, cramped, in

27:11

salubrious conditions. So that is her

27:13

milieu. She will be spending the

27:15

next few years drifting around these

27:18

kind of pensiones, these like boarding

27:20

houses, lodging houses, crowded,

27:23

miserable, probably frightening, frankly, for a

27:26

girl in her teens. But at

27:28

the same time, kind of exciting?

27:30

Oh, totally. Yeah, definitely. And

27:32

she has got away from the controlling presence

27:34

of her mother as well. Which

27:37

must also, I mean, if you're independently minded,

27:40

which Eva clearly is, that must also be a

27:42

factor. Don't you think it must have steeled her to

27:44

continue to remain in the city, to not kind of

27:46

give up, to not go back? Yeah, most people would

27:48

go back though. So as our biographers say, everybody dreams

27:51

of the life in the big city and life in

27:53

showbiz and being on the stage and being in front

27:55

of a camera. Except for you Dominic, to be fair.

28:00

Well, maybe I have my dreams too, Tom. I

28:03

still dream of that little Hollywood agent getting

28:05

in touch. Yeah, I suppose. Yeah.

28:09

Eurovision is not closed off to me entirely. So

28:13

yeah, most people dream of that but settle down in their

28:15

little town. There's something in

28:17

her. The drive. There is undoubtedly a

28:20

drive because there are no sources about this time. We

28:22

don't have evidence for it, but the evidence is her

28:24

life, I guess. I think what she sees in Buenos

28:26

Aires is the possibility of another life. So

28:28

I mentioned the elite. The

28:31

elite are impossibly rich, even

28:33

by European standards. So

28:35

there's an amazing statistic that in 1930, the top

28:37

2,000 people in Argentina owned land that

28:43

was the equivalent to Holland,

28:45

Belgium, and Switzerland put together. I

28:47

don't know why you'd put those three countries together,

28:50

but anyway, that's the equivalent of the

28:52

land holdings of this elite. And these are people who

28:54

made their money in the 19th century. They're

28:56

the old families. They live like English

28:59

country gentlemen and ladies. They play polo.

29:01

They play croquet. They shop

29:03

at Harrods, which has a branch in Buenos

29:05

Aires. They go to the

29:07

opera house, the Teatro Colón. They go to the

29:09

jockey club, which is the gentleman's club. Yeah, the

29:11

watering holes of the well to do. And

29:14

in the Argentine winter, which is our

29:16

summer, they would go to Europe, to the

29:18

Côte des Eurs, to summer on the Italian

29:20

lakes, to go to the races in England.

29:23

And people would say, oh my God, Argentines are

29:25

so rich. They're not country cousins. They're nouveau riches,

29:27

I suppose. So in Paris, there was an expression

29:30

at the time to be as rich as an

29:32

Argentine. So these are the people that she is

29:34

looking up to, I think. Well, she's not looking

29:36

up to them, though, is she? She despises them.

29:39

She hates them precisely because she is looking up

29:41

to them, surely. That's why she hates

29:43

them, because they are at the top

29:45

of that pyramid. Yeah, but looking up to them

29:47

implies that they provide her with the standard. No,

29:49

you're right. She wants to displace them. She absolutely

29:52

does. Yeah. But, I mean, important

29:54

to say that at this point, she's not politically minded at all,

29:56

is she? She has no real

29:58

interest in kind of social issues. and

30:00

she's entirely focused on making her way

30:02

as an actress. She is. And to

30:05

begin with, I mean, she's not a very

30:07

good actress, it's part of the problem. No.

30:09

And her earliest roles, even on stage, she's

30:11

part of the lower classes. She's always playing

30:14

maids or secretaries rather than

30:16

queens or anything. She is. She's in terrible

30:18

plays that run for two weeks and are

30:20

never heard of again. And we only get

30:23

fragmentary glimpses of her life. So she's going

30:25

to play about a girl's school and somebody

30:27

says, young, very pretty,

30:30

dark eyes, the personification of innocence. She seems very

30:32

pure. That's her persona at this point, of course,

30:34

because she's 15, 16. There's

30:36

also a glimpse we have of her. She

30:38

goes to some friends at some point to

30:41

the beach in Montevideo, Montevideo, the capital of

30:43

Uruguay. And there are boys who see her

30:45

on the beach, upper class boys. And one

30:47

of them said later, I remember her. She

30:50

seemed neither stupid nor intelligent, perfectly unremarkable, and

30:52

rather lower class. And that rather lower class,

30:54

that's the tone. So is that the place

30:56

that she's gone with this rather sinister sounding

30:59

guy, Pablo Suero, AKA the

31:01

Toad? Yes. And it's

31:03

said of him that she is sleeping with

31:05

him. Which she probably was. Because we've said

31:07

that she's not a prostitute. But

31:10

anyone listening and thinking, attractive young

31:12

girl wanting to make her way

31:14

as an actress in a very,

31:16

very predatory and masculine dominated world,

31:19

it seems improbable that

31:21

the directors with the power would

31:23

not have leveraged their control. Of

31:25

course. And I don't think even

31:27

the most sympathetic biographer would doubt

31:29

that in a way that we

31:31

undoubtedly would find repellent now in

31:33

the kind of Me Too era.

31:35

Well, because there's this famous kind

31:38

of, so after Suero and Evita

31:40

split up, she goes

31:42

to ask him for another part. That's right. And

31:44

he keeps her sitting outside the office for hours

31:46

and hours. And then he kind of bounds out

31:48

of the office and yells at her, do you

31:50

think that because I slept with you, I'm always obliged

31:52

to give you work. Yes.

31:54

There are loads of other actresses there. And the person

31:56

who sees it says her voice became silent. softer

32:00

and softer, she became whiter and whiter

32:02

with humiliation again, a terrible scene. And

32:04

even if that one incident didn't happen,

32:06

there must have been many such incidents.

32:08

Yeah. And you can see why in

32:10

due course, she will want

32:12

to erase the record of her career as

32:14

an actress as well as her origins completely

32:17

from the record. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Which obviously

32:19

then makes it difficult to know what was

32:21

going on. Exactly. We do

32:23

have a sense, I think, of what was going

32:25

on because people have dug into the listings and

32:27

things. We know that she was in a terrible

32:30

radio science fiction program in a tiny

32:32

part. We know that she entered a

32:34

beauty contest and lost it, that she

32:36

was the MC of a kind of

32:38

tango competition, that she was an extra

32:40

in a film about boxing. And we

32:42

know that she's listed in stage programs,

32:44

but she's in the chorus or

32:46

she has no lines or she has one line.

32:48

She must have been very, very

32:51

poor. I don't mean a poor actress. I

32:53

mean, no money. I mean, one point of

32:55

contact that she does have is her brother

32:57

Juan, who is in Buenos Aires

32:59

as well. Yeah. And he's

33:01

kind of, he's a shady character, isn't he? He

33:03

is. And later on, he will be accused of

33:06

gross corruption. I think not entirely unfairly. So she

33:08

does have her brother, but that avails her very

33:10

little. One of the actresses who she worked with,

33:12

the lead actress in a play, a woman called

33:14

Pierina de Alessi, she took her under a wing

33:17

a bit and she later said, I remember her.

33:19

She was hungry, unhappy, careless about herself. Her hands

33:21

were cold and sweaty. She would come to the

33:23

theater early because it was warmer than her room

33:25

and she had nowhere else to go. A sad

33:28

scene, but one that you can completely

33:30

imagine. You know, such a common story.

33:32

And there's another record, I can't remember

33:34

who it is, who is saying to

33:37

her, why don't you improve your elocution?

33:39

Because she has a very working class

33:41

accent, very provincial accent. She mispronounces a

33:43

lot of words. And the friend is

33:45

saying, why don't you try and improve

33:47

your, your ability to speak so

33:49

that you will get better parts? And she

33:51

kind of says, I just, I can't, I

33:54

just haven't got the energy for it. Yeah.

33:56

She's always hungry, always tired. Yeah. She's too

33:58

tired, too hungry even to do. that.

34:00

And actually also Tom, let us be

34:02

honest, she's not actually very good. She's

34:04

not a great actress. She's not stunningly

34:07

beautiful. Although her style of acting actually

34:09

turns out to be quite effective on

34:11

the radio. Yes. And this is really

34:13

the making of her, isn't it? It

34:15

is completely. You're absolutely right. So in

34:18

1939, I mean, she would be

34:20

hanging around all the time outside the offices of

34:22

agents and producers and things. And she seems

34:24

to have got in with a group who were

34:26

going to produce a whole series of plays by

34:29

this playwright called Echtdor Blomberg. And she actually

34:31

manages to land a role as one of

34:33

the sort of the stars of this series.

34:36

She's about 19. And the first thing

34:38

they're going to do is this love

34:40

story in 19th century, late 19th century,

34:42

Belle Epoque kind of Paris. And

34:45

it's the first time that she really

34:47

gets any publicity. And she is going

34:49

to become a bit of a radio

34:51

star. Now, I think that this is

34:54

absolutely central in the making of her,

34:56

not just as a show business personality,

34:59

yeah, but as a political personality. Argentine

35:01

radio is not nothing. It's the second

35:03

biggest commercial network in the world. So

35:05

the biggest is the US. And

35:08

in this vast country,

35:11

you know, far bigger than in

35:13

a European country and incredibly underpopulated.

35:15

So people are living gigantic distances

35:18

from each other. The

35:20

radio has this almost supernatural power

35:22

over people, and particularly

35:24

soap operas, which are broadcast every evening

35:26

at 530 to women preparing

35:29

the dinner for their husbands to come

35:31

home. And they're called soap operas, because

35:33

basically they're sponsored by soap manufacturers. Yes.

35:35

And you mentioned Reagan earlier. I mean,

35:37

there's an echo there Reagan kind of

35:39

cuts his political teeth, doesn't he? By

35:41

selling fridges, essentially. Yeah, General Electric. And

35:44

there's a sense in which Ava's ability

35:46

to act effectively as a radio star

35:48

is also about selling stuff. I mean,

35:50

she's selling soap as well. Yeah, she

35:52

is. And so that idea of broadcasting

35:55

messages is something like Reagan, that she

35:57

is learning by doing this. It's the

35:59

intersection. of capitalism and acting, I

36:01

guess. It is. When we did the

36:03

Reagan series, I remember we were talking

36:05

a lot about Reagan and Hollywood, and

36:07

I said, I always thought, like Lou

36:10

Cannon, Reagan's great biographer, that it's bonkers

36:12

that people would say of Reagan, he's

36:14

just an actor. Because being an actor

36:16

is brilliant preparation for politics. Saying

36:18

the lines, wearing the makeup, standing in the right

36:20

place, meeting the fans, all of that. And

36:23

I think radio ditto with politics in Argentina.

36:25

So the way it would work in Argentina

36:27

is because a lot of people are very

36:29

poor, and these far flung villages, the radio

36:32

manufacturers would get trucks, and they would send

36:34

them to these villages and they would have

36:36

loudspeakers and they would play the soap operas

36:38

to the people in the village. And the

36:40

soap operas, as her biographers, Fraser and Navarro

36:43

say, the soap operas, there were

36:45

more recitals of a script than there were dramas.

36:47

So the script would have been written just beforehand.

36:50

The entire thing is at an

36:52

absolute kind of pitch of emotion.

36:54

Yeah, histrionic, all me. Psych

36:56

from the start to the end.

36:59

And it's always about love, disappointment,

37:03

sacrifice. The lead characters are young

37:05

women who were always being betrayed

37:07

or sacrificing themselves for their husbands

37:10

or whatever. But who in the

37:12

long run, finish up in the

37:14

arms of a handsome and dashing

37:16

hero. Yes. And these are

37:18

the roles that Ava is playing. The girl who

37:20

is poor, who suffers, who endures,

37:22

but who does in the long run, get

37:24

a man. And it's the only role really

37:26

she ever plays. I mean, that's the thing.

37:29

It's not like this is one role among

37:31

many. This is all she can do. People

37:33

said of her voice. I mean, we

37:35

were talking, weren't we, about her voice

37:37

before we started recording. Her voice is

37:39

unbelievably monotonous. And all she can do

37:42

is to sort of emote plaintively about

37:44

duty, love, sacrifice, blah, blah, blah, martyrdom.

37:46

But she does it incredibly well. Yeah.

37:49

So that what, by 1943, she's earning a

37:51

fair amount of money and she's able to

37:53

buy a place. I think she also helped

37:55

out Juan who's got gambling debts. Yes. So

37:58

she's starting to get a degree of. insecurity

38:00

in a way that she had never before in

38:02

her life had and she's doing it by playing

38:05

this role of you know, the girl who suffers

38:07

who then gets her man and Dominic

38:09

would it be fair to say that

38:12

reality maps on to art? It does

38:14

indeed. It's extraordinary how in this story

38:16

again and again the

38:18

soap operas Anticipate what is

38:20

to follow? Yeah, because in January

38:24

1944 she goes to a gala event

38:27

Where she meets the man with

38:29

whom her life will be forever

38:31

entwined and this is the rising

38:33

star of Argentine politics matinee

38:36

idol Colonel Juan Domingo

38:39

Perón Perón So

38:41

I think on that thrilling soap

38:44

operasque moment we should

38:47

stop this episode and we will

38:49

come back next time with the

38:51

seismic meeting of Eva

38:53

and Perón and you

38:55

can either wait for it if you are a

38:58

Day, Kami Sado if you are one of

39:01

the suffering poor of Argentina and be mad

39:03

But if you want to be a member

39:05

of the Buenos Aires elite part of the

39:07

snooty country clubs You can of course hear

39:10

it on the rest is history calm by

39:12

going there and signing up or if you already

39:14

remember brilliant So we will see you whenever I

39:16

hope you've enjoyed it and as to the way

39:18

go. Bye. Bye You

39:28

Hi, it's Katty here from the rest is

39:30

politics us Anthony Scaramucci and I want to

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