What television programs did you watch as a child?

There was no commercial televisiont in Cuba untill I was eight years old, when my father bought a small black-and-white set with a small 17-inch round screen. The TV in Cuba developed almost as fast as it did here in the U.S., there were several stations, Channel 4 of Gaspar Pumarejo, Channel 6 which was CMQ and others were added later, including one in full color, belonging to Pumarejo, in 1957, the third in the world, after the first two in the U.S.

Radio had developed swiftly as well since 1922 when the famous composer and musician Luis Casas Romero, author of "El Mambí" began transmitting commercially. Goar Mestre, a sophistacated entrepreneur, graduate of Yale University in the U.S. and father of a girl who later became the Duchess of Luxemburg, was owner, with his brother Abel and Omar Vaillant as partners, of CMQ Radio, they had built a very modern building on Calle 23 and Calle L, El Vedado, called Radiocentro, an imitation of the New York building of the same name, with modern studios and central air conditioning, the first building in Havana with such amenities. He had hired the Basque-Country-born Basque Gaspar Pumarejo, who had come to Havana as an eight-year-old, was self-taught, lacked formal studies, but was a go-getter and great promoter, as his Director of Programming.

Pumarejo never the less, after a year in that position, with the backing of Diego Trinidad, owner of Radio Cadena Azul Radio and Trinidad y Hermano cigarrettes, from Las Villas and whose nephew Nicolás Rodríguez Trinidad was my schoolmate at Colegio Mimó, bought another radio station called Unión Radio and became Mestre's competitor. Unión Radio had big sponsors such as Trinidad y Hermano and Crusellas y Compañía, a Colgate-Palmolive company.

Mestre had planned to inaugurate in three years the CMQ Television Station at the Radiocentro Building, that was already prepared for it, he had sought and obtained the financing of the television manufacturer Dumont and of the Mexican radio magnate Emilio Azcárraga, as well as the technican assistance of Warner Brothers.

Gaspar Pumarejo, without television studios but with great ingenuity, surprised Goar Mestre by transmitting, from his backyard at Calle Mazón 52, esquina a San Miguel, in La Habana, the first commercial signal of television in Cuba through Channel 4 Unión Radio Television to the scarce few television sets of La Habana at the time. The first image shown was a commercial of Trinidad y Hermano, followed by a show with the great Mexican actor Pedro Armendariz and Cuban actresses such as Rosita Fornés y Raquel Revuelta, President Carlos Prío Socarrás was also present. He later transmitted live a game of Major League Baseball using a relay high in a flying globe.

Jack Benny could already be seen on American television since 1949, on 31 August 1950 television began in Mexico, on 18 September 1950 in Brazil and on 24 October 1950 in Cuba. Goar Mestre accelarated his plans and inaugurated CMQ Television, Channel 6 on 18 December 1950. The great competition between Pumarejo and Mestre, aided by the affluence of the economy of Cuba in the 1950s, excellent cabarets, restaurants, hotels and casinos, were the major force behind the quick development of television in Cuba.

CMQ had excellent programs, great sponsors and publicity agencies such as Siboney, Crusellas and Sabatés, programs such as El Casino de la Alegría and Jueves de Partagás, who broght top artists, both Cuban and foreign to act live on CMQ Television. Great comedies such as La Taberna de Pedro of Jesús Alvariño on Tuesdays.

Pumarejo was not left behind, he created Hogar Club, with hundreds of thousands of women as affiliates, with monthly gifts such as automobiles and even homes. He had superb entertainment, he animated himself, accompanied with the grat actor Otto Sirgo, well known and famous artists as well as inviting and discovering new talent of the stature of the Chilean Lucho Gatica and the Venezuelan Alfredo Sadel.

In 1957 Pumarejo, who always liked to do things in a great scale, decided to celebrate 50 years of Cuban Music at the Cerro Baseball Stadium, bringing together notorious Cubans from abroad and even some foreigners such as Puerto Rican Tito Puente and Chilean Lucho Gatica.

For that monumental spectacle, Pumarejo send for, from France, Humberto Cobo, Rudy Castell, Antonio Picallo and Raúl Zequeira. From España he brought Antonio Machín, Raúl del Castillo and Zenaida Manfugás. From Turkey Mariano Barreto. From México Gilberto Urquiza and Everardo Ordaz .From the United States came Mario Bauzá, René Touzet, Vicentico Valdés, Gilberto Valdés and Machito.

Unlike other Spanish countries, the U.S. television programs I watched as a child in the 1950s in Cuban TV were in English with Spanish subtitles and included Gene Autrey, Roy Rogers, Lone Ranger, Highway Patrol and Flash Gordon.

There were excellent Cuban programs too in the 1950s, beginning with children programs like El Show of Olga y Tony, with the great singer Olga Chorens, her husband Tony Alvarez, their daughter Lizzette who acted and sang since she was a very small girl, today married to the also famous Cuban composer and singer Willy Chirino and living in Puerto Rico.

The musical clowns than in Spain they call "The Pitufos" but we knew simply as Gaby, Fofó y Miliki, came then to Havana and became a great success in Cuban TV with their daily children program.

There were excellent comedies too, like "La Taberna de Pedro" by Jesús Alvariño as the Pollack owner, El Chino Wong, Guillermo Alvarez Guedes as the funny drunk, the Senator and his aduling male secretary, the chronically unemployed who could barely whisper from hunger and others. This program was imitated in its entirety by the popular program Cheers in the U.S. years later.

Other great commedians, such as Luis Echegoyen as Mamacusa Alambrito, El Show de Alvariño y Echegoyen with Jesús Alvariño y Luis Echegoyen, Manela Bustamante and Idalberto Delgado as Cachucha y Ramón, Lilia Lazo as Popa, Alberto Garrido and Federico Piñeiro, Leopoldo Fernández, Ánibal de Mar, Mimí Cal and Adolfo Otero in the super popular program La Tremenda Corte, the Argentinian Pepe Biondi and others.

Famous Cuban singers like Olga Guillot, Celia Cruz, Fernando Albuerne, Blanca Rosa Gil, La Lupe, Ramón Veloz and so many others, as well as foreigners such as Libertad Lamarque, Lucho Gatica, Alfredo Sadel, Jorge Negrete, Pedro Infante, Pedro Vargas, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra and many, many more were often seen on Cuban Television too.

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