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SPEAKER_02: From Wonder Media Network, I'm Jenny Kaplan, and this is Womanica. This month we're talking about comediennees, women throughout history who've made us laugh. They transgressed societal norms through comedy and often spoke out against injustice using their sharp wit. Today we're talking about a woman of many names and just as many talents. Radio host, writer, singer, dancer, comic, and more. Nini Marshall.
Marina Ester Treveso was born in 1903 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to two Asturian immigrants.
When Marina was two months old, her father passed away, leaving Marina's mother to raise her alone. Her mother called her Nini.
From an early age, Nini shined in the arts. When she was five years old, she had her acting debut at a local theater and became the leader of a children's theater group. Beyond her plays, Nini danced, painted, sang, and studied multiple languages.
When Nini was in her late teens, she met her first husband, an engineer with gambling problems. They married in 1924 and celebrated the birth of a child soon after. But this event was followed by tragedy. Soon after giving birth, Nini lost her mother. Then, her husband's gambling issues came to a tipping point when auctioneers took away their daughter's crib as collateral. At the time, divorce was a big taboo, but Nini had had enough.
Her mind was boiling over with ideas, and she was desperate for a platform.
In 1933, Nini began working as a writer. She joined La Novella Seminal, a women's leisure magazine. It was simple work, reviewing household appliances. But Nini's real passion was the arts.
She operated under a pseudonym, Mitzi, as an entertainment critic who wrote for a Cintonia, a publication about radio personalities. Starting in 1936, Nini entered the radio scene as a singer under another name, Yvonne D'Arcy. Nini took full advantage of her radio appearances, using her voice, language, and character to establish herself in the entertainment business.
Around the same time that her radio career began to take off, Nini met her second husband, a Paraguayan accountant named Marcelo Salcedo.
Nini took the first three letters from her husband's last name and the first three of her first name to create her most popular pseudonym yet, Nini Marshall.
Through her radio work and later movies, Nini created a cast of characters inspired by the many communities and accents she'd grown up listening to in Buenos Aires.
Nini Marshall! Katita, an Italian-Argentinian cook, was one of Nini's most well-known creations.
She spoke in Lunfardo, a unique dialect of Spanish in Buenos Aires that uses slang from other languages, especially Italian. How do you say it? Don't say it, you're an idiot!
SPEAKER_05: You're an idiot!
SPEAKER_02: As Katita, Nini exaggerated the accent even further.
She had other characters with different voices, like Candida, a Galician domestic worker.
SPEAKER_02: Her characters reflected the social hierarchies and challenges of the 20th century from the perspective of European immigrants in Argentina. But the very thing that made Nini's character so popular would also cause her exile from the country.
In 1943, a military coup overthrew the Argentine presidency and established a military dictatorship. A new committee to oversee radio transmissions was founded, which implemented strict regulations of language on the radio. According to the committee, Nini's characters had distorted the language of Argentina. They banned her from national radio. So Nini sought out a new career in Mexico.
There, she continued to appear in films, theater, and radio.
Nini's prolific writing was humorous and satirical. Her radio voices played with language that challenged a deeply gendered, straight-laced soundscape. She's often referred to as the chaplain in skirts.
Others prefer to highlight her as more than a comic. Argentine intellectual Maria Elena Walsh chooses to focus on how Nini played and experimented with language. Walsh says,
Nini returned to Argentina in 1954, and in 1957, she took back her throne on Argentine radio.
In 1980, she appeared in her last big-screen movie. Nini, a voice of Argentina, had gone silent. She said of her retirement,
Nini died at the age of 92 in 1996.
All month, we're talking about comediennees. For more information, find us on Facebook and Instagram, at Womanica Podcast. Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co-creator.
Talk to you on Monday!
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