PREMIUM LIVING

 

Roberto Gómez Bolaños, a Mexican comic actor, writer and director familiar around the world for his iconic characters El Chavo and El Chapulín Colorado, died on Friday in Cancún, according to the Mexican television network Televisa.

He was 85. No cause of death was immediately announced by the network.

Mr. Bolaños, known by his nickname Chespirito (chess-pee-REE-toh), was on Mexican television for more than 40 years, and millions of children across the Spanish-speaking world and beyond came of age watching his programs in syndication. His situation comedy “El Chavo del Ocho” (“The Boy from No. 8”) was first produced by Televisa in 1971 and remains one of the network’s most famous and lucrative franchises.

President Enrique Peña Nieto posted on Twitter on Friday, “Mexico has lost an icon whose work has transcended generations and borders.”

Roberto Gómez Bolaños was born on Feb. 21, 1929, in Mexico City. His father, Francisco Gómez Linares, was a noted painter and illustrator.

Mr. Bolaños, an engineer by training, started writing at an advertising agency when he was 22. Soon he would try his hand at radio, television and movie scripts. Success followed and by the late 1950s he had begun contributing to the highest-rated television shows in Mexico. It was during that time that he earned his nickname “Chespirito,” or “Little Shakespeare,” from Agustín P. Delgado, the television and film director.

In 1966, he was approached by Mario Moreno, better known as Cantinflas, Mexico’s most famous comic actor, to write a television series for him, but the project was scrapped by its sponsor, according to Mr. Bolaños’ official website. By 1970, Mr. Bolaños was acting and directing in his own sketch comedy hour. There, his character El Chapulín Colorado, or the Crimson Grasshopper, was born. Mr. Bolaños played a cocky but dimwitted superhero who always caught the bad guys through sheer luck.

“More agile than a turtle, stronger than a mouse, nobler than a lettuce, his coat of arms is a heart,” intoned the announcer during the program’s opening. “It’s the Crimson Grasshopper!”

El Chapulín’s weapon of choice was a mallet (“chipote chillón”), a squeaky version of Thor’s hammer. He also used “chiquitolina” pills that shrunk him to about 8 inches tall, which allowed Mr. Bolaños to use blue screens and other techniques to introduce Latin American audiences to innovative visual effects.

“El Chavo del Ocho” appeared a year later, in 1971. Mr. Bolaños played a freckled 8-year-old orphan who lives in a barrel and is constantly getting into trouble. The show relied heavily on physical comedy and routines à la Laurel and Hardy, but it also had instructive and heartwarming story lines that touched on friendship, family and even class.

“It was a wholesome program and the star was the script,” said the actor Carlos Villagrán, who played a spoiled little boy with bulging cheeks named Quico, during an interview in 1994. “The show might lose visual quality over the years, but the humor will endure.”

“El Chavo,” which ceased production in 1992, continues to average millions of daily viewers in all of the markets where it is distributed in the Americas, according to a report by Forbes.

Mr. Bolaños continued to act and write. In 1992, he starred in his play “11 and 12,” about a man trying get his wife pregnant after losing his genitals in an accident, that set a record in Mexico, with more than 3,200 performances. It also played to sold-out audiences in more than 30 Latin American cities.

“I never wrote for children,” Mr. Bolaños said during a 1999 interview with the Mexican newspaper La Jornada. “I wrote with respect for the audience, which I’ve maintained all my life. Doesn’t mean I couldn’t be risqué, but I did it smartly, without being vulgar.”

Mr. Bolaños was said to be in poor health, and his death was mistakenly reported numerous times on social media over the past few years. To stay in touch with fans, he joined Twitter in 2011 and posted: “Hello. I’m Chespirito. I’m 82 years old and this is the first time I tweet. This is my debut.”

He ended the message with a popular refrain used by El Chapulin Colorado, “Good people, follow me!” By the time of his death, he had more than six million followers.

Mr. Bolaños is survived by his second wife, the actress Florinda Meza (who played the haughty and overprotective Doña Florinda, Quico’s mother, in “El Chavo”), as well as six children from his first marriage, to Graciela Fernández, and 12 grandchildren.