MEXICO CITY – Mexican actor and comedian Gaspar Henaine, popularly known as “Capulina,” died in Mexico City after being hospitalized for several days with peritonitis and a grave pneumonia, a family member said. He was 85.
“Yes, it’s official...heaven is receiving the best man, father, grandfather and the best comedian in the world,” Ericka Aleman, granddaughter of the comic actor, tweeted on her Twitter account.
A wake was held Friday night for Henaine, of Lebanese origin and one of Mexico’s outstanding comedians in the 1950s and ‘60s, at the Gayosso funeral home, one of its employees said.
The humorist suffered a duodenal ulcer and two staples had to be used to close the wound, his son Antonio Henaine said earlier this week, adding that his father was “extremely exhausted.”
Capulina was born in January 1926 at Chignahuapan in the central Mexican state of Puebla.
His shows featured innocent, inoffensive gags and mainly targeted children and young people, for which he was called “the king of white humor.”
In 1952 he met the person who would become his comic sidekick for many years, Marco Antonio Campos – “Viruta” – with whom he formed the famed duo Viruta and Capulina.
Together with Viruta, Henaine appeared on the television show “Comicos y Canciones” (Comics and Songs), and four years later he made his film debut in “Se Los Chupo la Bruja” (The Witch Put Up with Them).
Viruta and Capulina starred in more than 40 movies, with “Dos Viajeros del Espacio” (Two Space Travelers), “Angelitos del Trapecio” (Trapeze Angels) and “Barridos y Regados” (Swept and Hosed Down) among the most memorable, and together they toured Central America, the United States and other countries of the continent.
The duo had a falling out and split up in 1967.