Sunshine Logroño
Sunshine Logroño | |
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Born | Emmanuel Logroño November 1, 1951 Bronx, New York , U.S. |
Occupation | Actor |
Emmanuel Logroño (born November 1, 1951), better known as Sunshine Logroño, is an American actor. Logroño has worked in Puerto Rican media for close to three decades.
Early years
Born in New York to a Puerto Rican mother, Logroño moved to San Juan, Puerto Rico along with his family when he was nine years old. He was soon recognized as a multifaceted entertainer by his schoolteachers and classmates. His nickname "Sunshine" came from a short stint (1973) as a disc jockey for San Juan-based WBMJ-AM, Puerto Rico's first rock and roll station (another WBMJ disc jockey at the time, Raymond Broussard, better known as Moonshadow, later became the co-host of El Vacilón de la Mañana, a very popular Spanish language morning radio talk show in New York City). Sunshine was also heard in 1974 as a part of the new announcing crew at "The New WRAI" 1520, a station created by Bill Thompson and "Radio Man" after the format change from English to Spanish at WBMJ. Besides his short stint as a disc jockey, Logroño served as a voice actor for Puerto Rico's then-active dubbing industry. His was the Spanish-language voice for "Little Joe", one of the Cartwright brothers (played by Michael Landon) in the U.S. television show Bonanza.
Logroño obtained a
Logroño kept himself busy in the late 1970s as a voice talent for radio commercials, as a comedic actor on Puerto Rican television, and as a radio host. He co-hosted a morning radio program, Rompiendo el Día (Daybreak) with Puerto Rican entrepreneur and musician Silverio Pérez, and served as part of the comedic team behind Desafiando a los Genios (Defying the Geniuses), a popular TV mock quiz show starring, among others, actor, writer and film director Jacobo Morales and Puerto Rico's premier comedic actor, José Miguel Agrelot. Two of Logroño's TV characters would surface around this time: Agapito Flores, a rather naive country bumpkin with a speech impairment, and Nicky El Bro, a Nuyorican hustler. A third character, "Chinito Rivera" (a flasher that said little and wore a raincoat he was eager to open at the slightest provocation) would eventually evolve into "El Barbarazo del Amor", one of his radio characters.
Los Rayos Gamma
Morales and Perez would soon revive, along with actor and radio announcer
At his initial stages in "Los Rayos Gamma", Logroño created a character that seemed to lighten up the absurdity and gravity of another character, played by Morales, that was in turn based on a real-life incident. During the 1930s, Dr.
Los Rayos Gamma edited a music album in 1982, from which "Me apesta la vida" (My Life Stinks), a
Later years
After Los Rayos Gamma's TV show was yanked off the air, Sunshine kept active, doing voice-overs for commercials (at one time half of all radio commercials in Puerto Rico featured Logroño's talents in one way or another) and making appearances at several TV shows and radio programs. At one of these shows the comedic characters of Eleuterio Quiñones and his son Elpidio were born. Eleuterio Quiñones, a die-hard supporter of Puerto Rican statehood whose grasp of public affairs and general culture level would be best compared to those of Archie Bunker in the U.S., and his son Elpidio -a 38-year-old special education patient with the emotional age of a child but with rather stunning reproductive organs - are still a staple of Puerto Rican radio and television. Logroño also developed his own audio production company, Man-TK Records (Man-TK being a pun on manteca, the Spanish word for lard. Logroño's work is filled with porcine references throughout his career).
Sunshine's Café
In 1988 Logroño began hosting a show named Sunshine's Cafe on WAPA-TV. Sunshine's Cafe was very popular among Puerto Rico's television viewers and its risqué sense of humor guaranteed four seasons of high ratings and extreme controversy. After the show's first airing all sponsors except one canceled their contracts, and the program spent close to six months without advertising. The program was controversial because it confronted many Puerto Rican stereotypes head-on. It also provided Logroño with a vehicle to bring in many taboo topics in subtext, a technique that he personally credits Bill Cosby with teaching him when Cosby developed a pilot for a Latino-based series in American television that did not evolve into a series.
In the program, Sunshine played many characters; one particular character portrayed a clever
The phrase "Salamaya" is still used in Puerto Rico to refer in jest to devout Pentecostal followers (Hermano Emmanuel constantly had two naive female parishioners follow him everywhere) or a small Pentecostal congregation (particularly those with rudimentary facilities, such as tents). Rapper René Pérez ("Residente") uses it in the Calle 13" song "Ojalai" to describe the song's attractive female subject in rapture-like amazement.
Offended by Logroño's portrayal of ministers, Pentecostal leaders in Puerto Rico threatened Logroño's program with boycotts, and Raschke and Milton Picón (the local representative for
Chona, La Puerca Asesina
In exchange for a cameo in the film "La Guagua Aérea", Logroño somehow persuaded film maker Luis Molina Casanova to direct a satirical action film, "Chona, La Puerca Asesina" ("Chona, The Killer Pig"), released in 1988 and filmed in black and white. Many Puerto Rican artists and media personalities (along with
In 1991, Logroño had a chance to star in a Hollywood movie: he acted opposite Martin Short and Kurt Russell in Captain Ron. He appeared in the movie Contact, alongside Jodie Foster, as a taxi driver, but actually - thanks to the rather extreme talents of the film's editor, Logroño claims - only his left elbow appears on the screen. He won the audition over Rafael Fuentes much to his dismay.
According to an interview that Logroño gave
Logroño attempted to show his serious actor side in the late 1990s, participating in various theater plays.
More recent history
He was the host of a show named De Noche Con Iris y Sunshine (At Night With Iris & Sunshine), co-hosted by
On February 25, 2007, Logroño appeared as an
Sunshine has been hosting the afternoon radio show Agitando El Show since 1997, with Fernando Arévalo. The show has one of the biggest audiences and is one of the longest running shows in local radio.[4]
During 2014, Logroño became involved in a dispute with television personality
See also
References
- ^ http://www.vozdelcentro.org/?p=167 Collado-Schwartz, Ángel, editor; "El humor como expresión cultural", La Voz del Centro II, Fundación La Voz del Centro, 2006
- ^ "Llega la nueva temporada de "El Remix"". Primera Hora (Puerto Rico) (in Spanish). June 6, 2017. Retrieved February 12, 2019.
- ^ El Nuevo Día
- ^ Melba Brugueras (October 12, 2011). "Todos se autoproclaman #1 en la radio". Primera Hora.
- ^ "Tiraera entre Mr. Cash y Sunshine – Metro". Archived from the original on March 28, 2014. Retrieved March 26, 2014.