Being the best bullfighter in the United States in history may seem like a small thing.
To the layman, because the competition was not scarce.
Many were called in that country, from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, thanks to the influx that
Sangre y arena
and
Hemingway
fed, and Tijuana -a Las Vegas of the early twentieth century- burned, with its offer of gambling, alcohol, women and. .. bullfighting.
There, many gringo matadors saw their first fight, as was the case with a boy named
Robert Ryan
.
The Californian lives in Madrid, he is the last of that time, along with the killer
Bette Ford
.
And the documentary
6 Yankee bullfighters 6
, which premieres on the 7th at the
Seville Film Festival,
pick up this story.
Ryan (Los Angeles, 1944) is the survivor of all the Yankee bullfighting, now practically settled, along with his countrywoman
Bette Ford, who
lives in Hollywood. The Californian is the best example of a total artist within the planet of bulls. Remarkable personal line painter, author for example of two posters of the Beneficencia de Las Ventas. And a poet and essayist, since one of his books -
El toreo de capa
(Alianza Editorial) an anthology of all the luck with the cape - displays a stylistic command of Spanish. Ryan decided in his day to stay in Spain, in Madrid, very close to where
Juan Belmonte
was domiciled
.
The documentary
6 Yankee bullfighters 6
, directed by
Nonio Parejo
, interviews him.
At 76 years old and as forceful as he is lucid, he affirms: "I am not a bullfighter from the United States, I am a bullfighter."
Ryan speaks with a downcast gaze, focusing on an indefinite point where
an imaginary crutch
appears from time to time
.
And his hands move giving the dream pass.
76 years old and continues to dream of passes, wishing with a concentrated gesture the impossible to return to what he always wanted: to fight.
Robert Ryan, during the interview for the documentary '6 Yankees Bullfighters 6'. JM
Robert Ryan was part of a group of bullfighters that sprouted in the United States, several reaching the achievement of fighting in the main Spanish bullrings. A
Lin Sherwood,
in his book
Yankees in the Afternoon: An Illustrated History of American Bullfighters
, will leave the seed sown 21. Ernest Hemingway with his
Death in the Afternoon
(1932), and the film of
Tyrone Power, Anthony Quinn and Rita Hayword
Blood in the Sand
(1941). And it germinated given the proximity to the second most bullfighting country, Mexico. The epicenter was in the Plaza de Tijuana, which boiled without pause with the great figures. And on the line appeared no less figures:
Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Ricardo Montalbán, Jack Palance, Cesar Romero, Mickey Rooney, Marilyn Monroe, Ava Garner, Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner, Kim Novak
...
All this caused in the 60s and 70s the emergence of characters, in some cases, unheard of.
Like
Sidney Franklin
(1903-1976), from Brooklyn, gay, and Jewish.
Or
John Fulton
(Philadelphia, 1932-1998), who fought in Seville and Madrid to finally stay to live in the Andalusian capital, where he developed a remarkable pictorial career with the uniqueness that he used bull's blood for red.
On the list of swords are
Richard Corey
(Virginia), of whom Fulton said: "I have never seen anyone try so hard to commit suicide";
and Barnaby.
Conrad
(San Francisco, 1922-2013), who threw himself spontaneously in Mexico City at the age of 19. He was a boxer, painter, vice consul in Seville, owner of the mythical Los Angeles club 'El Matador', and prolific writer, author of a
best seller
that sold millions of copies,
Matador
(1952), written after the printing of the death of his friend
Manolete
.
Of course, for caste and courage, that of US women who took bullfighting seriously. Fascinated by
Luis Miguel Dominguín
, whom she met in Colombia, the beautiful model
Bette Ford
(Pennsylvania, 1927) - later a supporting actress in
Cheers
,
Falcon Crest
or
El Príncipe de Bel Air
- fought for years in the Mexican arena with her earrings of diamonds, receiving eerie goring. And
Patricia McCormick
(San Luis, 1929-2013) added three hundred runs in her career, in one of them with extreme unction included.
Ryan explains that for him it all started drawing at the Catholic nuns' college he attended.
"By chance, I saw in a magazine a report on a cattle ranch, with a large photo in the middle of
a beautiful landscape of a
beautiful, brave
bull
, and it struck me."
When the Californian learned that the bull was behind a cloak, he read everything he found.
His first infant cape served him with his puppy, "a boxer that rammed me wonderfully."
In 1958, when he was 14 years old, he was able to see
Luis Procuna
fight in Tijuana
, whose film about his life,
Torero
, he had seen in Spanish, without understanding the language.
And there he was surprised.
"I could not see the bullfight because ... I had always seen black and white photos; in
Torero
everything is in black and white; when the bull entered the bullring and the blood came out, I couldn't look at myself. I got sick, I couldn't take it. Then on the trip home I was very disappointed in myself. " Robert Ryan got over it. In this process, he came to the conviction that the bullfighting ritual resembled "a mass, it was
like a sacrifice
."
But he doesn't like to talk about the other North American bullfighters. "The most annoying thing about being an American bullfighter is what happens afterwards, from time to time they say, well, let's look at exotic bullfighters: a Japanese here, a Chinese there, and there are several of the North Americans." John Fulton said that
the American bullfighter
"has no country; they neither accept him here nor understand him in theirs."
Again he looks down at a point, located in the past, and his fine hands begin to move in a back and forth without him noticing.
"I try to explain this movement and it is impossible, I don't know. When you are on the beach and a wave passes you, you are taking all the force of the sea, it is taking you, you are taking the bull; it is a dance, it is a song ".
In his collection
of
poems
Vestigios de sangre
(El Bibliófilo, 1986),
Antonio Díaz-Cañabate award
, the Californian sword writes: But when feeling the slow breeze open through my cape, the teacher's eyes, so sensitive to the leave of the waist and arms, / They believed they were looking at the spilled seed of their dead.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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