LUIS FERNANDO ROMO

Updated Sunday, March 10, 2024-02:10

  • Music The discreet and stable personal life of David Summers in the four decades of Hombres G

  • Money The modest assets of Hombres G despite their world fame

"

Never give importance to either success or failure

because both are temporary," Manolo Summers said at one point to his son David (60), who at that time was triumphing as bassist and vocalist of Hombres G. He knew what he was talking about. .

Throughout three decades as a film director he knew what it was like to be in hell.

Broken Toys

(1966) was only on for ten days, he lost all his savings and borrowed money and with

Goodbye, Stork, Goodbye

(1971) he savored the national and international honey, since as some press in Spain recalled, it surpassed

Love

at the box office.

Story

, in Colombia did the same with

The Godfather

and in France it was in premiere theaters for at least 15 weeks.

FELLINI

Manolo Summers

may be many things, but he certainly did not leave anyone indifferent.

José María Íñigo

defined him in one of his programs as someone with a corrosive sweetness combined with genius and rage;

José Luis Garci

describes him as "one of the greatest ever in Spanish cinema";

the maestro

Luis García Berlanga

highlighted the "ease he has in finding incredible types that only the maestro Federico Fellini can match" although

Fernando Méndez-Leite

assured that he did not appreciate the cinema of Manolo Summers "except for the first films" .

Filming of 'Goodbye, stork, goodbye' in 1970.EFE

The Sevillian director always stood out for not having a gag in his mouth and for pissing on the tree whenever he wanted without having to have a master take him out at eight in the morning.

This is how he saw himself and this is what he confessed in one of the sequences of the documentary

Summers the Rebel (1 in 100)

,

by Miguel Olid

, which opens in theaters on March 15.

His attitude earned him countless enemies in the Regime, but his intelligence allowed him to circumvent censorship and get the better of him.

He was an acrat.

And an outlaw.

He, too, had no great sympathy for

film critics

.

"They make me sick, they are people who should not exist,"

he said.

What he reflected through his profession came from a childhood marked by being a very rebellious and conflictive child who gave adults a hard time.

He was the second of the nine children of Emilia Rivero and

Francisco Summers, civil governor of Huelva and Granada,

prosecutor of the Supreme Court and president of the Court of Accounts, so at home the economy was more than comfortable.

Furthermore, the marriage was so Catholic that since Emilia was terrified that her children were doing mischief to their neighbors, the first three, Paco, Manolo and Enrique, were monitored by a seminarian to guide them on the right path.

What he didn't count on was that "the seminarian was as badass as they were. They went into swimming pools, smoked cigarettes...", remembers with nostalgia Guillermo Summers (82), another of the well-known brothers of the protagonist of the documentary.

In his cinema there is this mix between big names such as

Alfredo Landa, María José Alfonso, Laly Soldevila or Terele Pávez

and countless unknown faces who made his art independent, which caused certain envy.

In the midst of the effervescence of Hombres G, she lent a hand to his son with two films typical of the adolescent fan phenomenon such as

Sufre mamón

(1987) and

Suéltate el pelo

(1988).

David Summers in his father's documentary.CEDED

In his personal life Manuel also did whatever he wanted.

In 1960 he married Consuelo Rodríguez, with whom he had

three children, Manolo, David and Lucía

, who have been very discreet.

Above all, regarding the crisis that the marriage had in the early 70s, which caused Manuel to begin

a clandestine relationship with the actress

Beatriz Galbó

.

They met thanks to her sister, Cristina, who worked with the director on Del Rosa al Amarillo (1963), for which she won the Silver Shell at the San Sebastián Festival.

Not bad for his first commercial film.

From this union their daughter was born. Cheyenne

Summers Galbó, who works as a dubbing actress, was born

to him .

Manuel and Consuelo did not divorce, but she moved to Seville and he stayed in Madrid, where he was diagnosed

with colon cancer

.

Things were looking bad.

At the request of his first three children, she moved to Seville, where his wife took care of him until she died on June 12, 1993. The two families have not treated each other and have always tried to avoid each other.