I saw her on a rerun of the “Danny Kaye” show from 1965 last night. If that were true, she would have been 14, but she’s easily 20(ish).
As much TV as I watched when I was younger, I had no idea she had been appearing on TV since the mid 1960s. The first time I saw her on TV that I remembered her was on “Hollywood Squares” in 1973.
Charo’s wiki. They’ve just noted that her year of birth is the subject of controversy. IMDB shows it as 1951–and once a vital date is added to IMDB, it’s pretty hard to undo it without convincing, corroborating info.
Yeah, the wiki says she married Xavier Cugat in 1966. That’d be a 15 to 66. Even were she 21 that’d raise some eyebrows.
Also, for all her persona…watching her on some YouTube clips just now man, that woman could play some guitar.
Also, is she a damn elf? That guitar looks three sizes too big. It looks bigger on her than Joan Jett’s looks on her and Joan’s always looks like it got inflated somehow.
On the Danny Kaye program, she was in a scene with Clint Eastwood, Fess Parker, and Buddy Ebsen, all well over 6 feet–and at least with them, she was tiiiiii-neee!
She is not untalented, but once she had gained a single degree of fame she almost immediately became a caricature of herself. Granted, that seems to have been her choice, and she’s done quite well putting on what is essentially a drag show of herself.
According to Wikipedia, earlier in life she claimed a birthdate in 1941 … and then changed that several times over the years, culminating in her latest assertion of 1951.
Based on her reported life history 1941 seems more likely. Then again, I do note she would not have been the first entertainer to start at a very early age; hoofer Ann Miller was tapping away in the movies at the age of 14, NOT billed as a child. Here she is in “New Faces of 1937:”
Traci Lords, notoriously, was 15 when she started doing porn. Mila Kunis was 14 when she auditioned for That 70’s Show. Melody Patterson was 16 when she was in* F Troop.*
Charo is a total badass flamenco guitar player; ffs she trained under Andrès Segovia: that’s like being able to use a lightsaber and being trained by Yoda.
I don’t really care how old she is because she’s beautiful, she’s funny as fuck and she totally fucking rocks.
Well, it looks like she was on DWTS last year. If she was, indeed, born in 1941, she would have been 76 during that show. So, there’s that.
And, I see nothing in her Wikipedia article to suggest that she had any particular dance training, or was known as a dancer when she was a younger entertainer. She’s a guitarist, a singer, an actress after a fashion, and a media celebrity, but I don’t know that she was ever known for being a dancer – being known for shaking her body and saying “cuchi cuchi” is not the same as being a dancer.