Ismael Rodríguez, a filmmaker ¡A.T.M.!

The daring, brash and very popular director Ismael Rodríguez is known mainly for his duo with Pedro Infante in unforgettable films such as: 

Los tres García y Vuelven los García; Nosotros los pobres, Ustedes los Ricos y Pepe el Toro; Los tres huastecos; La oveja negra y No desearás la mujer de tu hijo;

¡A.T.M.! y Qué te ha dado esa mujer; Dos tipos de cuidado or Tizoc among many others. These successes have overshadowed other interesting aspects of his career, full of experiments and outbreaks of creativity. 

Ismael Rodríguez Ruelas was born on October 19, 1917 in a unique family. His father Ismael, a “red-blooded Catholic,” was a court clerk, tram inspector and owner of a bakery. 

His mother Maclovia was a housewife taking care of her children: Joselito, Roberto, Consuelo, Enrique, Emma and Ismael. 

He wrote in her Memoirs: “apart from my father, there were two Ismaels before me”, the first died at three years old and the second at five months old. 

“My dad was convinced that there had to be another one. […] Then it was a matter of self-love and I, Ismael the third, arrived.”

The Rodríguez family lived in a three-yard neighborhood in the Center of Mexico City. “Like the one that appears in Nosotros los pobres. 

Ismael recalled years later when talking about some of his endearing characters, “in my childhood I must have met several Guayabas y Tostadas and several Pepes el Toro.” 

Next to the family bakery, his brothers Joselito –who studied radio technician by correspondence– and Roberto –who specialized in photography– had opened their own business when the Cristero War forced the family to leave the country to settle in Los Angeles, California.

“My brothers insisted on sound and photography and it occurred to them to invent a device that synchronized image and sound.” 

They began to make films with other Mexicans who were making their way in Hollywood such as: Celia Montalván, Dolores del Río and Ramón Navarro.

In 1931, the National Film Production Company came to Hollywood looking for technicians and artists to film the first sound feature film in Mexico. 

The Rodríguez returned to Mexico to record the sounds of the movie Santa (Antonio Moreno) with their invention.

In 1939 they created Producciones Rodríguez Hnos. in which Ismael worked under the orders of his brothers as a child actor, clapper loader, microphone operator, sound engineer, screenwriter and producer before directing his first film, in 1942, ¡Qué lindo es Michoacán!

This is how the career of one of the most successful and risky filmmakers in our industry began. 

He was the only one who managed to bring together the top figures of national cinema who maintained a professional rivalry: Jorge Negrete and Pedro Infante in Dos tipos de cuidado and Dolores del Río and María Félix in La Cucaracha. 

He hired the Japanese film star Toshiro Mifune, who knew nothing about Mexico, to play an indigenous Oaxacan in Ánimas Trujano.

He filmed a three-year-old boy recently kidnapped and rescued by the police, playing himself in the dramatization of his own story in ¡Ya tengo a mi hijo!

In 1952, he filmed the amusing comedy Del Rancho a la televisión within the facilities of Televicentro and XEW, a film in which the brilliant Carlos Orellana portrayed Cecilio Zárraga as a tribute to Don Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta;

an old acquaintance of Ismael, from when, as the owner of a small shop called La Casa del Radio, he sold parts to the Rodríguez brothers for their inventions that would later revolutionize the national film industry.

For these reasons, at Fundación Televisa, we applaud the recognition that FICM is giving to the youngest of the Rodríguez brothers, an indispensable figure in our popular culture.