Le secret de Joselito

By 1963,Joselito was no longer a child.And his voice was irremediably changing.He was no longer the vocal phenomenon he was in the late fifties /early sixties.He sings only four or five songs ,and although it's lip-synching,we feel he is ill-at-ease,one sees little of the unqualified enthusiasm which accompanied him through his early career . He was no longer a child ,and as a teenager he seems to have lost all the qualities he formerly displayed :spontaneity,good humor and of course his golden voice .

The times were changing.When the 1963 audience saw the short scene when Tomy's pals are twistin',they perhaps thought that Joselito Jimenez's bel canto was perhaps quickly becoming a thing of the past.

And maybe JJ himself was beginning to be fed up with the poor screenplays left for him to play.This one is absolutely dumb,not even redeemed by the pristine charm of the star's former melodramas ("escucha mi cancion" is perhaps his most satisfying effort).The spell,like the voice,was broken.This is really dreadful stuff:bland teenage love (Joselito's co-star is a pain in the neck;besides she is taller than he is),bland grown-ups love (Joselito's airline pilot father's affair with a journalist),horse races (after all,if Liz Taylor did it in "National Velvet" ,why not Joselito?),wicked businessmen,and ,for all that, a song contest.

The song contest is particularly painful to watch.We only see one of Joselito's rivals :it's a fat ridiculous boy who makes the audience roar in laughter.The director obviously wanted to divert attention from how badly damaged the star's voice was.

And what about the secret of the title?There is none.

Yes, unfortunately I tend to agree with the review. The once golden Andaluian child star was already fading. Worst of all is that he never recovered. This was the very sad event. We lost a unique feature in the Spanish speaking world.

I particularly ignore what exactly could have happened to him. No doubt some children who happen to be somewhat appealing to the public lose their charm once they go through the difficult period of the adolescence. And this symptom becomes even worse in adulthood. Spontaneity is a given quality while we are children. But to be able to keep it as adults requires awareness of it and yet have the capacity to manifest it as if one would be unaware of it. Joselito, as many others, could not handle this quality. Even if that voice he was gifted with during his childhood was never going to be the same, had he managed the charm we were used to see in him when he became an adult he would have had an enormous appeal to the public. What a shame really. I am sure many people have lived missing him. And perhaps the latter may be the only consolation the unforgettable Joselito of the late 50s and early 60s has already taken.