Juan Manuel López Alcantud, better known as Carlos Petrel was a talented Spanish singer and actor.
Among his most recognized roles is Grandpa Simpson in the animated series The Simpsons, during the first 11 seasons, the evil Scar in The Lion King, the likeable Lumière in Beauty and the Beast and Commander Spock in Star Trek, among many others.
He was married to the star and dancer Eda Lorna and later to the actress María Eugenia Martí.
Biography[]
Born in El Ferrol, La Coruña, on March 30, 1924. Due to the Spanish Civil War, he was forced to go into exile in France where he spent his youth and it was there that he made his debut as a singer in 1943. Shortly after he arrived in Mexico. to visit his parents, refugees in that country, with a letter of recommendation from the French singer Jacques Pils addressed to the famous composer Agustín Lara, who hired him to sing at the inauguration of the "Los Candiles" ballroom at the Hotel del Prado, in Mexico City, where he sang with Isabel Durán interpreting the songs of Agustín Lara in French. He worked singing in many nightclubs and cabarets in the Mexican capital, including El Partio, La Roca, Bigalli, Mar y Cel, Flamingos, Astoria, Colmenar, Or Lui, etc.
He made his radio debut on XEB, where he was a regular on the National Lottery programs, to later join Televicentro, where he was one of the pioneers of Mexican television. He also had extensive theatrical tours both as a singer and as an actor on stage alongside Agustín Lara, Los Churumbeles, María Antonieta Pons, among many others.
In dubbing, he was part of the group of actors who inaugurated the company CLADSA, in 1955, also marking his start in this branch of acting. He was also part of the first group of Spanish-speaking actors who dubbed into Spanish at ESM International Dubbing Inc. in the late 1970s. It was also at this company that he began directing dubbing, activity that continued upon his return to Mexico throughout the 80s and 90s.
One of his most memorable jobs was dubbing the voice of Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) in the television series Trip to the stars, a role that he reprized in several films, as well as Leonard Nimoy himself in the episodes of The Simpsons: Marge vs. the Monorail and The Secret Files of Springfield.
Another of his well-known roles was Scar in The Lion King and he also masterfully narrated the documentary series "The Spirit of Asia".
He provided the voice of Abraham Simpson, the father of Homer Simpson, for the popular animated series The Simpsons until the 11th season, due to his death in 2000.
Among his radio work, he stands out as having been one of the three actors who gave life to Kalimán (the first being Luis Manuel Pelayo, the second Carlos Petrel himself and the last Víctor Mares).
The 6 adventures in which he played this famous Mexican radio and comic character are, in chronological order:
- Space Pirates
- Beyond the Beyond - 1973
- The Castle of Monsters
- The Invasion of the Satanists
- The Octopus with the Golden Tentacles
- Death in the Fourth Dimension
He also acted in the films "La Virgen de Guadalupe" (1976) about the apparitions of the Virgin Mary in 1531, "Bellas de Noche" (1980) in which he plays a mafia boss to whom Lalo the Mime he owes a large sum of money and a small participation in the 1951 film "Vuelva el Sábado" with María Elena Marqués and Abel Salazar, as a French-style singer who also owes money.
Death[]
He died on September 17, 2000, due to liver cirrhosis derived from hepatitis.
Due to his death, his replacement for Grandfather Abraham Simpson, was Sebastián Llapur, who also replaced him by dubbing Shere Khan in The Jungle Book 2 and The Jungle Book 2 [Scar]] in The Lion King bloopers.