Mario Fortino Alfonso Moreno Reyes (12 August 1911 – 20 April 1993), known by the stage name Cantinflas (Spanish pronunciation: [kanˈtiɱflas]), was a Mexican comedian, actor, and filmmaker.

His humor, loaded with Mexican linguistic features of intonation, vocabulary, and syntax, is beloved in all the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America and in Spain.

His abilities gave rise to a range of expressions based on his stage name, including: cantinflear, cantinflada, cantinflesco, cantifleando and cantinflero.

His reputation as a spokesperson for the working class gave his actions authenticity and became important in the early struggle against charrismo, the ruling PRI's practice of co-opting and controlling trade unions.

[citation needed] Moreover, his character Cantinflas, whose identity became enmeshed with his own, was examined by media critics, philosophers, and linguists, who saw him variously as a danger to Mexican society, a bourgeois puppet, a verbal innovator, and a picaresque underdog.

[citation needed] Mario Fortino Alfonso Moreno Reyes was born in Santa María la Redonda neighborhood of Mexico City, then grew up in Tepito.

He was one of eight children born to Pedro Moreno Esquivel, an impoverished mail carrier, and María de la Soledad Reyes Guízar (from Cotija, Michoacán).

According to one obituary, "Cantinflas" is a meaningless name invented to prevent his parents from knowing he was in the entertainment business, which they considered a shameful occupation.

At first he tried to imitate Al Jolson's use of blackface, but later separated himself to form his own identity as an impoverished slum dweller with baggy pants, a rope for a belt, and a distinctive mustache.

Before this, Reachi produced short films that allowed him to develop the Cantinflas character, but it was in 1940 that he finally became a movie star, after shooting Ahí está el detalle ("There's the rub", literally "There lies the detail"), with Sofía Álvarez, Joaquín Pardavé, Sara García, and Dolores Camarillo.

[citation needed] He would reprise the role of Agent 777 and be honored by police forces throughout Latin America for his positive portrayal of law enforcement.

In 1942, Moreno teamed up with Reachi, Miguel M. Delgado, and Jaime Salvador to produce a series of parodies, including El Circo, an interpretation of Chaplin's The Circus.

Critics, including the very conservative political party PAN and archbishop Luis María Martínez, called the mural blasphemous, and it was eventually painted without the image of the Virgin.

Yo Colón placed Cantinflas in the character of Christopher Columbus, who, while continually "discovering America", made comedic historical and contemporary observations from fresh perspectives.

The film had cameo appearances by Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Maurice Chevalier, Shirley Jones, Ricardo Montalbán, James Coburn, Debbie Reynolds, César Romero, and other stars.

Later in a 1992 American interview, Moreno cited the language barrier as the biggest impediment to his making it big in the United States.

His ashes lay at the crypt of the Moreno Reyes family, in the Panteón Español ("Spanish Cemetery") in Mexico City.

The nephew claimed his uncle gave him a written notice, Moreno Ivanova argued that he was the direct heir of Cantinflas and that the rights belonged to him.

[25] Among the things that endeared him to his public was his comic use of language in his films; his characters (all of which were really variations of the main "Cantinflas" persona but cast in different social roles and circumstances) would strike up a normal conversation and then complicate it to the point where no one understood what they were talking about.

The Cantinflas character was particularly adept at obfuscating the conversation when he owed somebody money, was courting an attractive young woman, or was trying to talk his way out of trouble with authorities, whom he managed to humiliate without their even being able to tell.

[28] The first animated version animated by Santiago Moro and his brother Jose Luis Moro for Televisa in the early 1970s (Cantinflas Show) which educated children by meeting such notable people as Chopin, Louis Pasteur, Albert Einstein and William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet as well learning how important water and oil is and educational parodies of some of his famous movies like Su Excelencia [La Carta with incidental music from Aaron Copland's El Salón México] In the second version his character was known as "Little Amigo" and concentrated on a wide range of subjects intended to educate children, from the origin of soccer to the reasons behind the International Date Line.

Cantinflas is sometimes seen as a Mexican Groucho Marx character, one who uses his skill with words to puncture the pretensions of the wealthy and powerful, the police and the government, with the difference that he strongly supported democracy.

[13][33] Monsiváis interprets Moreno's portrayals in terms of the importance of the spoken word in the context of Mexico's "reigning illiteracy" (70% in 1930).

"[36] Likewise, "Social hierarchies, speech patterns, ethnic identities, and masculine forms of behavior all crumbled before his chaotic humor, to be reformulated in revolutionary new ways.