SAO PAULO –
Whether or not Pele has scored nearly 1,300 goals in his professional football career, all his biographers agree that the three-time World Cup champion has written more than 100 songs and sold Get over 100,000 copies of one of his albums.
He also acted in films, especially in the movie Victory in the Second World War and was one of the stars of the Brazilian comedy that drew more than 3.6 million people to theaters in the South American country. .
Pele, whose full name is Edson Arantes do Nascimento, died on Thursday of cancer at a hospital in Sao Paulo. He was 82 years old.
Pele’s success on the football field made him a sports icon, but he added many performances as an actor and singer.
MOVIE
“King Pele” (O Rei Pele, 1962)
Pele’s first big screen moment came in a film directed by Carlos Hugo Christensen the same year he won his second World Cup. The story begins in Pele’s hometown of Tres Coracoes, about his move to the rural city of Bauru in Sao Paulo and then to Santos, where he became a global star.
“Victory” (1981)
Directed by John Huston, this is the film Pele says he’s had the most fun making. He played Cpl. Luis Fernandes, a soldier from Trinidad.
The plot involves prisoners of war preparing to face a German team in Nazi-occupied Paris while they attempt to escape. At the time with the New York Cosmos, Pele had the opportunity to play with very different teammates – actors Sylvester Stallone and Michael Caine.
“If I had to rate myself as an actor it would be 10,” Pele joked in several interviews after “Victory”.
He also told friends that the original script had Stallone in a position to score the winning goal with a bicycle kick, but the American actor didn’t have the skills to do it so instead There he was assigned to the position of goalkeeper. Former England captain Bobby Moore also starred in the film along with a number of other professional footballers.
“Victory,” known as “Escape to Victory” in many places, grossed nearly $28 million at the box office.
“The Clums and the King of Football” (Os Trapalhoes eo Rei do Futebol, 1986)
This was a union between two of the most popular Brazilian franchises at the time – a recently retired Pele and a comedy group like the Three Stooges, who became widely popular thanks to the TV show Os Trapalhoes (The Clumsies). The film premiered three days before the 1986 World Cup final, in which Argentina, under the leadership of Diego Maradona, defeated Germany 3-2. That year, millions of people went to cinemas in Brazil.
Pele plays a sports reporter named Nascimento who replaces the injured goalkeeper of a team called Independencia Futebol Clube and scores the decisive goal of the game with a kick-in.
Pele has also acted in documentaries, including “This is Pele” (1974), “Pele Eterno” (2004) and “Cine Pele” (2011).
TELEVISION
Brazilians are almost as obsessed with soap operas as football, and Pele has had many cameos. Most of his appearances are on TV Globo soap operas, which are often exported to the rest of the world.
Author Ivani Ribeiro was the one who first introduced him to television plays. She cast Pele in a show called “Os Estranhos” (The Strangers), in which he plays a famous writer who lives on an island and has extraterrestrial friends.
Pele’s last famous appearance in a soap opera was in 2002 in “O Clone”, which was loved in dozens of other countries. He plays and sings “Em Busca do Penta” (Fifth Search). The lyrics are about Brazil winning the World Cup again. Three months later, Brazil won the World Cup for the fifth time.
MUSIC
“Peleginga” was his biggest hit. Recorded with choir and orchestra, the samba album consists of 12 songs written by Pele and released in 2006.
Three years later, the Brazilian star wanted to record another album for an international audience and invited U2 singer Bono to feature on one of the songs. However, the Irishman was touring with his band and the project was cancelled.
Pele has also recorded a record with Brazilian diva Elis Regina and released an album produced by Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Sergio Mendes.
COMIC
Pele is also a character in a comic book that is widely known in Brazil. Cartoonists Mauricio de Sousa and Pele, then playing for the New York Cosmos, reached an agreement in 1976 to publish children’s stories as comic books.
At first, Pele did not like Pelezinho’s childish features. Sousa said in several interviews that the player wanted to be portrayed as a strong child athlete. The cartoonist then suggested that he ask his children what they thought. Both kids love it.
Sousa used several stories from Pele’s childhood in Pelezinho’s plots. Comics were published regularly from 1977-86, and then on special occasions. The most recent was in 2013 when Brazil hosted the Confederations Cup, the warm-up tournament for next year’s World Cup in the country.
