Fuad Jorge Jury (28 May 1938 – 5 November 2012), commonly known as Leonardo Favio, was an Argentine singer, actor, film director and screenwriter. He was of Syrian background.
Much beloved in Latin America, he was one of the most successful Argentine singers in the 1960s and 1970s with big hits like Fuiste mía un verano, Ella, ella ya me olvidó, Quiero aprender de memoria, Ding, dong, las cosas del amor and La cita and starred in many films. His 1975 film Nazareno Cruz and the Wolf was entered into the 9th Moscow International Film Festival.
Without detriment to his outstanding career as a singer and songwriter, at the time he began to sing in public, he was already a consecrated film director. His first feature movie - Crónica de un niño solo - and the second one - El romance del Aniceto y la Francisca - compete in the consensus of Argentine critics to be considered the best Argentine movie of all times, while the agreement is almost unanimous in considering Leonardo Favio as the best Argentine movie director of all times. Later, he would film: El Dependiente, Juan Moreira, Nazareno Cruz y el Lobo, Soñar Soñar, Gatica el Mono, Perón Sinfonía de un Sentimiento and Aniceto (a valet version of El romance...) His brother is writer and director Jorge Zuhair Jury. He was married to Maria Vaner and had two children, one being the composer Nico Jury.
On October 9, 2010, Favio was appointed Argentina's Ambassador of Culture by national decree of the president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
He died on 5 November 2012 in Buenos Aires at the age of 74.
Famous quotes containing the word leonardo:
“In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed—they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!”
—Orson Welles (1915–84)