I'm Jill St John tonight on intimate portrait Ava Peron who in her time was called the most powerful woman in the world born on the wrong side of the tracks she grew up yearning for fame as an actress but played a real life role that went Way Beyond anyone's imagination Ava Peron would rise from the slums of Argentina to become its first lady a potent mixture of Youth Beauty and ambition that aroused Fierce passions throughout the nation to her admirers she was a saint who gave her life to help the poor to her enemies she was nothing but a common [ __ ] grasping for the power and luxury to which she had no right how did this slender young woman rise so far in a society dominated by men how was she able to fasen an entire nation and change it forever she would die tragically young before she could have children but she considered all of Argentina to be her family she left behind a heartbroken country but the power of her Legend would extend beyond the grave continuing to shape Argentina and inspiring one of the best known musicals of all time and a film starring the Don [Music] Ava Peron the woman who called herself iita an intimate portrait next [Music] it was an unlikely opening scene for the tumultuous life to come the vast lonely prairies of Argentina known as the pompus this is cattle country the key to the nation's wealth and it was in one of the small towns that still dot the Prairies that a girl the last of five illegitimate children was born in 1919 Ava Maria iar guren never knew her father when she was just a year old he left to return to his legal wife and children in another town left destitute in a small town Ava's mother struggled to support her five children a job made even harder by the scorn of the villagers who sometimes called aa's mother a [Music] [ __ ] her realization of the situation of her mother her own illegitimacy in relation to her father's family uh other family because they were both families um I think must have been a traumatic experience and I think that this is something that Mark her for life it came out no desire to defy convention in not being afraid to do what she wanted to do and I think that he gave her a strength and an audacity that was quite extraordinary it would have been a certain source of Shame for her uh and we can tell from her future actions how how important this must have been because she made a point later of changing the law such that illegitimate children were never again called illegitimate but rather natural children so she must have had this extremely present in her mind as she grew up as far as I can remember the existence of Injustice has hurt my soul as if a nail was being driven into it from every period of my life I retain the memory of some injustice tearing me apart she called herself iita little Eve a petite girl with big brown eyes from an early age she dreamed of escaping the poverty and small-mindedness of the Prairie towns and her dreams were fueled every weekend iita became a movie fanatic entranced by the stories of actors who'd overcome humble beginnings to find stardom on the screen I made my belief there were other places marvelous places where only wealth existed at the age of 15 iita decided to make her dream come true she boarded a train and left for the capital of Buenos Ares 150 M from home if she wanted to be an actress which she did from always there was no other way but to go to woes when Otis was Hollywood uh uh so therefore that's where you have to go buenos Aris in the 1930s was the third biggest city in the Americas after New York and Chicago it was a whole new world to a 15-year-old girl from the Prairies she soon found that work in the theaters was scarce and badly paid for the first several years iita was poor and hungry and sometimes could not even afford the local beverage mate she probably uh pounded the Pavements at enormous lengths and there are rumors from other actresses and so forth that she was incredibly thin and when they would offer her a mate with milk in it she she would grab the mate I just remember the the tone of these stories that she was hungry and uh so she would have been pushy you're pushy when you're hungry I's persistence paid off under the name iita dwarte her father's name she began to get regular work in the theater and on radio in the immensely popular soap operas when I knew her she was kind of a quiet nice with everybody but not an extroverted at all she was a complete i w say was a complete introverted but was not necessarily and she was quiet she was always was very very ambitious and persistent I mean she was not the one that give up busy no uh-uh no she never did nature gave her the power to talk face to face to people but as far as reading a script she was pretty bad she wasn't good she didn't have it despite her less than brilliant acting ability Ava dwarte became one of the most popular radio actresses in our Argentina but her success led to accusations her opponents would repeat throughout her life that she had won all her roles on the casting couch actually the way what people accuse her of here in general is of being a prostitute and there's no evidence whatsoever that she received any money for her sleeping around we also don't know to what extent she slept around and I would emphasize again that it probably was no more than than any other of the actresses who tended to throw this in her face but much bigger issues were about to engulf aita in 1943 the Argentine military took power in a coup and her life would change forever she would cross paths with the most powerful officer in the new regime a colonel named Juan Peron [Music] in 1943 when she was 24 iita would begin the romance that would change history she fell in love with the strong man in Argentina's new military government Juan Peron was the secretary for labor and War he had a gift for politics and an undeniable charm the two met at a fundraiser for Argentine Earth Quake victims probably she went after him I would I would imagine her going after him she went after after Fame and Fortune so why not go about after this handsome man who seemed to be the best catch around Colonel Peron was Smitten by the young actress he was 48 she was 24 she was a woman of fragile appearance but with a strong voice and fevered eyes when she spoke her face seemed to catch fire they became lovers almost immediately iita quickly installed herself in peron's apartment without asking him beforehand and ordered his previous mistress to leave town becoming peron's mistress gave Evita's acting career an immediate boost she suddenly began getting movie roles she'd never had before she did use the fact that he was a colonel in the government and and PR soon vice president of of Argentina in order to get better contract she did she hadn't gotten that before and I I I cannot believe accidentally she got it just just then but aita's Focus was shifting from acting to politics Juan Peron was championing the rights of the poor and Avita who' known poverty well began supporting his vision by making radio speeches the revolution came because there is hate and a sense of Injustice there is a man a soldier who can bring dignity to the workers iita did more than make speeches she sat in on peron's private political meeting she hears the discussions uh among the politicians apparently she would serve coffee and she would stay and she would listen and she would he in male dominated Argentina allowing a mistress to sit in on such meetings was unheard of they don't accept uh um senior officers to have Mistresses and particularly of her social background so this was something that was very brave or daring or radical on his part and it's hard to imagine that he it was a slip you know it looks as it was on purpose perhaps Pon valued I's advice or maybe he was simply in love but his fellow officers were appalled by her constant presence soon Peron was expelled from the government his fellow officers jailed him in 1945 one of them said it was the military's duty to stop the country falling into the hands of that woman Vita's radio contracts were immediately cancelled and suddenly she felt abandoned once [Music] again she is lost I mean she's lost everything that she had she cannot be an actress her men the men she loves is in jail and God knows what's going to happen to him and she knows that her Destiny has been by then very close to his those days still cause me pain I never felt so small so utterly unimportant iita tried single-handedly to win support for pedone to get him out of jail she went around knocking you know from door to door knocking um on people's doors and windows and anything to try to try to get people to help and she at that point um people were aware of her relationship with Pon and she apparently was pulled out of a car and beaten up uh as she as she went around trying to drum up support for p whether through aita's efforts or not no one knows for sure T A minor miracle happened a spontaneous rally of 200,000 workers descended on the presidential Palace chanting that Peron must be freed the military leaders fearing they'd lost control of the Country released Pon and let him speak to the mass of demonstrators he was cheered wildly and instantly became the front runner for the upcoming presidential elections [Music] only 4 days later pyron and Ava were married conscious of her new image as a candidate's wife iita tried to have her acting publicity shots destroyed and in her hometown someone went into the municipal archives and removed her birth certificate aita had never told her husband she was born illegitimate when Peron began campaigning for the presidency iita again defied convention she campaigned with him that might have been the first time however that this that she could see and of course Pon could see the kind of popular reaction to her presence and the the response in the countryside particularly and amongst the working class was was was pretty astounding an enthusiasm that was a mix between enthusiasm for a for a political leader and for a a beautiful woman who was uh telling people I'm one of you Peron won the election easily which meant that aita was now at the age of 26 the first lady of Argentina iita was popular with the mass but the upper class was horrified to see a woman of her upbringing as first lady I think it was total horror absolute horror dismay disgust the all the negative things that negative things that you could imagine uh uh come up because of of of her Origins her lack of Education the fact that she's been a movie actress I mean which was the pets there's a terrible saying here about the the the monkey dressed in silk is always a monkey here they used to say well aita finally she dressed like a queen but she had thick ankles but by the time um she was at the sort of peak of her power at which point she was the most powerful woman in the world she was dressing impeccably iita dressed like the movie star she'd once dreamed of becoming and the public loved it it was as though one of their own had made it to the top but aita constantly reminded them that she was still working class I am a greaser she used to say gra I'm a greaser she from her Dior suits and um you could say that the Dior was contradictory but nevertheless she uh Vindicated people's right to remain working class and supposedly have some of the Privileges of the higher social classes if you will iita further annoyed High Society by making a grand tour of Europe in 1947 touring Europe was something only available to the rich but now iita would show the wealthy class just how far a girl from the slums had come the trip to Europe is her her moment of of Glory as far as that is concerned and and also they're rubbing their nose into it nobody no Argentine will become more famous than she does she will wear the best clothes the best Jewels she will be more beautiful than anybody and there's the actress that comes into play and and I think that shapes her very very much iito was a hit in Europe drawing big crowds first in Franco Spain then in it Italy France Portugal and Switzerland Benito Yami was Argentine ambassador to Switzerland during her visit and remembers that even the normally reserved Swiss were affected by AA Charisma I was very surprised to see the Swiss standing on their balconies with flowers applauding so happy to see her one day we went out in open coaches drawn by horses and the Swiss women would come up and scream Oh what a beautiful woman in Paris she made contact with the great fashion houses who would dress her from then on yet despite all the agulation she told her priest what have I an illegitimate child done to deserve all this but IFA would prove to be much more than a fashion statement she would return home to become a champion of the Argentine poor and to become in the eyes of sun a saint although she was now Argentina's first lady Ava Peron had not forgotten what it was like to to grow up poor in the countryside or to walk the city streets hungry and rejected and so she began a campaign to help the long neglected poor a campaign that became a crusade when the high society women who resented her refused to let her join their charity group she was thrown out more or less I mean that's a good a way to describe it of the main uh Club of the upper classes here which was a like a charity organization a very ritzy charity organization and and um everyone knows that they told iita that she was too young so iita turned on them and said well what about my mama who of course was the Mistress of this rancher in in the province of bues and so that was an insuperable wrist and she never forgot that IID set up her own charity the Ava Peron foundation and encourag the poor to write to her directly and to visit her at her office soon she was receiving hundreds of people every day she actually gave people for example beds housing sewing machines very important sewing machines what you can do with a sewing machine you know changes your whole the life of your entire block not to speak of your family this instilled a total and Lasting loyalty I want to hit people in the face to make them see what poverty [Music] is it probably had a lot to do with the way she grew up she had more than just ambition she had absolute convictions she was very genuine she could have carved out a very comfortable life for herself going to parties and that sort of thing but she left all that and dedicated herself to the needy and the poor she worried about education schools and health made a special point of receiving the sick often welcoming tuberculosis victims and lepers with a kiss despite the warnings of her staff the AA Peron Foundation built thousand of schools and hospitals often stocking them with the most expensive equipment to show that the poor deserve the same as the rich AA herself would visit the projects at night to make sure they were running properly she remembered you know what what people needed she remembered that people uh were playing football but they didn't have shoes or she remembered that people couldn't get to doctors and she never seemed to have gotten sufficiently distant from that to to forget Francis leemon newspaper called aita the Madonna of the Argentine poor and the poor themselves often used the word Saint they were so surprised that they would say I have found my fairy Godmother my angel they were not used to being received with this kind of generosity so vital full of [Music] emotion the a Peron Foundation became a huge business with $200 million in assets and 14,000 workers much of the money came from unions in Private Industry with I's [Music] prodding she didn't ask she would order whenever it had something to do with the poor and the humble she would tell the businessmen and the cabinet ministers in her husband's government what she needed she didn't ask for [Music] favors I's opponents claim she siphoned off much of the money for herself one report claiming she had $700 million in a Swiss bank account whether that is true or not it's certain that aita cared deeply about her social work and put in tremendously long hours in a very real sense I had lost my wife by 1950 we saw each other only occasionally she would work all night I said to her Eva get some rest you are my wife and she said doing this makes me feel I am your wife [Music] one day we'd been working to 3:00 in the morning and she said let's go and eat something at the presidential residence we had to go in on tiptoe because General Peron was asleep he was always in bed by 10: because he had to be at his office at 6:30 in the morning we had a quick snack then we went home and she went off to sleep she is convinced that she is a a a special person who has been Destiny marked by Destiny to do what she does and um that she's going to do until she drops de iita was still in her 20s but her Youth and Beauty hid a tragic Frailty time is my greatest enemy iita often said soon she and her beloved poor would realize how true that was in helping Argentina's poor so conspicuously aita was doing more than just charity work it was good politics her social Crusade combined with her youth her Beauty and her fairy tale rise to power won her the support even the agulation of the masses they see a very beautiful woman very blonde very white skinned very beautiful who says I am one of you she makes them identify with her despite the fact that they are obviously very different and they accept her they defend her as their their one of them you just imagine what it would be like to be a still a very young woman and walk out on a balcony and hear again millions of people calling your name when you go back off the balcony what do you what do you think I think that she was that she was convinced that she was saving the country [Music] she talked to a a big group of people everybody was mesmerized she really she acted magnificently there she would have been so good in the theater she would have been a superstar she was able to put 100,000 people on their toes and yell like crazy aita and that be something you know she made the language of love a political language because the way she talked to workers is as if she were she was still talking in in in in in acting in a soap opera and it worked I's political favy helped her husband to strengthen his hold on the presidential Palace the casa rosada or pink house while Juan Peron had to speak diplomatically to woo the upper classes Evita because she was not officially part of the government could be as radical as she liked in support of the workers he would have her in Bang and so forth and give her the the floor you know so then she would give one of her radical speeches and he would more or less say they're there but he'd let her talk at the end he'd say they're there dear and he'd look around he'd say you know how women are and sit seat her again so it was a way that he could have his cake and eat it too iita organized the pon women's party giving hundreds of thousands of women a political voice when a woman goes into politics she told recruits the man can eat cold stew I think's insights into social problems made her a very early feminist she had to overcome uh all the disadvantages of gender uh being poor the way in which her mother had solved her problems by becoming someone's someone's mistress NAA brought this to the Forefront and said this is what a poor woman is this this is what it is to be working class the pons had no children in her autobiography aita said it was because her real children were the poor and the helpless of Argentina she styled herself almost as a religious icon the pure virginal mother figure in the Catholic country where there is a a a um The Cult to the Virgin Mary is an important cultural phenomenon that the her possible identification with the Virgin Mary happens by 1950 her heavy work schedule was beginning to tell she was taken to the hospital with exhaustion but test revealed something far worse she had cancer of the uterus aita was not told directly but when her doctors suggested surgery she became enraged and refused claiming there was nothing wrong with her and she went straight back to work because I think that what she was doing was by then far more important it was her I also believe that she was Immortal somehow that she was it was never going to happen to her that and she's you know she's 33 despite her illness IID became even more political she allowed her name to be mentioned as a vice presidential candidate in the 1951 elections at a giant rally for Pon a million people began chanting aita's name demanding that she run she told the crowd she would do whatever the people asked but her husband knowing the military would never accept her on the ticket was not amused and at one point you can hear P's voes this accelerates the people crying for her to to to say she'll be the candidate he says um stop this act and uh that's very significant that it was out of control and at that point she may have felt that that she may have really wanted to say yes a few days later aita announced she would not run but her decision was immaterial she was now fatally ill and increasingly unable to get out of bed the Govern government told the public she was suffering from severe anemia masses were held for her recovery and altars raised in her name there was a great anxiety uh first of all she was very beloved so people were were waiting dreaded her death um I think that a big ingredient of that would also have been fear of what would happen after after her death since she'd actually made this an explicit theme you know I cannot be divorced so you are in the government with me and she's dying so what do you register from that I's weight dropped to just 80 lb and when new gowns arrived from Paris she was too thin to wear them she had to have her Maids model them looking at old pictures of herself she would weep and say to think of what I was and what what I have become although iito was losing her health she did not lose her spirit in her rare public speeches she became increasingly fanatical against peron's enemies within the military we will not let Madmen get their hands on Peron when I go down I will go down with the working people and leave nothing standing that is not for Fon making that speech took all her strength she had to be helped from the balcony by pedon she was so slight in my arms there was nothing more than a dead woman in June she amazed her doctors by finding the strength to attend her husband's second inaug ation she had actually um ridden in the in P's parade uh tied to a wire apparatus to keep her standing which is hard to imagine what what she must have been feeling at that point but people could see her standing they could see she was sick but they wouldn't have known that she couldn't that she could not stand up only a few weeks later on July 26th as a nation prayed aita told a maid I could never have stood being ordinary in this life and lapsed into a coma she was given the last rights and National radio began preparing the public calling her condition very serious at 8:25 that night with her mother sisters brother and Pon himself at her bedside iita took her last breath she was 33 years old with the news of Ava peron's death the country went into deep mourning when aita's body was moved to the ministry of labor to Lion State eight people were killed in the crush to see her and 2,000 were injured lines to see the coffin stretched for 30 blocks and the viewing lasted 2 [Music] weeks it was a spectacular display of emotion that went on for days people came from all over the country to be at her funeral it was pain on a very Grand scale she was like the protector of everything but she was the ray of sun of of sunshine in their lives she was the one who would make sure that things happened for them unions asked the pope to make her a saint cities schools and Subways were renamed for her and the evening news broadcast moved from 8:30 to 8:25 the hour at which she had passed into immortality at the funeral 17 th000 police were needed to hold back the Weeping crowd Juan Pon himself surveying the scene said I never knew they loved her so much iita was not buried her body was in bombs so that it could be laid inside a proposed Grand Monument but the monument was never built president Pon without his wife's popularity and beset by economic problems was ousted in who 3 years later and sent into Exile the new military government which hated the piton immediately tried to destroy the iita myth by displaying the wealth she had acquired but that backfired once aita's will was [Music] released I desire that all my assets be used for the poor as proof of my love for them in each shirtless one God was asking me for love which I never withheld the military also had the problem of what to do with aita's embalmed body which they knew would be an important symbol for her supporters the very thought of her body gave them the shakes they knew it was a symbol they could not destroy easily [Music] the church would not allow cremation so in 1957 5 years after she died I's body was secretly buried in a cemetery in Milan Italy but her influence would extend beyond the grave as military governments floundered throughout the 1960s and70s the pedons became a symbol for the opposition left-wing gorilla groups made iita their spiritual leader citing her final speeches about blood and sacrifice people had an interpretation that Ava represented this unadulterated working class um radical working class element revolutionary working class element people remembered her as their most as as this person who called called people to action and and and told people to defend Pon told people to Die For A Cause I's body was recovered from its unmarked Italian grave in 1971 after Argentine guerillas murdered a former military president and arranged to swap his body for IAS iit's corpse apparently in near perfect condition was sent to Juan Peron in Exile in Spain Pon would soon return triumphantly to Argentina to be elected president again in 1973 but he did not take aita's body with him instead he brought his third wife Isabel who achieved aita's goal of becoming vice president Isabelle told Argentina she wanted to follow in aita's footsteps she tried earlier to have a hairo do similar to AAS but it which wasn't but nevertheless I think that she was really haunted by by by ways because in fact she did what aita couldn't do because aita wanted to be vice president but certainly she was occupying a place that in the minds of everybody was a place Isabelle became President when Peron died in 1974 and during her rule aita's body was finally returned home Ava was laid to rest in her family's vault in a buenos Cemetery today her Legend lives on most famously in the musical Lita now a major film starring McDonald [Music] it's nearly half a century since aita's death but the story of an illegitimate slum girl who Rose to Captivate a colonel and then a nation still fascinates the public imagination iita was a symbol of femininity with a fantastic personality I think the personality intrigues people and at the same time tragically any woman who gets into power and we are talking 50 years later any woman in power intrigues because it's because it's it's not the way things should be I think people are drawn on to this figure to try to understand how did this work how did she pull it off because it's very very very difficult for people to pull this off and then of course she dies beautiful you know it's like Marilyn Monroe blonde beautiful not a single wrinkle not a double chin nothing I mean those beautiful eyes and that beautiful smile and she will be forever portrayed as she was at [Music] 33 ia's life was brief but it had all the ingredients of great myth an astonishing rise to the top a magnetic appeal that enthralled a nation and a tragic finale just as her star Shone at its brightest [Music] oh [Music] [Music] la [Music] oh