Antônio Renato Aragão OMC (pronounced: ahn-TOH-neo HEH-nah-too ah-rah-GAHN-oon) is a Brazilian actor, comedian, director, producer, screenwriter, presenter, singer, lawyer, businessman, writer, and blogger, famous for the character Didi, with whom he led the comedy group Os Trapalhões, between the 1970s and 1990s. In the 1984 Brazilian parody film Os Trapalhões e o Mágico de Oróz, Aragão not only played Didi, but is also one of the film's writers.
Biography[]
Renato Aragão was born in Sobral, Ceará to the Sobral writer Paulo Ximenes Aragão and the teacher Dinorá Lins. In 1955, he became an Army officer (second lieutenant of infantry), graduated from the Centro de Preparação de Oficiais da Reserva (CPOR). While still a law student, on September 5, 1958, while returning from Recife to Fortaleza, Renato was one of the passengers on board the Curtiss C-46 Commando plane, registration number PP-LDX, from Loid Aéreo Nacional, which crashed in the Serrotão region, close to Presidente João Suassuna Airport, in Campina Grande (PB). He and a friend survived by helping other survivors until the arrival of rescuers, who opened a path through the forest with machetes to reach the crash site.
At the age of 24, Renato won a TV Ceará competition to work as a "realizador" – a kind of director, writer, and producer of programs – and within a short time he was working as an actor. The first television program he participated in was Vídeo Alegre. In 1964, Renato moved to Rio de Janeiro to study program direction and was soon hired by TV Tupi in São Paulo to work on the comedy show "A, E, I, O...URCA". The move to TV Excelsior in 1966 gave him the opportunity to create his own comedy show; then it was born Os Adoráveis Trapalhões, in which he starred alongside Wanderley Cardoso, Ivon Curi and Ted Boy Marino.
Despite having participated in many other humorous programs, Aragão would never forget the formula he used in "Adoráveis Trapalhões", and finally managed to consecrate it in 1974, when he debuted "Os Trapalhões", now back on TV Tupi, alongside Dedé Santana, Mussum, and Zacarias. Renato Aragão acted in several films, some of which received foreign awards, such as Os Vagabundos Trapalhões and "O Cangaceiro Trapalhão", at the Lisbon International Children's Film Festival, in Portugal, in 1984, and "Os Trapalhões e a Árvore da Juventude", at the 3rd Festival de Cine Infantil de Ciudad Guayana, in Venezuela, in 1993.
Role as Didi Mocő[]
Didi Mocő is the most successful character played by Renato Aragão. The character is so famous that Renato Aragão is better known by the name Didi than by his own name. Renato says that the name Didi Mocő was created impromptu in na auditorium program when Aragão was already working at TV Tupi, in Rio de Janeiro. Didi appeared on TV for the first time in the TV show "Vídio Alegre", on the then newly opened TV Ceará, on November 30, 1960.
In Didi's first and only Oz-related appearance, Os Trapalhões e o Mágico de Oróz (film), Renato Aragão had been separated from Os Trapalhões for between 6 months to 1 year prior to the production of that film, that being the film that marked the group's return to the big screen after their separation. As the film was a parody of the 1939 MGM film, Didi was a loose adaptation for Dorothy, serving the same role of meeting the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion on his way to Oróz.
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