Ramos Calhelha

Moacyr Ramos Calhelha was born in Brazil in 1919. His mother died within a few months of his birth and his father died when he was three. His sister, Daura, (18 years older) raised him with her husband Jorge Magalhaes. Moacyr attended elementary and high school in Brazil. He won a scholarship to Niagara University and immigrated to the US in 1938 to attend college. He left college during World War II and enlisted in the Brazilian Army, working from Washington, D.C. in the Signal Corps. In May, 1943, he married Maria Ospina, from Bogota, Colombia. There were two children from the marriage, Daura M. Calhelha (11 February 1944) and Moacyr R. Calhelha Junior (7 June 1948). Professionally, Calhelha had a diverse career that included television and radio credits in the United States and work as a freelance translator & narrator (English to Portuguese) for Twentieth Century Fox, among others. His resonant voice, used in dubbing many American films, is very well known to this day in Brazil. When he returned to Brazil in the 1970s, he worked as a radio news anchor and did commercial and artistic recordings. Most well known, is his recording of Jonathan Livingston Seagull in Portuguese (Jonathan Livingston Gaviota).