Summer 1962. Rio de Janeiro. At the Veloso Bar, a block from the beach at Ipanema, two friends, the composer Antonio Carlos Jobim and the poet Vinícius de Moraes, are drinking Brahma beer and musing aloud about their latest song collaboration.
The duo favor the place for the good brew and the even better girl-watching opportunities. Though both are married men, they’re not above a little ogling. Especially when it comes to a neighborhood girl nicknamed Helô. Eighteen-year old Heloisa Eneida Menezes Pais Pinto is a Carioca - a native of Rio. She’s tall and tan, with emerald green eyes and long, dark wavy hair. They’ve seen her passing by, as she’s heading to the beach or coming home from school. She has a way of walking that de Moraes calls “sheer poetry.”
As he later wrote of Helô, “She was a golden girl, a mixture of flower and mermaid, full of brightness and grace, but with a touch of sadness.”
Jobim’s description was more direct. “She had a fantastic figure. Let’s just say that she had everything in the right place.”
Legend has it that Jobim and de Moraes were so inspired by this shapely coed, that they wrote a song for her right on the bar napkins. It’s a good story, but it’s not quite true.
Following their success composing songs for the 1959 film Black Orpheus, the writers began work on a musical comedy. Conceived by de Moraes, it was called Blimp. There was a rash of UFO sightings around Brazil in the early ‘60s, and in that spirit, Blimp concerned a Martian who arrives in Rio during the height of Carnavale. And what might impress a little green man the most about our planet? A beautiful girl in a bikini, of course.
Jobim and de Moraes were stalled two verses in on the song they called “Menina que Passa” (“The Girl Who Passes By”). They needed a fresh breeze of inspiration, something vivid to stir their alien visitor’s blood. Conjuring up the vision of their favorite hip-swaying distraction, they poured out all their secret longing and lust into the newly titled “Garota da Ipanema.”
Though Blimp never got off the ground, the Martian girl-watching tune became not only a hit in Brazil, but the international calling card for a style of music that charmed the world - Bossa Nova.
While Helô inspired the song, it was another Carioca who carried it beyond Rio. Astrud Gilberto was just the wife of singing star João Gilberto when she entered a NYC studio in March 1963. João and Jobim were making a record with tenor saxman Stan Getz. The idea of cutting a verse on “Ipanema” in English came up, and Astrud was the only one of the Brazilians who spoke more than phrasebook English.
Astrud’s child-like vocal, devoid of vibrato and singerly mannerisms, was the perfect foil for her husband’s soft bumblebee voice. Jobim tinkled piano. Getz blew a creamy smooth tenor. Four minutes of magic went to tape.
A year later, the song was casting its quiet spell of sea and sand on the charts, washing past the Beatles’ “I Want To Hold Your Hand.” It peaked in mid-June at #5, selling over two million copies.
“The Girl From Ipanema” went on to become the second-most recorded popular song in history, behind “Yesterday.” Covered by an A-Z gamut of performers, it’s become the ultimate cliché of elevator music - shorthand for the entire lounge revival of the ‘90s.
In the mid-’80s, the Veloso bar was renamed Garota da Ipanema, and the street where its located was dubbed Rua Vinícius de Moraes (the poet died in 1980). Jobim, uneasy about the commercialization of the song and the use of his late partner’s name, objected, complaining that “Now the cars are driving over Vinícius and dogs come and pee over him.”
Over the years, Helô Pinheiro (her married name) enjoyed country-wide fame, ranking with Pelé as one of the good-will ambassadors of Brazil. She never settled on an occupation, dabbling in acting, then running a modeling agency. In 1987, she posed nude for Playboy (and again in 2003, with her daughter Ticiane). In 2001, Helô opened the Girl From Ipanema clothing boutique in a Rio shopping center.
Shortly after, the heirs of Jobim and de Moraes filed a lawsuit, claiming, “Helô Pinheiro, besides not having written the song, was only inadvertently involved in its creation, and as a result of that fortunate coincidence has had her life improved. That does not guarantee her the right to use the [song] for commercial purposes.”
Helô says, “Tom used to say to me that ‘The Girl From Ipanema’ was the goose that laid the golden egg. But I never made a cent from any of that, nor do I claim that I should. Yet now that I’m using a legally registered trademark, they want to prohibit me from being the girl from Ipanema, which is really going too far. I’m sure that Tom and Vinícius would never question the use of the name. It was an homage to them.”
After much ugliness in and out of court, Helô was able to keep the name for her boutique. Today, she reflects on the early ‘60s in Ipanema with nostalgia. “I like the time when everything was prettier because of love, as it says in the Portuguese version of the song. I am still touched when I arrive in some place and somebody plays the song in my honor.”