Toto Karaca

Toto Karaca — Biography

Toto Karaca was a stage and screen actress who rose to prominence as a comedy and vaudeville performer during the years when Turkish theatre moved from the tuluat tradition to Western-style drama, and who later became one of Turkish cinema's sought-after character actors. Born İrma Felekyan, she is also remembered as the mother of Anatolian rock pioneer Cem Karaca and the grandmother of Emrah Karaca.

Her career grew out of a theatre family: she was taught by her mother, studied ballet as a child and became known as İrma Toto by singing and dancing in several languages in the Direklerarası district. In the 1930s she worked in Ömer Aydın's operettas and musical plays, and later with various operetta companies. In 1939 she married stage actor Mehmet Karaca, took the surname Karaca under the surname law, and from then on was known as Toto Karaca. In 1960 she was among the founders of the Istanbul Theatre.

She came to the screen in 1947 with Kılıbıklar and went on to appear in Bağdagül, Kadının Fendi, Bizim Kız and Yasemin, usually playing worldly, hard-to-fool types. She died in Istanbul on 22 July 1992; her funeral was held at the Kumkapı Armenian Patriarchate Church and she was buried in the family grave at the Şişli Armenian Cemetery. Her story was recalled in the film Cem Karaca'nın Gözyaşları, in which she is played by Yasemin Yalçın.