Fri 19 Nov 2010
Reviewed by Dan Stumpf: THE CISCO KID WESTERN COLLECTION.
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western movies[8] Comments
THE CISCO KID WESTERN COLLECTION:
â— THE GAY CAVALIER. Monogram Pictures, 1946. Gilbert Roland, Martin Garralaga, Nacho Galindo, Ramsay Ames, Helen Gerald, Tristram Coffin. Director: Willliam Nigh.
â— BEAUTY AND THE BANDIT. Monogram Pictures, 1946. Gilbert Roland, Martin Garralaga, Frank Yaconelli, Ramsay Ames, Vida Aldana. Director: William Nigh.
â— SOUTH OF MONTEREY. Monogram Pictures, 1946. Gilbert Roland, Martin Garralaga, Frank Yaconelli, Marjorie Riordan, Iris Flores. Director: William Nigh.
â— RIDING THE CALIFORNIA TRAIL. Monogram Pictures, 1947. Gilbert Roland, Martin Garralaga, Frank Yaconelli, Teala Loring, Inez Cooper. Director: William Nigh
â— ROBIN HOOD OF MONTEREY. Monogram Pictures, 1947. Gilbert Roland, Chris Pin Martin, Evelyn Brent, Jack La Rue, Pedro DeCordoba, Donna DeMario. Director: Christy Cabanne.
â— KING OF THE BANDITS. Monogram Pictures, 1947. Gilbert Roland, Angela Greene, Chris Pin Martin, Anthony Warde, Laura Treadwell, William Bakewell. Director: Christy Cabanne.
Speaking of Gilbert Roland and Widely Available (as I was at the end of my previous review ), his six Cisco Kid movies from Monogram are out on DVD in pristine prints not seen since their original release. This is not, however, a cause for general rejoicing, as the films themselves could be charitably described as lack-luster.
Gilbert Roland was a romantic leading man in the silent films, but despite his melodious voice and relaxed acting, he slipped badly in the 30s and 40s: he can be glimpsed in humiliatingly small parts in The Sea Hawk (1940) and My Life with Caroline (1941) and he landed in a Columbia serial, The Desert Hawk in ’44.
In 1949 John Huston resurrected his fortunes with a meaty part in We Were Strangers that led to a satisfying career as a busy character actor, but in 1946 he was doing pretty much anything that came along — and doing it surprisingly well.
Roland’s Cisco Kid movies have their moments, but they are mostly listless and formulaic. Action is scarce and rather routine (except for a couple of sword fights in The Gay Cavalier and Riding the California Trail) and as for formula, well, in Cavalier Martin Garralaga plays an impecunious rancher who wants to wipe out his debts by marrying his daughter to a shifty Americano. It is up to Cisco to rescue her.
In California Trail, Garralaga plays a rancher in debt to bad guys who wants to absolve his debt by marrying off his niece to a Yankee ne’er-do-well. And in South of Monterey, he’s a Police Captain who owes his job to American bad-guy Harry Woods and pressures his sister to marry him.
Okay, so there’s a lot of bland-and-predictable in these films, but they are saved, redeemed even, by Gilbert Roland’s swaggering, sexy portrayal of the Cisco Kid. Roland, the only Mexican actor to play Cisco, wrote some of his own dialogue for these films, which demonstrates how seriously he took the part.
His macho swagger and general air of devil-may-care recall Doug Fairbanks in The Gaucho (1927) and even in the reduced circumstances of these poverty-row westerns he looks relaxed, expansive, and damn sexy — which isn’t easy in a B-movie.
Errol Flynn and Clark Gable projected rugged male sexiness easily with the vast resources of Warner Brothers and MGM behind them, but Gilbert Roland somehow managed the same effect on the tiny budgets of a studio renowned in those days as Hollywood’s dumping ground. And somehow he keeps one watching these tawdry films long after their promise has waned.
November 20th, 2010 at 9:54 pm
I have a box set of 35 episodes of the Duncan Renaldo-Leo Carillo television series, but I’ve not watched any of them yet. I don’t remember seeing any of them when I was growing up, but I do remember the radio series. After 1946, or so I’m told, Cisco and Pancho were played on radio by Jack Mather and Harry Lang. Before then it was Jackson Beck and either Louis Sorin and Mel Blanc. (The chronology isn’t quite clear, but I haven’t spent very much time in researching it.)
The TV series was on from 1950 to 1956, and I’m sure I’d remember if any of the local stations carried it back then, but I don’t.
Duncan Renaldo also played Cisco in the movies, both before and after Gilbert Roland. Before Renaldo was Cesar Romero, and before him was Warner Baxter. The was one silent Cisco movie, in which he was played by William R. Dunn.
In spite of Dan’s overall lack of enthusiasm for the Gilbert run, with some qualifications, I’ve ordered the box set. The dealer on Amazon I ordered it from had it for $7 less than the next lowest, which probably means he priced it wrong.
This has happened before, and it often means the order will be canceled when the mistake is discovered. I’ll let you what happens this time. $10 for six movies is a bargain, including the shipping.
— Just noticed this, something I’d forgotten till now. Jimmy Smits and Cheech Marin played Cisco and Pancho in a 1995 movie, available as a VHS tape, but not on DVD. Anyone remember this one?
November 20th, 2010 at 11:27 pm
I remember the TV series very well. Steve must have been one of the very few kids who did not watch it. I remember the parting line at the end of so many episodes with the two heroes grinning at each other: “Hey Cisco, Hey Pancho!” I have to admit as a ten year old kid I liked the show. Now, I have absolutely no desire to watch it all. I’m not sure that is a good thing.
November 20th, 2010 at 11:41 pm
I grew up in northern Michigan where for many many years there was only one TV station to watch.
But don’t feel sorry for me. In my previous comment, when I was talking about The Cisco Kid on the radio, I forgot to say that I grew up listening to not only that program (with exactly the same ending that you mention, Walker), but BOBBY BENSON, STRAIGHT ARROW, SKY KING, CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT, SGT. PRESTON and CLYDE BEATTY, too.
I also wish I could listen to a few TOM MIX shows on the radio again, but aside from a few scattered episodes, the hoards that are holding them show no signs of giving any of them up.
In spite of spending a good chunk of my formative years lying on the floor next to the radio, I also wish to assure everybody that I grew up just fine. Just in case you were wondering.
November 21st, 2010 at 2:05 pm
An amazing thing about the Cisco Kid is that he appeared in one story by O. Henry and in that story he was a cold blooded killer and somehow became the hero of films and tv shows galore.
Dan loaned me this set some months back and I enjoyed them. In the first 4 films Cisco had a band of about 8 or10 men who, for the most part, just sang. In the last 2 all he had was Pancho.
November 21st, 2010 at 5:45 pm
You’re absolutely right, Ray. Interested parties might want to look up Cisco on Wikipedia as a starter:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cisco_Kid
One thing I did not know, or if I did, I’d forgotten:
“For his portrayal of the Kid in the early sound film In Old Arizona (1928), Warner Baxter won the second Best Actor Oscar.”
It’s still not clear how Cisco made the transition from outlaw to romantic hero in such a dramatic fashion.
Referring once again to IN OLD ARIZONA, all that’s said is: “This film was a revised version of the original story in which the Kid is portrayed in a positive light.”
The transformation held from that point on. While no longer in the same category as Sherlock Holmes and Tarzan as popular entertainment heroes, the Cisco Kid may still be in the top ten.
Being on the wrong side of 20 years old, I could of course be all wet about that.
November 22nd, 2010 at 9:44 am
Here is a link to a LibriVox recording of the O. Henry story “The Caballero’s Way” featuring the Cisco Kid: http://ia700202.us.archive.org/17/items/short_story_041_1001_librivox/shortstory041_14caballerosway_bm_64kb.mp3 . The reader does a fair enough job at it and only has a trace of the smugness with which the story is laced. I found the story to be too mean spirited and condescending to be funny or very enjoyable. The gimmick on which O. Henry pegged the story was a cruel one and the story that preceded it kept the reader from caring about the characters and from feeling that the story is a true tragedy.
I watched online a preview of the collectors’ set of the Cisco Kid movies and Gilbert Roland had some of that early Clint Eastwood toughness to him. One wonders whence that portrayal of the macho Latino came. Was it from the Hollywood tradition going back to movies like Zorro or from the contemporary movies of Jorge Negrete or Pedro Infante?
Touching back on the O. Henry story for an unrelated side comment, the switch garb gimmick was similarly used by Mike MacLean in “McHenry’s Gift”, anthologized in The Best American Mystery Stories 2006. The idle question that comes to mind is: was it a case of recycling or coincidence?
November 22nd, 2010 at 12:21 pm
Daryl
Thanks for the info and the link. I’ll have to either read or listen to the Cisco Kid story, that’s for sure. It must really have caught the reading public’s attention with a vengeance when it first appeared for the character to have become as famous as he did, even though the movies helped.
It probably didn’t hurt that almost anything that O. Henry wrote back then was a topic of discussion almost immediately.
As for “McHenry’s Gift,” I’ve not read it, nor even heard of it, but based on nothing more than the title, can there be any doubt?
— Steve
January 22nd, 2011 at 2:11 am
Re the original story by O Henry, Cisco isn’t a Mexican in it, but a Billy the Kid type Anglo who dresses up in his Mexican girl friend’s clothes to escape and sends her out in his outfit to be shot down by the Texas Rangers. Like the real Billy the Kid (who inspired the character) Cisco in the story is a juvenile delinquent and back shooting sociopath, but charming.
Some hero, a back shooting cross dressing coward.
Incidentally. the Texas Ranger captain in the story was modeled on Lee Nace, the Ranger who arrested William Henry Porter in San Antonio on the embezzlement charge that sent him to Ossining (Sing Sing) eventually.
Nace befriended Porter, and he later wrote several westerns tales with likable Ranger’s based on Nace.
Cisco had a long run in comic books, mostly at Dell, and a too short lived comic strip beautifully illustrated by Argentine cartoonist Jose Luis Salinas.
I met Renaldo in 1971 in Denton, Texas (there was a tailor there who had been a costumer at Republic and Renaldo and several old timers still flew in once a year for fittings and to have suits made, and he looked little different than when he played Cisco on television — like Gilbert Roland he was ageless — in fact he was 50 when the series started filming — keep in mind his first movie was Trader Horn).
He was every bit as charming in person as on screen, and quite happy to meet a fan.
Renaldo had a fascinating life story — early stardom, a fatal tragedy, ruin through no fault of his own, eventual redemption (including a pardon from FDR himself), and a new career in films — mostly in Republic serials and the Three Mesquiteer series with Bob Livingston. When Cisco came to television he recognised the potential, took a piece of the action, and made his fortune — a happy ending after having been victim of one of an almost Woolrichian tragedy.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Warner Baxter winning the Oscar playing the Cisco Kid is that Ronald Colman lost out in his nomination that year playing Bulldog Drummond. Can you imagine the Academy nominating an actor today for playing either character?
Me neither.