SAG-AFTRA

Summer 2015

Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/555596

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 45 of 48

44 SAG-AFTRA | Summer 2015 | SAGAFTRA.org Snapshot by Valerie Yaros Leo Carrillo: More than a California State Park Leo Carrillo and Janet Colebrook in a publicity still for the touring production of his 1917 Broadway hit Lombardi, Ltd. Below, Carrillo on horseback in the 1941 Universal serial Riders of Death Valley. L eo Carrillo is a state park, with one of the most popular beaches and campsites on the Southern California coast, adjacent to Malibu. Leo Carrillo is also an elementary school in Orange County and both a historic park and walking trail in Carlsbad. We know what Leo Carrillo is now, but who was this man? At his birth in Los Angeles in 1881, Leopoldo Carrillo was an eighth-generation Californian and the great- grandson of Carlos Antonio Carrillo, provisional governor of California from 1836-1837, during its time as an independent Mexican state. In 1903, he was a cartoonist for the San Francisco Examiner. In 1917, a Broadway star. In the 1930s through 1940s, a prolific movie character actor. On 1950s television, he was a household name as the beloved Pancho, co-star of The Cisco Kid. Deeply proud of his Spanish and early California heritage, he expressed his love — and concerns — to a newspaper reporter in 1924: "I have a message for the people of California. Protect the old Spanish homes that are left; keep the Spanish names of streets and towns. Don't change them for newfangled, high-sounding names. Those old names all have meanings. They are landmarks, just as the adobe houses and the old missions are landmarks in the history of the state. It cuts me in the heart every time I see a workman dig a pick into an adobe wall. I am doing what I can to keep the tradition." From 1943–1961, Carrillo served on the California Beaches and Parks Commission. The beach at Leo Carrillo State Park, named for him in 1953, is also a popular filming location and received its first onscreen credit for Gidget in 1959. The beach has been seen in decades of commercials, television shows and movies, including Beach Blanket Bingo, I Love You Alice B. Toklas, The Karate Kid, The X-Files, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, The Mentalist and American Horror Story. His former Carlsbad home, Rancho de los Kiotes, is now preserved as part of Leo Carrillo Ranch Historic Park. In 2013, Carrillo, who has two stars on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, was posthumously inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers at the National Cowboy & Western Museum in Oklahoma City, along with his Cisco Kid co-star Duncan Renaldo, movie legend Robert Mitchum and award-winning Cherokee actor Wes Studi. L on the Southern California coast, adjacent to Malibu. Carrillo is also an elementary school in Orange County was an eighth-generation Californian and the great-

Articles in this issue

Links on this page

Archives of this issue

view archives of SAG-AFTRA - Summer 2015