Gilbert Roland: Latin Legend

Gilbert Roland as The Cisco Kid

The Golden Age of Hollywood was not particularly golden for Hispanic actors. If one was not particularly handsome, he might find himself playing a number of Mexican bandidos and buffoons. If one was particularly handsome, he might find himself playing a succession of stereotypical Latin lovers. It took actors of considerable talent to break free of the stereotypical roles in which the Hollywood studios insisted on casting Hispanic actors. Among the actors who was able to break free of the stereotypes was the extremely talented Gilbert Roland.

Gilbert Roland was born Luis Antonio Dámaso de Alonso in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico on December 11 1905. His father, Francisco, was a bullfighter who had immigrated from Spain. In fact, young Luis had intended to follow in his father's footsteps as a bullfighter, but his destiny would take him in another direction entirely. When the Mexican Revolution began it was only a matter of time before Ciudad Juárez would become caught up in it. Francisco then moved his family to safety across the border to El Paso, Texas. Sadly, El Paso would not be a particularly pleasant experience for young Luis. There he faced anti-Hispanic bigotry. To cope young Luis escaped into the movies, spending any money he had to attend the cinema. Of course, being Hispanic he had to watch from the balcony, which was reserved "For Coloured People Only."

Having to sit in the balcony at movie theatres was the least of young Luis's worries, as he faced racism on a daily basis. He was once beaten for not knowing every single word of "The Star Spangled Banner". Regardless, he persevered. He became a newspaper boy and still later a messenger boy.  It was while he was a messenger boy that he was in an accident that would change his life. A car hit and almost killed him, and it took him a long time to recover. When his father went to perform bullfights in Tijuana, he took Luis with him. Luis stayed at a ranch outside San Diego, California, where he met actor Chris-Pin Martin. Chris-Pin Martin told Luis he could get work as an extra in Hollywood. Luis wound up hired to play a cowboy and then an American Indian. He later joked, "All day I chased myself on horseback for three dollars and lunch. My baptism in silent movies."

Luis found it difficult to make a living as an extra, and to make ends meet he eventually took a job answering fan mail for actor Antonio Moreno. In 1922 his knowledge of bullfighting got him a job as a dresser's assistant in order to get Rudolph Valentino ready for the bullfighting scenes in Blood and Sand (1922). Both as an extra and in bit parts, young Luis would appear in some memorable films. He was an extra in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923). He was a matador in The Spaniard (1925).

It was an agent named Ivan Kahn who would get Luis his big break in films. He got him a bit part in The Midshipman (1925), which starred Ramon Novarro. By coincidence, Ramon Novarro's family had known Gilbert Roland's family before they had moved from Mexico. It was Ivan Kahn who suggested that Luis adopt a stage name Mr. Kahn's suggestion was George Adams. Instead Luis created a stage name by combining the last names of two of his favourite actors, John Gilbert and Ruth Roland. Luis Alonso then became Gilbert Roland.

Gilbert Roland received his first big break in a supporting role in the film The Plastic Age (1925) starring Clara Bow.  Curiously, Mr. Roland's first major role would not be a Hispanic character, but instead the very Northern European Carl Peters. It would be his role as Annibale in The Blonde Saint (1926) that would draw him his first overwhelmingly positive reviews. He was signed to Untied Artists and cast right away as Armand Duval in the studio's adaptation of Camille (1926). Unfortunately Gilbert Roland's first male lead role would prove to be a bit of a double-edged sword. While it guaranteed larger roles in movies (often the lead role), it also meant that he would spend a good deal of time playing stereotypical Latin lovers. Indeed, when Rudolph Valentino died, some in the Hollywood press declared Gilbert Roland as Valentino's successor.

While Gilbert Roland would play more than his fair share of Latin lovers, he would play other sorts of roles as well. In fact, not only were many of the characters he played over the years not lovers, but often they were not Latin either. In Men of the North (1930) he played Louis Le Bay, a French Canadian falsely accused of a gold theft. In Universal's Spanish language version of their adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's Resurrection (1931), he played Prince Dmitri Nekhludov. In The Woman in Room 13 (1932) he played Victor Legrand. Like many Hispanic actors of the era, Gilbert Roland was often cast in roles of ethnicities that did not originate in Northern Europe. In addition to the various Frenchmen he played, he played the Arabic roles of Kasim and his evil twin Hassan in the serial The Desert Hawk (1944). He played another Arabic character, Achmed Abdullah, in Around the World in 80 Days (1956).

Perhaps because his father had been a bullfighter and Gilbert Roland had aspired to be one, he may well have been his best in adventure movies.  Indeed, his most famous role may well have been that of The Cisco Kid. Gilbert Roland was only the second Hispanic actor to ever play The Kid, after Cesar Romero. He took over the role of Cisco from Duncan Renaldo in 1946's The Gay Cavalier. He would go onto appear in five more Cisco Kid movies. In addition to the Cisco Kid movies, Gilbert Roland was also a popular choice for casting directors when it came to swashbucklers. He played Captain López, the sea captain of archvillain Don José Álvarez de Córdoba in The Sea Hawk (1940). In Captain Kidd (1945), he played Kidd's navigator, Jose Lorenzo. He was one of the stars of the obscure swashbuckler The Diamond Queen (1953).  He appeared in two episodes of Zorro as the villain El Cuchillo. He appeared as Don Alejandro Vega, Zorro's father, in the 1974 TV movie Zorro.

As might be expected, Gilbert Roland appeared in several Westerns over the years, beyond the Cisco Kid franchise. He was the lead in Thunder Trail (1937), based on Zane Gray's novel of the same name. He had a significant role in Anthony Mann's Western The Furies (1950) as Juan Herrera, close friend of rancher's daughter Vance Jeffords (played by Barbara Stanwyck) and her ally against her father. He would also have roles in such Westerns as Bandido! (1956) and The Last of the Fast Guns (1958). Not surprisingly, he would appear frequently on television Westerns, including Wagon Train, Bonanza, Frontier Circus, Gunsmoke, The High Chaparral, and Kung Fu. Later in his career he appeared in several Spaghetti Westerns, including Any Gun Can Play (1967), Johnny Hamlet (1968), God Was in the West, Too, at One Time (1968), and Sartana Does Not Forgive (1968). Unlike many Latin actors of the Studio Era, Gilbert Roland was fortunate in that he was almost never cast as stereotypical bandidos. That having been said, he played many military officers and aristocrats over the years.

Gilbert Roland's last role was in the Western Barbarosa in 1982. He died of cancer in 1994 at the age of 88.

Sadly, Gilbert Roland would spend much of his career acting in B movies. When he did appear in an A picture, it was generally in a supporting role. This is not to say that he did not give many great performances over the years, and it was not unusual for Mr. Roland to outshine a movie's leads. In The Last Train from Madrid (1937) he gave an admirable performance as the fugitive Eduardo de Soto. In Juarez (1939) he played Colonel Miguel Lopez, who would eventually betray Maximilian and his forces. The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima (1952) gave him one of his very best roles, that of agnostic Hugo da Silva who nonetheless is friends to children who wholeheartedly believe in the miracle of the lady of Fatima. In The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) he played womanising actor Victor "Gaucho" Ribera. Even on television Gilbert Roland was capable of great performances. One of the best episodes of the Western anthology series Death Valley Days was "A Kingdom for a Horse", in which Gilbert Roland's played Brazil's Emperor Dom Pedro II. It was one of his finest television roles.

During a period when Hollywood was content to cast Hispanic actors as bandidos, Latin lovers, and buffoons, Gilbert Roland was able to overcome stereotypes and play a wide variety of roles in his career. Over the years he played everything from military officers to matadors to pirates to murder suspects. He could play heroes and villains equally with ease. Even though Hollywood never utilised him to his full extent, Gilbert Roland left behind a long list of great performances.