Leo Carrillo

American actor and conservationist

• Born: August 6, 1880
• Birthplace: Los Angeles, California
• Died: September 10, 1961
• Place of death: Santa Monica, California

Carrillo appeared in nearly all branches of show business and his career as an actor in motion pictures is celebrated with a star on the Hollywood Boulevard Walk of Fame. But equally, if not more, important was his dedication to the preservation of California’s natural beauty and historic places so that everyone would have the opportunity to enjoy them. For his services to the state then-governor Edmund G. “Pat” Brown dubbed him “Mr. California.”

Early Life

The scion of an old, distinguished California family, Leopold Antonio Carrillo (cah-REE-oh) was born in Los Angeles in 1880. His great-great-grandfather had emigrated from Spain to San Diego, California, where Carrillo spent many of his formative years. His great-grandfather was the provisional governor of California, a great-uncle was three times mayor of Los Angeles, and his father, Juan José Carrillo, served as the police chief and then mayor of Santa Monica, California. Carrillo’s family wanted him to consider the priesthood, but he opted to attend college and earn a degree in engineering. He worked on a railroad construction crew to finance his education.

Life’s Work

Carrillo was destined to find his fulfillment in various creative endeavors. A talented caricaturist, he pursued a career as a newspaper political cartoonist and was hired by The San Francisco Examiner. While employed there, he became friendly with its publisher, William Randolph Hearst, and much later was involved with the fate of Hearst’s home in San Simeon. Carrillo soon became interested in show business and performed in vaudeville shows for several years, utilizing his talent for mimicry and dialects. His cousin William Gaxton (born Arturo Gaxiola) became an important Broadway musical star and sometime film actor. Carrillo also went on the legitimate stage in the mid-1910’s and appeared in some fifteen productions by 1927. Among the plays in which he appeared were Lombardi, Ltd. and Twin Beds.

With the advent of sound in film, Broadway actors were sought after for their presumed ability to speak well into microphones. Carrillo entered films in 1927 in an early Vitaphone sound short, made a few other short films, and then went on to appear as a character actor in about ninety feature films by 1950. His first full-length feature was 1929’s Mister Antonio, based on a play in which he had appeared. In most of his roles, he played Mexican, Italian, and other Latin-type characters in the overly broad, comedic manner that came to be considered stereotypical and crude. It was how Hollywood had, for decades, portrayed people of “ethnic” backgrounds. Carrillo usually played excitable men with exaggerated accents who liberally mangled the English language.

Most of Carrillo’s numerous motion pictures were B-films, but there were a few that could be called A-films. In these he generally played small supporting roles. They included Manhattan Melodrama (1934), In Caliente (1935), History Is Made at Night (1937), Lillian Russell (1940), and the 1943 version of The Phantom of the Opera. One important film in which he played a Latin character—but without the fractured accent—was John Ford’s The Fugitive (1947). In his final role, in 1950, he portrayed the titular character in Pancho Villa Returns, one of his very few leading roles. Carrillo had previously appeared in Viva Villa! (1934) but not as the main character. Carrillo retired from acting in the late 1950’s. For much of that decade, he had appeared as Pancho in the long-running western series The Cisco Kid.

A noted conservationist and preservationist with a great interest in the history of California, Carrillo purchased a large parcel of more than twenty-five hundred acres in Carlsbad, California, near San Diego, in 1937. It was known as the Rancho de los Kiotes, and he maintained it as a working ranch in the style of a Mexican hacienda. In the 1970’s, after much of it had been sold off to developers, a small portion became the Leo Carrillo Ranch Historic Park.

Carrillo’s marriage to Edith Haeselbarth, which lasted until 1953, produced a daughter named Antoinette. Carrillo died on September 10, 1961, in Santa Monica.

Significance

Carrillo’s greatest significance probably was as a conservationist. His eighteen-year tenure on the California Beaches and Parks Commission was a distinguished one. He apparently was instrumental in California’s acquisition of William Randolph Hearst’s fabulous San Simeon estate, popularly known as Hearst Castle, and its preservation as a state park. He also had a hand in the establishment of the Los Angeles County Arboretum and the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, as well as the preservation of Los Angeles’s Olvera Street, an early landmark. In honor of his service, the governor appointed him as a goodwill ambassador, and he toured widely at home and abroad. Among the honors bestowed upon him was the 1959 designation of a beach area near Malibu as Leo Carrillo State Park. In addition, a school in Westminster, California, is named after him, as is the Leo Carrillo Ranch Historic Park in Carlsbad. For many years, he also supervised the production of the famed annual Fiesta de Santa Barbara. A wealthy man, Carrillo gave generously to various charities and to the restoration of California’s Catholic missions.

Bibliography

Aaker, Everett. Television Western Players of the Fifties: A Biographical Encyclopedia of All Regular Cast Members in Western Series, 1949-1959. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1997. A reference book that contains an entry on Carrillo.

Carrillo, Leo. The California I Love. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1961. Less an autobiography than an account of the pioneering Californios, whose roots were in Mexico and who once ruled California.

Halliwell, Leslie. Halliwell’s Filmgoer’s Companion. 9th ed. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1988. A well-regarded, long-running reference work that contains an entry on Carrillo.

Kindle, Alan K. An Introduction to Carrillo Ranch: What, Where, When, Who. Carlsbad, Calif.: City of Carlsbad Parks and Recreation Department, 1992. A history of the twenty-seven-acre Leo Carrillo Ranch Historic Park in Southern California, originally known as the Rancho de los Kiotes.

McKowen, Ken, and Dahlynn McKowen. “Leo Carrillo Ranch Historic Park: A Hollywood Star’s Working Ranch.” In Best of California’s Missions, Mansions, and Museums. Berkeley, Calif.: Wilderness Press, 2006. This guidebook covers the ranch’s history and significance.

Meyer, Nicholas E. Biographical Dictionary of Hispanic Americans. 2nd ed. New York: Facts on File, 2001. A reference book containing an article about Leo Carrillo.