"Oh, Cisco . . . " The Cisco Kid
The Cisco Kid was famously portrayed in movies and on TV by Duncan Renaldo. Partnered with Leo Carrillo as the jovial sometimes bumbling sidekick Pancho, the pair dashed across the American west mounted on Cisco’s signature black and white overo, Diablo and Pancho’s golden palomino, Loco. Cisco and Pancho righted wrong wherever they found it. That’s the character we fondly remember; but that’s not the character that got Cisco his start.
TV promotions attribute the Cisco Kid to an O’Henry character that appeared in the story The Caballero’s Way. O’Henry’s Cisco Kid was a cold-blooded Anglo killer with the boyish charm of Billy the Kid and the social graces of a rattlesnake. Take your choice. Somewhere between O’Henry’s pen and the film and TV portrayals of the same name, the Cisco Kid morphed into a charming, handsome, heroic Hispanic figure, dressed in black, silver and pearl. It was the perfect part for Duncan Renaldo.
Like his character, Duncan Renaldo morphed into his part. When I dug into his biography, I started wondering where I could go with this post. An orphan, the precise date and location of his birth are uncertain. His earliest recollections were of Spain. He reached the U.S. aboard ship working as a seaman sometime in the early 1920’s. He entered the country temporarily. When his ship burned at the dock, he never left. He tried to support himself as an artist. Failing at that, he found his way into films until he was arrested as an illegal alien in the early 1930’s. Facing deportation, Eleanor Roosevelt, one of the few people who ever purchased a Renaldo painting, interceded on his behalf. FDR pardoned him and he returned to film work from 1937 to 1944.
In 1945 Renaldo was paired with Leo Carrillo in the role of Cisco Kid, now characterized as the dashing “Robinhood of the old west”. They made four films before taking the character to the small screen in 1950. The series ran successfully through the spring of 1956, spawning a popular Dell comic book series that remains the object of collector interest to this day.
In the golden age of the western in the fifties and sixties many other TV cowboys would follow the stars profiled in this series; but few would reach the iconic stature of those we remember here. Several of those who came later are worthy of profile on these pages. We’ll visit with them somewhere down the trail.
Next Week: Crossing the Chasm
RETURN TO FACEBOOK TO COMMENT
Ride easy,
Paul
TV promotions attribute the Cisco Kid to an O’Henry character that appeared in the story The Caballero’s Way. O’Henry’s Cisco Kid was a cold-blooded Anglo killer with the boyish charm of Billy the Kid and the social graces of a rattlesnake. Take your choice. Somewhere between O’Henry’s pen and the film and TV portrayals of the same name, the Cisco Kid morphed into a charming, handsome, heroic Hispanic figure, dressed in black, silver and pearl. It was the perfect part for Duncan Renaldo.
Like his character, Duncan Renaldo morphed into his part. When I dug into his biography, I started wondering where I could go with this post. An orphan, the precise date and location of his birth are uncertain. His earliest recollections were of Spain. He reached the U.S. aboard ship working as a seaman sometime in the early 1920’s. He entered the country temporarily. When his ship burned at the dock, he never left. He tried to support himself as an artist. Failing at that, he found his way into films until he was arrested as an illegal alien in the early 1930’s. Facing deportation, Eleanor Roosevelt, one of the few people who ever purchased a Renaldo painting, interceded on his behalf. FDR pardoned him and he returned to film work from 1937 to 1944.
In 1945 Renaldo was paired with Leo Carrillo in the role of Cisco Kid, now characterized as the dashing “Robinhood of the old west”. They made four films before taking the character to the small screen in 1950. The series ran successfully through the spring of 1956, spawning a popular Dell comic book series that remains the object of collector interest to this day.
In the golden age of the western in the fifties and sixties many other TV cowboys would follow the stars profiled in this series; but few would reach the iconic stature of those we remember here. Several of those who came later are worthy of profile on these pages. We’ll visit with them somewhere down the trail.
Next Week: Crossing the Chasm
RETURN TO FACEBOOK TO COMMENT
Ride easy,
Paul
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