Gilbert Roland

He was one of Hollywood's original Latin Lovers, in the same time frame as Rudolf Valentino and years before the likes of Ricardo Montalban and Fernando Lamas.  Gilbert Roland was dashing, sexy, a bit dangerous and often had that cigarillo hanging from his lips.  On the screen he always seemed like he was having a good time.

He started his Hollywood career in silent films.  Many of his contemporaries left movie-making when sound arrived because they had terrible voices.  Roland, who spoke fluent English and Spanish and had a beautiful voice, was much in demand because so many of the first talkies were often translated into Spanish (and other languages) for the world market.

From the late 1930s until his last film in 1982, he alternated between second male leads and character parts in major films to leads in B films.  I suppose I saw every film he made in the 1950s and thought he was an exciting addition to every one of them.  He and I shared a love of westerns.

 He was born Luis Antonio Damaso de Alonso in Juarez, Mexico in 1905.  Fleeing the Mexican revolution. the family moved to El Paso, Texas when Luis was a young child.  He would hold El Paso near and dear for the rest of his life.  In his youth he intended to become a bullfighter like his father and grandfather before him.  Papa owned a bullfighting ring and young Luis did anything he could to help out and soak up the atmosphere. 

In addition to his love for bullfighting, there was also the movies.  He couldn't stay away from them and then one day he decided he wanted to be an actor.  While he had never acted he said he just knew he could do it because he loved make-believe.  At 14 he hopped a freight train and headed to Southern California and that magical place called Hollywood.  His family soon followed.

He was bored with his numerous menial jobs but his interest piqued  when he got various jobs as an extra.  He changed his name by combining the last names of his two favorite movie stars, John Gilbert and Ruth Roland.  (Didn't you love their work?)

His first film role, a bit, was in the 1923 version of Lon Chaney's
The Hunchback of Notre Dame.  Three years later he had the leading male role of Armand Duval in Camille (1926) opposite Norma Talmadge with whom he had a torrid affair causing the breakup of her marriage to movie guru Joseph Schenck.  Roland was lucky he wasn't run out of Hollywood.  He was also involved with the highly-promiscuous Clara Bow, his costar in three films.  

Technically Roland was bisexual although he had a much stronger preference for women.  He was never involved in a relationship with a man beyond the occasional tryst, usually with another actor of the same bent.  He sensed early on that to be known as gay would impede his career and nothing or no one was going to do that. 

Roland made 26 movies in the 1930s... a number of which were in small roles.  He did occasionally return to Mexico to star in some films there.  While he did rise to starring roles in this decade, most of the films are forgettable.  The few that aren't are She Done Him Wrong (1933) opposite Mae West and Cary Grant, Our Betters and After Tonight, both 1933 and both starring Constance Bennett, and the best of the bunch, Juarez (1939) opposite Paul Muni, Bette Davis and John Garfield.

With wife Constance Bennett

The year after appearing in Errol Flynn's The Sea Hawk in 1940 he married Bennett.  It would last four years and produce two daughters.   The marriage on Roland's part was largely to disguise his bisexuality and change the gossip in Hollywood surrounding his being around for nearly 20 years and never marrying.  He was her fourth husband and they fought and cheated on one another constantly.

His movie output in the 1940s is generally as forgettable as it was in the prior decade.  I think it's fair, however, to say he was memorable in most all of his films.  He saw to it.  It had something to do with those good looks and his lusty demeanor and perhaps an aura that kept him in the light.

He bounced around from one studio to another but those at lowly Monogram Pictures had something in mind for him... the lead role in a Cisco Kid western and if successful repeating the role in a series.  Well, the first one was successful and altogether Roland made six of them.

He is arguably the best thing about John Huston's 1949 thriller, We Were Strangers which stars Jennifer Jones and John Garfield.  Concerning a Cuban revolution, Roland is lively, animated and even sings.  Crisis (1950) is somewhat similar but this time the revolution takes place in a unknown Latin America country.  Jose Ferrer is a dictator and Cary Grant a visiting doctor who gets mixed up in the mayhem.  Roland and numerous Hollywood Latinos aptly handled smaller roles.

One of my favorite of Roland's movies is Anthony Mann's psychological western The Furies (1950).  Roland plays a squatter on the land owned by a ruthless rancher (the wonderful Walter Huston in his final role) who will go to any extremes to remove him and his family despite the fact that his daughter (Barbara Stanwyck) opposes her father.   He and his leading lady were great friends.  There'll be an upcoming review on this one.

Roland obviously had great affection for making director Budd Boetticher's Bullfighter and the Lady (1951).  The director had once taken a stab at this dangerous profession and was aware of Roland's background in the sport.  The actor plays an aging bullfighter hired to teach a young American (Robert Stack) all he knows in the ring so the latter can impress a young Mexican woman.  Produced by John Wayne's company, it is a B flick but a damned good one.   

The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima (1952) is based on the true  spiritual story of three Portuguese shepherd children in 1917 who experience a vision of a lady in a cloud.  It sets the government, decidedly non-religious and in a revolution, against the children and their sentiment.  Roland, top-billed for a change, plays a fictional character, a non-believer, who comes to change his tune.  

He had a small but key role in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), a superb Hollywood exposé, as a randy actor who schmoozes the wife (Gloria Grahame) of a writer on a trip where they are both killed in a plane crash.

Feisty in Thunder Bay

Thunder Bay (1953) is a childhood favorite chiefly because it stars Jimmy Stewart and Joanne Dru, two big favorites.  Directed by Anthony Mann, it concerns two oilmen who want to drill in a profitable shrimping area.  Roland plays a local who at first helps them but when they want to dynamite the area he becomes their enemy and sets up the explosive finale.  It is a good but run-of-the-mill adventure story which helped start me on my romance with movies.

In 1954 after nine years of bachelorhood Roland married for the second and final time.  He and non-pro Guillermina Cantu came just months short of their 50th anniversary.

Because my mother was so whacked out over Jane Russell and (especially) Richard Egan, we saw Underwater! (1955) several times.  RKO and Howard Hughes went into overdrive publicizing this rather ordinary sunken treasure story of two deep sea divers (Roland and Egan) and the thugs who want to steal their stash.  Hughes even insisted on the exclamation mark in the title.  I thought the best part was seeing these three in a constant state of near undress.  Go figure.  Russell adored her two leading men and would work with each of them again.

Before they undressed in Underwater!

Three Violent People (1956)  is about carpetbaggers trying to snatch up land and a man who is returning to his home with a new wife he hardly knows.   Despite the presences of Anne Baxter and Charlton Heston, Roland may be the best thing about this story as a strong neighbor.

He had a darker role in The Midnight Story (1957), a B film noir featuring Tony Curtis as a young cop investigating the murder of a priest.  He suspects Roland who also happens to be a family member of his girl.  It is better than it's been given credit for.

The Big Circus (1959) concerns a saboteur under the Big Top where nearly everyone is suspect.  Roland has a showy role as a high wire performer and Victor Mature and Rhonda Fleming are the stars.  Roland was the bad guy in an unusual 1959 Audie Murphy western, The Wild and the Innocent, co-starring Joanne Dru and Sandra Dee.

Roland had guest-starred in a few television shows in the 1950s but it picked up considerably in the 1960s and lasted throughout the remainder of his life.  In my opinion he made only two films worth noting in his last 24 years.

Certainly one of the best roles he would have in the latter part of his career was as one of the title stars in director John Ford's final film, Cheyenne Autumn (1964).  The story about the Cheyenne's move from Oklahoma to their former ancestral land in Wyoming is not quite accurate but most Ford fans know this is his kindest tribute to the Indian.  Roland and Ricardo Montalban are the lead Cheyennes and Richard Widmark and Carroll Baker the sympathetic whites.

With Dolores Del Rio in Cheyenne Autumn

From 1964 until he retired 18 years later, like many from Hollywood's Golden Age, Roland found himself doing much television and appearing in movies few have heard of.  Luckily, he made one last splash for his farewell film, Barbarosa (1982) as Willie Nelson's vengeful father-in-law.  It is a good western although not great.

He reportedly enjoyed most of the 12 years of his retirement.  He had a happy marriage and enjoyed his grandchildren and as much tennis for as long as he could.  What I loved about his acting was that he was authentic and believable and always a joy to watch.

Gilbert Roland died of cancer in 1994 in Beverly Hills.  He was 88.

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An intelligent actress