LEO CARRILLO (1881–1961)

Born into a prominent aristocratic family, Leo Carrillo was a notable entertainer on stage (including Broadway) and screen.  Although Carrillo’s parents wanted him to join the clergy, Leo pursued an engineering degree and joined the Southern Pacific Railway’s engineering department.  In his free time, Carrillo amused himself by drawing cartoons and mimicking railroad laborers’ accents, mastering those of the Spanish, French, Italian, and Chinese workers.  After taking an art course, Carrillo moved to northern California and began drawing political cartoons for the San Francisco Examiner. Encouraged by his co-workers, he left his career as a cartoonist to develop a vaudeville act, which eventually led to a role in the stage hit Lombardi Ltd. (1917). Working alongside Carrillo in the New York cast was Warner Baxter, the talking movies’ first Cisco Kid. 

After a prestigious role opposite Henry Fonda and Dolores del Río in The Fugitive (Argosy, 1947), Leo Carrillo joined the Cisco team and revived the role of Cisco’s zany sidekick Pancho.  Carrillo never lost his zeal for politics and was eventually appointed to the California Beaches and Parks Commission, where he served for eighteen years.