LEGENDARY HEROES #8

THE CISCO KID

The Cisco Kid was created by O. Henry in his 1907 short story "The Caballero's Way" from the book "Heart of the West" and the July 1907 issue of Everybody's Magazine.  In the original story The Cisco Kid was not the hero that we know him to be today.  He was a 25 year-old murderous desperado who killed for sport and was responsible for 18 deaths.  The Kid was so cold-hearted that when a Texas Ranger gets on his trail, he sets up his own duplicitous girlfriend to be killed by the Ranger to make good his escape.  "The Caballero's Way" was filmed in 1914 as a silent film, which to my knowledge, no longer exists.  I don't know how faithful to the story the film was, but the depiction of Cisco as a heroic figure came in 1928 when actor Warner Baxter played the character in the film "In Old Arizona".  Baxter's portrayal won him the Oscar for Best Actor, though he almost didn't get the chance to play the Cisco Kid.  Raoul Walsh, the sometime actor and up-and-coming director, was originally slated to play the hero, but a car accident that cost him an eye changed all that.  Warner Baxter went on to play The Kid in four more films from 1930-1939.

Cesar Romero portrayed The Cisco Kid in six films from 1939-1941, and then Duncan Renaldo played the hero in three movies all made in 1945.  Gilbert Roland took on the role in six movies from 1946-1947, with Renaldo returning to the film series in 1948 and made five more films through 1950.  Jimmy Smits played The Kid in a 1994 made-for-TV movie.  In O. Henry's short story the Cisco Kid did not have a sidekick, but in 1945 when Duncan Renaldo took on the character the producers gave him one and named him Pancho.  This was a result of the popular radio series that debuted on October 2, 1942 on the Mutual network that introduced Pancho as The Cisco Kid's partner.  The weekly show aired until February 14, 1945 then was resurrected in 1946 on regional radio airing three times a week.  It ran until 1956 and produced 600 episodes for syndication.  When the actor who portrayed Pancho died in 1953, voice actor Mel Blanc stepped in to play the sidekick for the next three years.  Aimed at a younger audience, The Cisco Kid was depicted as a virtuous wanderer and quasi-Robin Hood figure, often mistaken for an outlaw because he tangled with the rich & greedy who victimized the poor.  Each episode ended with one of the heroes making a humorous observation about the adventure they had just enjoyed, resulting in a hearty laugh and the signature "Oh, Pancho!" "Oh, Cisco!" before the duo galloped off into the sunset.

Ziv Television produced a TV series from 1950-1956 which is most notable that it was the first series to be filmed in color.  Duncan Renaldo, fresh from the movie enterprise, played Cisco and Leo Carrillo played Pancho.  Pancho rode a palomino named Loco while Cisco rode upon his horse Diablo.  The TV show used the signature sign-off that had been popularized on the radio show, and a new audience of youngsters were introduced to the heroic figure.  The comics were the next logical incarnation for The Cisco Kid beginning with a one-shot comic book in 1944.  Dell comics published 41 issues of The Cisco Kid from 1950-1958 that coincided with the TV series.  King Features enlisted artist Jose Luis Salinas to draw a comic strip adventure of The Kid that ran in newspapers from 1951-1967.  The Cisco Kid became one of the great western fictional heroes who has stood the test of time.