Gilbert Roland - A Latin Performer Unbounded

[MissGoddess]

I am fond of Juarez. Not only for Gilbertito, who looks like a painting of a Spanish grandee come to life, but I've always thought Bette Davis looked exceptionally beautiful as the dark, tormented Carlota. Also, Brian Aherne makes Maximilian human.

[Sue Sue Applegate]

She was lovely in Juarez!

[JackFavell]

I agree, Juarez has some exceptional moments for Bette and Brian. Gilbert is so noble and graceful here, I just love him, though it's in a futile cause. I also am fond of John Garfield in the film. Joseph Calleia gives a nice shifty performance as a political animal who urges Juarez to betray some of the people he represents, rather transparently in order to satisfy his own ambitions.

I remember liking The Passionate Plumber quite a lot as a kid. I can't wait to see it again. I believe Buster and Gilbert formed a solid friendship while waiting around for the studio bosses to give them something to do. I wonder if Lucille Ball and Roland knew one another? I have a feeling they must have, since Lucy was also hanging out in 'Siberia' for a time with Buster.

[CineMaven]

Mild Spoiler Alert

Mild? Any one of us could have written a better movie.

Does anyone else think that Jeanne Crain made some movies just to get her seven babies new shoes?

Probably. She did some clunkers. But I liked her in them. Maybe three less kids would have got her a little bit better career.

[moira finnie]

Check The Passionate Plumber, an amusing flick with Buster Keaton, lovely Irene Purcell and fiery Mona Maris.

Thanks, Fernando. I will try to view it this time. I get sad for Buster, but the cast is intriguing (other than the miscast OTT Jimmy Durante, whom I normally like).

I am fond of Juarez. Not only for Gilbertito, who looks like a painting of a Spanish grandee come to life, but I've always thought Bette Davis looked exceptionally beautiful as the dark, tormented Carlota. Also, Brian Aherne makes Maximilian human.

She was lovely in Juarez!

I agree, Juarez has some exceptional moments for Bette and Brian. Gilbert is so noble and graceful here, I just love him, though it's in a futile cause. I also am fond of John Garfield in the film. Joseph Calleia gives a nice shifty performance as a political animal who urges Juarez to betray some of the people he represents, rather transparently in order to satisfy his own ambitions.

I agree about Bette, who kept her eye-popping gesticulations under control in this movie, using those trademarks judiciously in her mad scenes. Maybe that was William Dieterle's doing, though the actress did say that when she worked on this movie she was in awe of two others--Brian Aherne for his drop dead looks & Claude Rains for his authoritative hauteur as Napoleon III. Davis' performance made a viewer feel the tragedy of her life and that of her husband. Don't get me started on Brian Aherne...please. He was just wonderful and knew that this was his best role.


GR was near the height of his good looks in that late '30s, imho. His character's brave, blind loyalty to Maximilian gives the film a bit more needed humanity and poignancy too.

JF--I kept wishing that they could have told Paul Muni to stay home and concentrated on Calleia and Garfield on the Juarezistas' side. Muni could be good, or he could be awful. There appears to have been little in-between with actor, who apparently thought he was playing a plaster saint instead of a real person and gave his stiffest performance ever on-screen.


Above: Brian Aherne holding Mickey Kuhn as Gilbert Roland looks on in Juarez (1939).

BTW, on the set, Gilbert Roland reportedly was smitten with Mickey Kuhn, who played the little boy adopted by Carlota & Maximilian to help legitimize their place on the Mexican throne in Juarez (1939). In "Growing Up on the Set: Interviews with 39 Former Child Actors of Classic Film and Television by Tom Goldrup, Jim Goldrup:

"Mickey's first recollection of working in a picture was when he was six years old. 'In 1938 I did a movie at Warner Bros. called Juarez with Paul Muni and I got a hundred dollars a week. Gilbert Roland also appeared n Juarez, and I'll tell you an interesting little sidelight in regards to that. He and his wife were childless and wanted to adopt a child. He approached my mother in all seriousness to work out an arrangement to adopt me. Of course my mother said, 'No, I'm sorry.'"

I guess that Mickey was referring to Constance Bennett as GR's "wife" though they were not legally married until 1941 (after her divorce from the the long-absent Henri de la Falaise, the Marquis of de la Coudraye, who was fighting for France at the time of the split).

Lorinda Roland, Constance and Gilbert's eldest daughter was born--according to her mother, who never seems to have produced a birth certificate--in her NYC apartment in April, 1938, to avoid publicity. Since the relationship between Bennett & Roland was reportedly quite "torrid" and subject to separations and renewals, is it possible he did not know of his daughter's birth or that he hoped a son would help things between himself and Bennett?

A younger daughter, Gyl, was born on Dec. 9, 1941, also reportedly at home on Carolwood Drive in Los Angeles and this is reportedly detailed in GR's unpublished memoirs, though strangely, no mention of Lorinda's birth is made in that book, cited by the author Brian Kellow in "The Bennetts: An Acting Family."

GR & Bennett had married in April of 1941. Gilbert Roland reportedly enlisted in the Army Air Corps the day after the Pearl Harbor attack, so that event may have cast a pall over her birth, but at least there was less speculation about the girl's paternity since her parents were married then.

In any case, Mickey Kuhn, who went on to play the son of Melanie & Ashley in GWTW (and loved working with Olivia de Havilland, Leslie Howard & esp. Clark Gable), apparently thought very highly of Gilbert Roland. Kuhn explained to the authors that "like with Jimmy Stewart, Gilbert Roland, John Wayne and all of those people you learn something [from each of them]."

He recalled fondly working with him again in the movie High Conquest (1947), though he received a bad burn on his hand during the film.

"'I carried a flare and fell off a mountain and tumbled to my death. In that particular scene something happened with the flare and it spewed out and landed on my hand and burned it. Not a whole lot, but just enough to put a good scar on it. Working with Gilbert Roland again was a thrill beyond all thrills because I really thought that world of that man. When he died I hadn't realized he had been at the Motion Picture Home. If I had known I would have certainly gone and seen him because he was always one of my favorites. He was a nice, nice man, and that's hard to come by.'"

[JackFavell]

I find Mickey Kuhn's remembrances fascinating. Somehow, it reminds me of Leatrice Joy Fountain's remembrance of meeting her dad John Gilbert on the beach one day, having a lovely walk and talk with him, and finding out afterwards that the wonderful man who had picked her up and carried her on his shoulders was GR.

He must have been one of those people that little kids gravitate to and remember.

[moira finnie]

GR schedule on TCM for October:

Beneath the 12-Mile Reef (1953) October 15th@12pm (ET)


The complete film is here.


The Big Circus (1959) Oct. 17@11:30 PM (ET)



Underwater! (1955) Oct.19@ 7:15 AM (ET)


GR with Lori Nelson.
The whole movie can be seen here:


Malaya (1949) Oct. 23@2:15 AM (ET)



Some recent Image finds:

From Camille (1926) with Norma Talmadge:


From The Campus Flirt (1926) with Bebe Daniels


Portrait from 1927:


From New York Nights (1929) with Norma Talmadge:

[MissGoddess]

Underwater! and Beneath the 12 Mile Reef would make a good double-feature.

I was disappointed in Malaya. You would think a movie starring Spencer Tracy and Jimmy Stewart would be impossible to fail yet it did. I don't remember much about Gilbert in it but I wouldn't be surprised if he was the movie's most entertaining aspect.

That 1927 portrait is stunning.

[moira finnie]

Underwater! and Beneath the 12 Mile Reef would make a good double-feature.

True, though I prefer the color and music in Beneath the 12 Mile Reef to the silliness of Underwater!

I was disappointed in Malaya. You would think a movie starring Spencer Tracy and Jimmy Stewart would be impossible to fail yet it did. I don't remember much about Gilbert in it but I wouldn't be surprised if he was the movie's most entertaining aspect.[/color]

I thought that Tracy and Stewart seemed to be exhausted throughout that film. Maybe because it was such an old-fashioned movie, it came across that way. GR appeared as a friendly smuggler who shares a few scenes with Tracy.

That 1927 portrait is stunning.

[JackFavell]

I agree, the one thing I wouldn't think Spencer Tracy and Jimmy Stewart could be is boring, and yet...

I love both Underwater and Beneath the Twelve Mile Reef. For sheer entertainment value they give a lot of bang for their buck. The Big Circus is in that same genre, but doesn't really keep me interested like the others do. There are only a few movies that really deliver, even though they have silly plots, I think of these two and maybe Trapeze as favorites because they don't try to be anything but what they are, a simple story with some good visuals. I'm sure there are more movies that go a long way with me, but I can't think of them off the top of my head. Guilty pleasures, or just plain fun? I think it's because they still are what they originally intended to be, which was pure entertainment/adventure.

That still of Gilbert on the couch is fantastic! Ditto the animated gifs, swear I see a tear in his eye...

[MissGoddess]

Has anyone seen GUNS OF THE TIMBERLAND? I found this still and now I want to watch the movie (despite Frankie Avalon being in the cast---every time I see him I look for Annette).

[JackFavell]

Wasn't this on recently on Jeanne Crain day? I'm pretty sure it was, though I missed it.

[MissGoddess]

i have only been catching TCM sporadically, so it might have been. i'm surprised i never heard of it.

[moira finnie]

Has anyone seen GUNS OF THE TIMBERLAND? I found this still and now I want to watch the movie (despite Frankie Avalon being in the cast---every time I see him I look for Annette).

Yes, Miss G. it was aired on Jeanne Crain day on TCM in August. I'm sorry you missed it. The film had some good moments, largely courtesy of Jeanne Crain's ecologically-minded ranch owner, who was determined to prevent Alan Ladd and Gilberto's crew of lumberjacks from decimating the delicate balance of the area (like a herd of cattle doesn't?). GR played a wild man lumberjack whose greatest pleasures in life were fisticuffs, drinking and hacking down nature's miracles---he played a key role in the denouement, in a familiar portrayal that I suspect was written into his contract for several years in this period. The movie's feel made me think of North to Alaska--without the real zestiness of that romp, but some of its frontier silliness.

Elements of Guns of the Timberland were enjoyable, such as the beautiful area where this was filmed in Arizona and in Northern California, and Gilberto always gave more than the role required (as usual). What was unusual about his character was the edge of lunacy his character expressed at times. Lyle Bettger, who must have been very weary of playing the blustering bad guy by 1960, was along for the ride, as was a beautifully mature Jeanne Crain, who was a pleasure to see in all her cowgirl glory--even if you worried that she might snap her leading man in two if she hugged him too hard. The script's limitations (by Aaron Spelling, of all people) and the clearly unwell Alan Ladd presence made the film veer from the dull and predictable to the unsettling. Ladd, who also produced the film, was disturbingly pained looking throughout the film, playing a role that he might have been able to bring to life a decade before. My affection for this actor kept me wishing throughout the movie that he could have made a graceful transition into the production side of the business, as his wise children appear to have done so successfully.

Frankie Avalon sang twice, giving audiences of the time a chance to head out for popcorn or swoon, I guess, and that was pretty icky, at least to my tin ear. In the scenes when he played a teenage ranch hand eager to be thought of as an adult, he was much more likable and almost made me forget he was a product of '50s packaging as much as alleged "raw talent."

[MissGoddess]

i can almost see the movie unfold through your words, moira! i guess i did not miss much but for curiosity's sake, i hope i can catch it one day. i agree that Ladd did not have a "second Act" to his career that was really worthy of him for whatever reasons. jean's character sounds like one I'd enjoy watching in spite of the movie's limitations.