VOLATILE CARRILLO

Taranaki Daily News, 31 January 1930, Page 12

VOLATILE CARRILLO

INTERESTED IN EVERYTHING. CHATS TO A REPORTER. Leo Carrillo was once a newspaper reporter himself, so he knows what it’s like interviewing actors, says the Christchurch Sun. He makes it very easy; Seated on his bed in the hotel, clasping one knee and then the other, smiling and frowning—but mostly smiling—the' star of

“Lombardi, Ltd.” chatted away on all sorts of things, cabbages and kings. “Volatile” is indeed the word to describe him. His task is volatile, his movements are volatile and restless. His face is round and happy,* and his hair is dark. Carrillo is of Spanish descent.

“But what a glorious place,” he was saying when the reporter arrived. “Did anyone ever tell you it was like California? Clean and fresh and bright.” Carrillo was told that if he had arrived a fortnight earlier, he would have seen the process of cleaning going on. “Yes, we had a little, of the liquid sunshine in Wellington,” he said. He was born in Los' Angeles, of Spanish parents. For four years he was a newspaper reporter in San Francisco. He used to do “turns” for them at the office. So one day his dramatic critic took him over to the club. Followed an engagement in vaudeville, then the legitimate, stage, and finally his New York debut in “Lombardi, Ltd.”

This play was specially written for him by the Hattons. After a year and a half in New York, he took it on tour through the States,’winning tremendous success. The play was shelved for seven years. Then—“Wo took it out -again, got busy with the blue pencil, cut out the creaky bits, and put the play on in Portland, Oregon, in Hollywood, and in other cities. Then Williamson’s bought the Australian rights, and asked me to come out and play it. They gave me a better production and a better cast than ever I had in America.

“And in Sydney, we hit ’em on the nose. A five months’ season, with packed houses all tho time. After New Zealand, we go to Melbourne, and then, in October, I go to London to play lead in the production there.” Carrillo is very interested in New Zealand. He’s got a car, and he wants to get out and about. He wants to see tho kiwi, to play polo, to bathe at Sumner, to see W.hangainui—and what’s that other place? He can't pronounce these Maori names.

Before he left America, Carrillo made a talkie of a Booth Tarkington story, “Mister Antonio.” He is expecting-the first copies in Christchurch shortly, and hopes to give a private screening. Ho has now in hand a manuscript story of Peter B. Kyne’s which he and Kyne are dramatising together.