Trivia: After being raised in several parts of Europe Duncan Renaldo arrived in the U.S. in the early '20s, having secured his passage as a stoker on a Brazilian coal ship (other sources say it was a Rumanian freighter that caught fire in Baltimore and left its crew stranded). He failed at his attempt to be a portrait painter, then tried to become a producer of short films; soon, however, he took up acting, signing with MGM in 1928. He played Latin lovers in late talkies and early silents. In 1932 he spent almost a year in prison on illegal entry charges filed by immigration authorities; he was later pardoned by President Roosevelt. After his release, he continued playing leads and supporting roles in minor films and serials. In the early '40s he was chosen as one of the Three Mesquiteers in a series of popular western films; within a few years he was starring in his own western series as The Cisco Kid, the role for which he is best known. He played the Cisco Kid in a popular TV series in the '50s, rarely appearing on the big-screen after 1950.

Trivia: Leo Carrillo was descended from a long-established, aristocratic California family. His great-grandfather was the first provisional governor of California, while his father was the first mayor of Santa Monica. His parents wanted him to be a priest, but Carrillo decided to go for an engineering degree while attending Loyola University. A talented caricaturist, Carrillo secured a job as a political cartoonist at the San Francisco Examiner. At the encouragement of his fellow employees, Carrillo decided to parlay his gift for mimicry and dialects into a vaudeville career. He went on to provide comedy relief for several stage plays and musical productions, starring in one tailor-made vehicle, Lombardi Ltd. In films from 1929, Carrillo was frequently cast as excitable, malaprop-ridden Spaniards and Italians; in only a few instances, notably John Ford's The Fugitive (1947), did Carrillo perform in his normal California cadence, sans dialect. From 1950 through 1955, Carrillo co-starred with Duncan Renaldo in the popular TV western series The Cisco Kid, playing Cisco's sidekick Pancho. Though well into his seventies, Carrillo claimed to be in his mid-fifties so that the Cisco Kid company would qualify for insurance coverage. As active in California politics and civic affairs as his forebears, Leo Carrillo was in charge of the annual Fiesta de Santa Barbara, and at one juncture was appointed to the State Park Commission; there still exists a California beach named in Carrillo's honor.