The face of Zorro

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Then came television, and sudden rebirth. In 1957 Disney produced the top-rated "Zorro" television series starring Guy Williams as the Masked Avenger in 39 half-hour shows. The success of the first season led to an additional 39 for the second season, and the show spawned a Zorro mania among young Americans. Yet for young Mexican-Americans, the recurring character of fat, stupid Mexican Sergeant Garcia was a humiliating stereotype. Like the Frito Bandito, Garcia helped to launch an entire generation of enflamed Chicano activists in the 1960s. Even so, it was increasingly evident that Zorro was serious worldwide show business. Zorro inspired not only merchandising, but also other duel-identity crime fighters. Bob Kane, the creator of "Batman," credits Zorro as the inspiration for his masked, caped crusader.

Does it matter that, in real historical time, there were a number of early Californios who might well have served as inspirations for the masked avenger? Three young Monterey natives and intellectuals rush to mind, namely Mariano Vallejo (the namesake of the city of Vallejo in the San Francisco Bay Area), Juan Bautista Alvarado (one of California's few native-born Mexican governors) and Tiburcio Vasquez, the last of the California bandits and the last man publicly executed in the state, in San Jose in 1875. Vasquez is particularly intriguing, given his self-proclaimed flamboyant stance as a freedom fighter (alas, against the Americans) and his gentile penchant of dressing in black and wearing a cape, though never a half-face mask. He was hanged for the murder of three men in a holdup at Tres Pinos, south of Hollister, in 1873, but it took a statewide manhunt to finally trap him in Cahuenga Pass near Los Angeles, close to what is today the Sunset Strip. Even more amazing, while Vasquez was recovering from gunshot wounds received from a zealous posse member, Samuel Piercy, an astute theatrical impresario, met with the accused felon in his jail cell and then staged a wildly successful melodrama called "The Capture of Vasquez" to overflow crowds. Only one other Spanish California bandit shares the honor of having his exploits staged as purest melodrama, and that was the infamous Joaquin Murrieta of the Gold Rush. Hollywood, in fact, has honored him time and again in films paralleling Zorro's own cinematic sojourn, from silent days to cable TV, but Murrieta also started his career in print. Virtually culled from the real-life legend of seven bandit Joaquins -- who appeared and then disappeared in California from 1849-1853, creating fear, loathing and mayhem -- the Murrieta myth was published as a dime novel in San Francisco by John Rollin Ridge (alias Yellowbird) in 1952. This quickly led to further embellishment and fabrications, each trying to outdo the other in retelling the familiar tale of Murrieta's bloody revenge on all Americans for the murder of his lovely Rosita (or Carmencita) at the hands of the greaser-hating '49ers. He was, however, a foreigner, like everybody else in the Gold Rush, and Murrieta's nationality was proudly proclaimed in the very first Mexican corrido ever written, in 1850, "The Ballad of Joaquin Murrieta." According to his persistent legend, Murrieta easily rode into cinematic history because of his blue eyes and light skin, even inspiring the character that made Clint Eastwood an international star in "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." By 1981 the legend of Zorro appeared to be played out, until George Hamilton breezily starred in "Zorro, the Gay Blade," spoofing the title role in the film that brought the masked avenger to the level of ridicule. This cartoonish treatment was followed by a real animated series on Saturday morning TV, featuring the voice of Henry Darrow, the first Latino to play the role in any medium. From 1990 to 1993, Darrow appeared again in a new "Adventures of Zorro" series filmed in Spain for New World Television and the Family Channel. Unfortunately, Darrow was not called upon to play the title role, but rather the part of Zorro's father. The masked avenger once again reverted to a non-Latino actor, Duncan Regehr. If one can detect a pattern here, it obviously has to do with the casting of our hero. Now in 1998 along comes Antonio Banderas, the first "Spanish guy," as he puts it, to play the role on film. I wish it were possible to affirm that the latest Hollywood remake finally reveals a true Californio face. Alas, it does not. As the masked avenger, Banderas is a true heir to the Fairbanks legacy, with more swashbuckling legerdemain and macho sex appeal than any other Zorro since, well, Fairbanks Sr. Banderas is, of course, a true Spaniard, born and bred, and his casting is inspired box office, but he appears in the movie as a bogus Zorro -- who, as a scruffy Mexican bandit, is really the brother of Joaquin Murrieta! Anthony Hopkins, with his refined Shakespearean British accent, is the real McCoy, and he takes it upon himself to transform the sow's ear of Banderas' Murrieta into the black silk purse of a new Zorro. What emerges is more like the clown prince of California; but it is all meant in good fun, and Murrieta is, after all, a Mexican. The trouble is that by mixing history with sheer fantasy, the new Zorro only serves to further obfuscate the legend. It appears that the filmmakers, with Steven Spielberg at the helm as an executive producer, were attempting to deal with just enough political correctness to make their new concoction palatable in the '90s. The villain, Don Rafael Montero (Stuart Wilson), is thus an evil Spanish grandee on the rebound, trying to revive the good old days, scheming to buy California from Santa Ana by jump-starting the Gold Rush with Mexican labor. This is why Hopkins, the English Don Diego, recruits Banderas, the Spanish Murrieta, to save the faceless masses of unwashed Mexican victims from utter slavery. Beyond that, all of the Mexican characters are the usual Hollywood buffoons. There are some interesting shifts in the casting of other characters that bear mention. Catherine Zeta-Jones, a British import who plays Don Diego's daughter, is beautiful, athletic and heroic -- but one can only wonder whether her hyphenated last name is real or just part of the hype. (Zeta, after all, means "Z" in Spanish.) Then there is the strange reincarnation of Three-Fingered Jack as an Anglo. The historical Juan Tres Dedos was a Californian named Juan Duarte, born at Tejon Pass, near present-day Bakersfield. No less strange is the rebirth of Harry Love, the historical hard-drinking California Ranger who reputedly killed and beheaded the real Joaquin Murrieta in the coastal range west of Fresno. He is reborn as Harrison Love, an unmistakably American type, who appears to me to be a cross between Gen. John C. Frémont and Gen. George Custer. I could go on, but you catch my drift. In one more commercial twist on its fictitious California history, the latest Zorro remake is apparently attempting to save the Masked Avenger from the fictional obfuscations of the past. But in the final analysis, we shall have to wait for future Zorros to unravel the distortions. While the plot line careens dangerously close to the beginning of the American era, the story is still a condemnation of Spanish/Mexican/Hispanic venality and corruption. I wish I could have enjoyed it more, but in this era of Props 187 and 227 and other Mexican immigrant bashing initiatives, I can only laugh till it hurts. Banderas is the first Spaniard (as opposed to "Hispanic") to assume the black cape, mask and sword -- but in the end, all the swashbuckling cuts through nothing but the old hot air of racist, Eurocentric yesteryears.

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