Cesar Romero — Always a Best Man — Never a Groom (1939) 🇺🇸
At white-tie openings in cinemaland, you can be very sure that you will see him, traditionally "tall, dark and handsome" although a little on the denture side, flashing a pearly set (Nature's own) at the candid camera crew.
You can be as sure that he will have on his arm a 24-carat movie honey, and that she will be in star brackets. Once she would have been Virginia Bruce, Sally Blane or Betty Furness, but with their marriages, the lady this gentleman wears on his right arm may be Joan Crawford, Loretta Young, Sonja Henie. May be, but at the moment it is definitely "Annie" Sheridan, pretty filly from the Warner stables. The man, if you haven't already guessed, is Cesar Romero of Producer-Poloist Zanuck's acting string.
The ability of Cesar Julio Romero II to get around to the right places has long been a point of envy among the better boys-about-town. Cesar goes to the "right places" and once there, knows how to conduct himself. The result has been that he goes again. And again. He is a definite part of that nebulous thing known as Hollywood's Inner Circle. There is no reason why he shouldn't be, Nature having equipped him with a good Latin background, even though he was born in New York City. An early education that took him from boarding school at Redding Ridge, Conn., to the Riverdale Country School at Riverdale-on-Hudson and to the Collegiate School of Manhattan, gave him what is known to Germans as "good nursery." It rhymes with "breeding."
What defeats the lads about town is the way Cesar squires the colony's loveliest honeys, yet is never led to the altar even by the sheerest of halters. He dances them, dines them, romances them (in a nice way, of course) but he never finds his name smeared on the front pages of the jonquil-colored journals in a breach of promise action. It's not because he is graded as a gigolo. The passé term could not be applied to Cesar who pays his way, and that of his girl friends. Sometimes it's only that memorable $3.50 at the Troc when he took Joan Crawford dancing and they each ordered a sasparilla, one apiece. No, it seems to be an immunity to matrimony that keeps Romero single. Some say an allergy. This Cesar denies. He plans to marry. "In two years," he declares.
Don't make any bets on the date of Romero's wedding. He has a habit of putting off until next year what he cannot afford this year. It gives pseudo-psychologists, like us, a chance to work out Theories. We can easily attribute this hesitant philosophy to a "manaña instinct," a do-it-tomorrow instinct, and trace it right back to the Latin. Cesar's forefathers are Cuban. Cuba's patriot, José Martí, was his mother's godfather. Actually, Cesar has a curious, Yankee idea of thrift. He doesn't want to buy anything until he is sure that he can afford it. That is why matrimony is two years away.
Like most young men who have danced, professionally, at cafes and night-clubs, Romero has had ample opportunity to marry well. All offers he has sternly rejected. The reason, in every case, was that he did not love the well-dowered damsel. And Romero has ideals. One is that he will not marry unless he is deeply in love. With the passing of the years, Romero, who was thirty-two on February 15th, finds love more remote; companionship a more necessary part of marriage. He looks back upon a love affair that he entered into at twenty-three as the peak of his romantic graph.
Upon coming to Hollywood five years ago at the invitation of M-G-M who wanted him in their Thin Man cast, Romero might have discovered the same situation in Hollywood: moneyed women wanted to marry him because he was an excellent dancer and a good all-around companion. But Cesar declined to become aware of it. By this time he had a definite objective, and that was a Career. After fooling around with one thing and another, never making enough money, in debt half the time, from the age of fourteen, Romero found in the picture business a solution to his family problems. He had himself and his family, five of them, to support. Films offered a steady livelihood. He took it. No gilded Hollywood honey could convince him there was anything else to do.
Being career-minded didn't destroy Romero's strong love of fun. Besides, his singleness of purpose was no exception. Everyone in Hollywood was career-minded, too. Also they were matrimonially-minded, changing partners with recklessness. Cesar might have fallen into the same slap-happy, careless habit, but every time he thought of marriage, he also thought of his responsibilities. They won. The first girl he went out with in Hollywood was Loretta Young's sister, Sally Blane, now Mrs. Norman Foster, and mother of Gretchen. Even today Cesar's heart softens at the thought of Sally. She has the sweetness of Joan Crawford, in his mind, and the independence of her younger sister, Loretta. All in all, Sally would have made a perfect wife. And does. But, unfortunately, not for Romero. This he probably thinks of between 'phone calls and wardrobe fittings. A busy actor has small time for regrets.
Soon he met Betty Furness, Virginia Bruce, Joan Crawford, Sonja Henie, even Ann Sheridan… she was "Clara Lou" then, right off the Texas plains. "So young, so dumb," says Romero, critically, today. "All she could say was 'How a' you all?' And has she changed!" It wasn't a case of dashing skittishly about from flower to flower. Romero was a good friend to all the girls. He had an urban wit, was a divine dancer, was good-humored; his technic with women was full-grown. There was nothing priggish in his attitude. Some of the girls were still smarting at the advice handed out by a certain crooner-executive who cautioned them not to consider matrimony. "Remember," he is reported to have told them, "I am just taking you out for a good time. Don't get serious." There was nothing like that about this six-plus footer. Cesar got along better with the top-notch glamor girls than he did with his former professional dancing partners; those he hired and fired with the regularity of a punch press. He can't figure out why that is. He doesn't waste time mulling over it, either.
Actually, Romero's bachelorhood is something of a Hollywood phenomenon. Maintenance of this sacred state has been tried by many actors, and most of them have lost. Ronald Colman tried the recluse act. He might have been a Shangri-Lama for all the premières he attended. Then along came Benita Hume. Clark Gable remained officially married, but separated from his wife, until Carole Lombard's presence made marriage highly desirable to him — again. Cesar Julio, the Second, chose the daring way of remaining a bachelor. He plunged headlong into the social swim and he has never had an engagement rumor printed about him. Apparently he is immune — until he chooses to fall victim. He is not even a marriage bug "carrier," like the famous "Typhoid Mary."
Factually, Cesar Julio has never been a "best man" at a Hollywood or Yuma wedding. The other night he almost became one. It was midnight and, in pajamas, he was about to retire, when a knock sounded on the door of his apartment. He opened it to greet a twenty-year-old friend from Oakland. With him was what was obviously a blushing bride-to-be and a quaking maid-of-honor-to-be. "We're on our way to Mexico to be married," quoth the youth. "Come along and be our best man, will you?"
Romero, the confirmed bachelor, thought fast. Then he invited the kids into the house. He explained that he wouldn't be able to go to Mexico with them at that moment but if they would wait until morning, he would drive down with them. "I'll put you up with me. You take the girls to the Roosevelt," he advised. While the youngsters were away, Romero received a wire from the boy's father, asking his assistance. When the prospective groom returned, Romero sat down before the fireplace with him, and they had a long talk. With the spectre of Economic Insecurity so freshly laid in his own life, Romero gave the performance of his career — to an audience of one. He pointed out the responsibilities of wedlock, touched upon the boy's lack of work, extreme youthfulness, and ran the gamut of logical reasoning against immediate marriage.
The boy wiped his brow when Cesar, the old meanie, finished, and Romero fished the telegram out of his dressing-gown pocket. "Here's a wire from your dad," he said. That was the climax. Grabbing his hat, the boy said a hasty farewell, and rushed to the hotel. His wife-to-be was still dressed, and both girls were as nervous as cats. "Come on! Let's go home. We can get married some other time. Let's leave right now," the near-groom ordered. They drove North that night. Romero looks upon this little episode as a service to matrimony, which is a great institution if you don't abuse it. Personally, Romero doesn't like to see it kicked around.
To prove his fondness for the holy state Cesar points out that his best friends are married: the George Murphys, Irene Hervey and Allan Jones, He tactfully refrains from listing the Franchot Tones. Joan Crawford is one of Romero's long-time friends and he was the first male with whom she showed herself after the break-up of her marriage.
As a friend he rushed into the breach, not because he wanted to wear a glamor girl of her rating on his arm and grab front-page space, but because Joan is a friend. Romero values friendship. It was a risky thing to do, gossip being what it is. Romero risked being named as "other man." He took the chance, not, as you may suspect, because to dance again with Joan was a delight, but because Joan has the sweetest disposition of any woman that he knows. And she was a friend.
In the opinion of an expert, Joan sheds more real sympathy than a book of Western Union consolation wires. She likes to dramatize herself, but she gives you a chance to dramatize your troubles. This is Nirvana and Karma, to an actor. (It goes great with any man.) Loretta Young, Romero explained, is independent. She's a feminist, but she is still feminine. She is a bracing companion. Virginia Bruce is beautiful, so very beautiful. She is utterly feminine, but not a clinging vine. Definitely not. Ann Sheridan is… well, there's a slight diffusion there, Annie being the current Cleopatra in this Cesar's life. It's hard to see the forest for the trees. Her lovely traits like her humanness, her present self-confidence, are dimmed by the radiance of Eros.
With Annie as Romero's Cleopatra, it is interesting to know how our hero came by his name. He came by it honestly. It is his father's. And his father (Cesar's grandfather) had a humorous padre who named four sons with the inverted names of great men. Julius Cesar became Latinized (again) and Cesar Julio was christened. In turn, so were Bolivar Simon, Franklin Benjamin, Nelson Horatio.
It can easily be said of Cesar the Second that he danced into fame. When at fourteen, Cesar the First lost his wealth with the collapse of the Cuban sugar market, he chose to use his personal fortune to pay off his debts instead of putting his money into his wife's name and seeking bankruptcy. Both Cesars regarded this with imperial fortitude as a necessary obligation. But the effect of reduced circumstances on the family made a deep impression on the boy, gave him his first thoughts about the close relationship of money, marriage and marital happiness. He never forgot them.
By the time he was twenty-three he was a well-established dancer in White Way night-clubs, but not ready for marriage. There was no future, no security, in this occupation. The woman he loved, a rich-voiced singer ten years his senior with two children, shared his life, but Romero could not ask for a permanent alliance. He was living, gracefully, on nothing. His tenderest romance died when she sailed for England for a theatrical engagement. It was about this time that Romero took the Tullio Carminati role in a road company of Strictly Dishonorable. Subsequent Broadway plays brought him to Hollywood, where he remains under contract to 20th Century-Fox with a part in Warner Baxter's Return of the "Cisco Kid" as his next thespianic tidbit. "Next year," he says, he plans to build a Mexican farmhouse in Brentwood. In "two years" he will probably marry — annuities, trust funds for the family, being as they are.
He is fearful of catching cold for fear that it may lead into a major complication, like pneumonia, according to a palm-reading given him by Mrs. Ernst Lubitsch. Cesar looks forward, with grisly delight, to the siege, for Mrs. Lubitsch also told him that it would bring him his future wife. Cesar is definitely intrigued, and definitely superstitious about such things.
Cesar Romero is Hollywood's single man escort bureau. He escorts them all, but courts none — unless it's Annie Sheridan (2) who seems very close to Cesar. Once it may have been Wendy Barrie (3), Betty Furness (4), Virginia Bruce (5), Ethel Merman (6), Joan Crawford (7), Astrid Allwyn (8)
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Collection: Motion Picture Magazine, June 1939