Luis Alberni — Peppery Alberni (1937) 🇺🇸
Luis Alberni, who started out in life to be a lawyer, and turned to acting, has been before the public since 1910. This tells all about him.
by Alyce Shupper
Luis Alberni is another of those Hollywood paradoxes. He was born in Spain, yet he has played every other Latin personality on the screen except a Spaniard. His specialty is, of course, provoking laughs and relieving the tension of melodramatic moments between Grace Moore’s songs as an Italian comic. He has appeared in all her pictures except, as he says:
“The ‘stinkarola’ she made with Franchot Tone called The King Steps Out.”
But that is getting ahead of my story.
In a little Hollywood delicatessen where I had stopped for a hurried sandwich, I saw Luis Alberni lunching with his agent. I sent a note asking him where I might call to make an appointment to interview him. Upon the same scrap of paper he wrote “Come and get it.” So, taking the bull by the horns, I went over.
I learned he was preparing for a trip to Palm Springs before stepping into a new picture, Easy Living, with Edward Arnold, Jean Arthur, and Ray Milland.
He was born in Barcelona, where his parents are still living — he hopes! In these days of stress, strife, and civil war, nobody can be certain or find out actually what is going on in the once romantic land of guitars, caballeros, and señoritas behind their wrought-iron balconies.
“I don’t understand why everybody thinks I am Italian,” he complains. “Except maybe on account of my accent. The only whiff of Italy I ever had was a French sweetheart in Paris who spoke Italian.”
The son of a civil magistrate, young Luis was destined to follow the paternal footsteps with law as a career, until he rebelled — perhaps in the modern Spanish manner — joined a circus and traveled all over Europe as a clown.
“Two years later, however,” he recalled, “I went home dragging my tail behind me and almost became reconciled to a legal career. At least I attended classes at the University of Barcelona. That seemed to satisfy everybody for a while.
“I was even fairly satisfied myself and managed to graduate. But when I faced the prospects of law courts, long-winded trials, and contracts with their whereases, whereofs, and hereinafters, I just couldn’t take it.
“I was feeling sorry for myself and trying to figure a way out of it one afternoon in a café, when I looked up and suddenly recognized Enrique Borrás, the greatest actor in Spain at that time.
“Buoyed up by the effect of vintage wines, I didn’t hesitate to approach his table. I told him all my troubles as though I had known him all my life,” Alberni recalled. “At great length I explained my distaste for law and my ambitions to be an actor. And, by one of those strange quirks of luck which are supposed to happen only in books, he listened patiently to my woes and offered me a small part in his next play, Marta of the Lowlands. That was in 1910.”
Luis remained with a stock company in Spain for a year and the next two years found him still an actor, playing with a company traveling in the south of France. In 1914 he embarked for America and never has returned to Europe professionally since.
“I first came to Hollywood in 1929,” he told me, “as a dialogue director on Spanish versions. I arrived here with a letter to Irving Thalberg from Laurence Stallings.”
It was inevitable that he couldn’t remain long behind the cameras, and we soon found him in his first screen rôle with Richard Arlen in The Sante Fe Trail. Since then he has appeared in more than seventy pictures.
“Of course,” he confided, “my ultimate goal is that of director of Spanish pictures, and as soon as I find that my popularity with the fans is on the wane, that is what I plan to do.”
At this time the waitress approached him with a check.
“Give it to him,” he said, pointing to his agent. “He collects ten per cent for nothing and he can pay for a lunch for his best client.”
While visiting the Paramount studio the other day, I was surprised to note upon entering the office of Producer Arthur Hornblow Jr., that both he and Director Leisen [Mitchell Leisen] were garbed in bell hop jackets and caps.
“What’s the gag?” I asked.
“We are just preparing for the arrival of Luis Alberni to discuss his rôle in Easy Living,” I was told. “He’s playing the part of ‘Louis Louis,’ the hotel owner.”
At that moment Alberni entered the office. In one moment he took in the entire situation. He handed Leisen his hat and cane and turned to the producer. He snapped his fingers and said, “Arthur, my lunch.”
Hornblow replied, “Very good, sir,” and left the room. And that seemed to settle that.
But within a few minutes, Hornblow was back carrying a tray covered with a large table napkin. Placing it before Alberni, he said “Voila!” while removing the covering to reveal an uncooked ham.
Alberni showed he could take it in gales of laughter.
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The above is a typical Luis Alberni pose as seen in a recent picture. His latest is Easy Living, for Paramount.
The ultimate goal of this fine actor is that of director of Spanish pictures.
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Hollywood High Lights
Exploding a Myth. — The old “fatal three” myth is just about to be exploded in Hollywood. It’s one of the silliest things anyway. It depends on which way the figuring is done. The thing is that every time there’s a death of a prominent star people commence counting, and chances are that two lesser players will follow in a short time, especially with the present large actor population in movieland.
In the last series of deaths it was just as easy to count four as three. The passing of Jean Harlow was followed by that of Monroe Owsley, then Colin Clive, then Charles Sellon the character player. These three were all pretty prominent at one time or another, Sellon for his crabby old men especially.
Mal-de-mer Bride. — Little June Lang, Venus of the movies, was rushed back from her wedding trip to Honolulu. But June didn’t mind that so much. The thing that was terrible was the fact that she was terrifically seasick for two days going over. “Even the sailors suffered mal-de-mer,” she told us. “I think a whale turned over at the bottom of the ocean or something.”
June is the cutest bride Hollywood has ever seen. A mere child, one might say. She was wed to Victor Orsatti, a brother of whom recently married Jean Chatburn. The Orsattis, in fact, are a numerous family.
Bug Bites McCormack. — Who do you suppose has an eye on the movies as a future career? None other than John McCormack, the famous tenor. John got the yearning when he played in Wings of the Morning, and now he’s settled in Hollywood for an indefinite time. Well, the cinema bug captures them all.
End of Pickfair. — With her marriage to Buddy Rogers, Mary Pickford quit Pickfair, and so the big reception held after the wedding was regarded as signalizing the last view of the celebrated estate. However, it may become the residence of some other movie star. For didn’t Miriam Hopkins purchase the old home of Jack Gilbert? And she remodeled it pretty completely, except for the exterior.
Emissary to England. — Jaunty young Robert Taylor is to be the first star dispatched to England by MGM. We surmise that Bob will fill the bill because he is a fashion plate. But won’t Barbara Stanwyck be lonesome unless she is able to arrange that planned trip of hers to Europe at the same time!
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Mickey Rooney’s idea of resting between film work is lending a helping hand with the housework. His latest screen try is Hoosier Schoolboy.
John Boles is caught by the candid cameraman helping himself to a hot dog from the buffet commissary on the set of Sam Goldwyn’s Stella Dallas.
Ann Sheridan enjoys fishing between picture assignments. Her latest are Footloose Heiress and Lady Luck.
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Ruby Keeler primly strolls about her garden thus attired, and you couldn’t ask for more seemly shorts on a girl.
Leo Gorcey, sixteen, is enacting the same rôle he had on the stage in the screen production of Dead End.
Collection: Picture Play Magazine, September 1937