By the early 1930s, actor and vaudevillian Leo Carrillo had appeared in a string of Broadway hits and stretched his comedic talents into silent films. With his characteristic ebullience and comfortable success, he decided to return to Los Angeles to pursue a film career. He wanted to build a home in Santa Monica Canyon; he had grown up in Santa Monica and remembered the site of his future ranch house from childhood—the stream where he waded and gathered watercress.
That home, 80 years later, still retains the traditional elegance of a historical Mexican hacienda and will be open to the public for an exclusive salon on Saturday, September 21 from 4 to 6 p.m. Sponsored by The Santa Monica Conservancy, the event will feature a house tour, conversation with owners Melinda Gray and Bill Borden, and wine and elegant hors d’ouevres.
The rancho on East Channel Road sits on four acres of the once 14-acre property in Santa Monica Canyon that Carrillo purchased in 1932 from the allotment of Manuel Marquez, scion of the Marquez y de Los Reyes Boca de Santa Monica land grant family.
Carrillo, born in 1881, hailed from one of California’s first families, going back to his great-great grandfather who was an early Criollo settler of San Diego. His great grandfather, Carlos Antonio Carrillo was governor of Alta California, while his father, Juan Jose Carrillo, served as Santa Monica police chief and the city’s first mayor. Many readers may remember Leo from the television series, “The Cisco Kid,” which ran from 1950 to 1956. By then Carrillo was 70, and had appeared in more than 90 films when he landed the part of the sidekick Pancho to Duncan Renaldo’s Cisco.
When Carrillo returned to Los Angeles in 1932, he began to build the rambling hacienda-style home, which he named Los Alisos, “The Sycamores.”
Employing the labor of five Mexicans and a Swedish boat builder, Carrillo searched for authenticity. He used hardened adobe bricks from an old kiln in Malibu, which he disassembled and moved to the property. The roof was fabricated from clay tiles, which were molded on the maker’s thigh. Each of the rooms, individually named after a family member or friend, opened onto a loggia, which overlooked the canyon and creek at the end of Channel Road.
Leo planned to surprise his actress wife, Edith Shakespeare, and daughter, Marie Antoinette, who knew nothing about the house. The evening the women arrived from New York, where Edith had been appearing on Broadway, Leo arranged for a highway patrol to escort them from the Santa Monica Airport to the house, where, on cue, flood lights installed by MGM technicians lighted up the house and garden.
Leo, who was widely known as a jovial host, loved to socialize and often entertained film people and politicians at the rancho and large barbecue area. At one time, a stone-edged path behind the house led up to Amalfi, which at the time was open land, where Carrillo was said to have grazed his 17 head of cattle. Will Rogers and his son used to come down from their ranch on horseback to enjoy frequent meals at the Carrillos.
Leo planted the hillside with sycamores, oak and avocados, providing a compatible native California context for the home, barn and swimming pool.
After Carrillo’s death in 1961, the estate was bequeathed to Antoinette, who later moved to her parents’ extensive rancho in San Diego County. In the 1970s, the house was sold to a developer, whose plans to build a computer school were stopped by neighbors. Subsequently, the four-acre Carrillo property was split in two, with the other two acres subdivided for three houses, occupying the site of the former barn, stables and pool.
Several owners lived in the house until 1998, when Bill Borden and Melinda Gray bought the property. Gray, founder of Gray Matter Architecture, views preservation through the lens of today’s architectural vernacular. Borden is a filmmaker, whose credits include “High School Musical.” Doing very little beyond years of neglected maintenance, upgrading the kitchen and adding a swimming pool, the owners have respected the gracious, low-lying ranch house that still echoes the romance of its cool bucolic past.
For reservations ($175) visit smconservancy.org.
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