CESAR ROMERO

The life of a gifted yet guarded actor.

Screenwriter, playwright, and author Garza Bernstein celebrates the career of Cesar Romero (1907-94), who—with a handful of other campy actors—formed “nascent LGBTQIA+ representation in the media” and influenced and informed the author as a young queer man. Most memorable and recognizable for his distinctive laugh and theatrical portrayal of the Joker in the 1960s Batman TV series, Romero got his start as a singer and ballroom dancer, making his Broadway debut in 1927. Six years later, the native New Yorker was in Hollywood, on screen with such established stars as Marlene Dietrich, Shirley Temple, William Powell, and Myrna Loy. Playing the Cisco Kid—“the Latino Robin Hood of westerns”—in six movies, Romero then enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard, giving dramatic, morale-boosting speeches at war plants. The son of wealthy conservative Cuban immigrants, Romero was often typecast in supporting roles as the “suave seducer,” and his career spanned more than 100 movies and 250 TV appearances. It was his two-year “iconic” stint on Batman, however, that garnered him widespread notoriety as a character actor. “Suddenly,” writes Garza Bernstein, “he is on lunch boxes, school supplies, board games, T-shirts, jigsaw puzzles, and trading cards.” Romero was a closeted gay actor, but Garza Bernstein astutely notes that he was “secure enough that even though he assiduously keeps his private life out of the public eye, he still refuses to marry a woman to provide cover—unlike many of his peers in Hollywood.” Romero’s privacy extended to his “famous friends,” writes the author. He didn’t want to write a memoir, “telling people that he knows what publishers want him to write about, and he has no interest in betraying friends and loved ones.” In this fond appreciation, Garza Bernstein keeps the singular actor’s legacy alive.

A skillful and vivacious biography of a multitalented and underappreciated celebrity.