Guy, PERFECT for Zorro

"Exciting News Release on Historic Olvera Street"


A publicity picture of Guy on historic Olvera Street in Los Angeles, holding a fake newspaper announcing his new role as Zorro

Comments and picture courtesy Joy Tilly





From the Archives, 11/19/01

Beautiful replies, all... is it any wonder that we don't gush continually over the reasons for Guy being the best Zorro? Nope, it has been said, and said eloquently.

Sue Kite


Dave Cook writes:

1. The smile -- friendly to friends and strangers, taunting to his enemies.

2. The bravado -- it may be bad fencing form to the experts, but that ballestra technique of stomping forward looks great. And he always seemed to be fiercer than his enemy while still smiling.

3. He looks right in that costume. I don't think anybody else ever looked so right in a costume.

4. Lots of energy and enthusiasm. He always looked like he was having the time of his life -- he never looked tired or like he was going through the paces.

MaryAnn Beverly writes:

Guy WAS Disney's Zorro. He lived and breathed the part as no one else could. We could discuss writers, sets, other characters, etc., but Zorro without Guy? No way!!!

Jill P. writes:

I think I have written more about why Guy was perfect for the part of Zorro than just about anyone else. When he retired, he chose to live in a place where he was idolized for having been Zorro, where to preserve his privacy when he took his daily strolls he had to shave off his mustache. Perhaps, there are many wonderful things you can say about the Disney production. But the facts are clear. Much as I loved everyone in the cast, as much as I admired the sets, and enjoyed the scripts and the music, when I look at Zorro, my eyes are glued on Guy. Guy always wished that Zorro had been filmed in color.

After all, it might have appealed more to modern audiences and brought him in more residuals. He never lived to see the colorized shows we have been enjoying since 1993. Even in Argentina, this place where Zorro was a national hero, he would have had a new resurgence of adoration.

Since childhood I have never been able to forget Zorro, but it was the character of Zorro, not the person of Diego, I waited most of the half-hour length to appear. Was it simply because I was a child or would I have been as knocked out then by Diego as I am now when I see him in color? Looks so alive, doesn't he? You can't help being overwhelmed with how great Guy looked. You are impressed with how tall Guy was. Guy was just the right height. His manly frame so perfectly shaped only became more muscular as the fencing workouts Fred Cavens put him through daily erased the ungainliness of youth. There never was a more beautiful man. I am convinced that were we to stand shoulder to shoulder beside him every other actor from any time period whom we have ever considered handsome, he would lay every one of them to shame.

But he wasn't just another pretty face. You have mentioned the way Guy fenced. Will any of us every forget it, the way he swept the cape back over his arm and with a gleeful growl lunged towards his opponent? I have spoken of his perfection pronunciation and intonation for the Spanish language. All of us love his expressiveness, the way he used his hands as a natural extension of his speech. That devilish smile – Gerry Dooley on the A&E Biography of Zorro said that he is convinced Guy's flashing white grin is what got him the role of Zorro.

There was still more that made Guy the perfect Don Diego de la Vega. No one, not one of the other 36 historic Zorros, ever evinced the air of aristocracy that Guy exuded in his every movement. To watch him lay his shoulders back and jaunt through a scene, to see him astride a horse with his hand on his thigh, straight-backed and proud, or as he was often filmed, standing nobly beside the fireplace, the serious cast of his patrician Roman features mired in thought. No one in the pueblo de Los Angeles hesitated to call Diego "Don." When he demured and bowed his head, when he jumped over the rail and tipped his hand to his hat, "Senor!", Guy evoked the aura of a bygone age.

I have said before, and I will say again, that I would have loved to have been in the studio the day Guy Williams first donned the Zorro outfit. Imagine the day of his first screen test. He had to walk the distance from his dressing room to the stage area through an assembly of stage hands and secretaries, agents and actors, worldly old-timers and standers-by, all of whom had seen the 1940's Mark of Zorro and all of whom knew what Zorro should look like.

Heads must have turned, script girls must have waved madly to their friends to look, look who is walking by. What a flurry of instant recognition. "There goes Zorro!" What did Norman Foster mean -- "Guy fits Zorro to a T" -- when he announced to the press that he had found his new Zorro? Why did Guy himself feel that this part suited every part of his background and his nature?

Zorro is the most romantic fictional figure ever conceived. Not even Johnston McCulley could have appreciated how much the public would come to love his action hero. He has been played over and over again. Zorro will always be part of our literature and cinematic heritage.

So why do we all grieve for Guy so much? Is it because Zorro should never have died? Is it because he should have been eternally youthful, grinning his wicked grin as he touched his sword to his forehead in an "Adios" and disappeared over the rooftops? How can anyone ever take Guy's place? Guy Williams was Zorro.




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