More than an Actor,
Artist at heart

About Pepe Serna

A filmmaker came to town looking to cast a Mexican American actor in the lead role as a young bullfighter in a movie called Jacket of Blood and Gold. Though the only print of the film was later lost in a gulf hurricane, the director got Serna a gig as a barker at the Moroccan Pavilion at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. Besides refining his burgeoning improv talents, he awarded himself a major theatrical success. “I had a small hotel room on Broadway, so I leaned out the window and read [Eugene O’Neil’s] The Hairy Ape out loud. That way, I could say that I performed The Hairy Ape on Broadway.”

Even a stint in the Marine Reserves could not deter his quest. After a few months pretending he’d been cast in a movie about a young man entering the Marine Corps, where the drill instructors were his directors, he found that he could earn exemption from active duty by studying abroad. He left for Mexico City, enrolled in school, lived on 80 cents and one meal a day, and hung around film studios hoping to break into the business. “I was doing what I loved,” he says. “I didn’t care whether they paid me or not.”

Incongruously, he was cast in a half Mexican, half American production of Hair. Serna says the daughter of the president of Mexico ordered the production closed after one performance because of the scandalous nudity, but it inspired him to travel north and try his luck in Hollywood. Borrowing $100 from his hairdresser mother in Corpus, he headed west to the city of his dreams.

PEPE SERNA ARRIVED in Hollywood in 1969. He was determined to be discovered. He wanted the chance to perform and was not going to be denied. Though broke and homeless at times, he still gave his all to his improv group,