Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez, the diminutive (5'3"), comically endearing character actor and entertainer who got his break in the movies after John Wayne spotted him as a guest on Groucho Marx's You Bet Your Life, died at his Culver City, California home on February 6 of natural causes. He was 80.

Born Ramiro Gonzalez Gonzalez in Aguilares, Texas, on May 24, 1925, his parents were Mexican-American entertainers who pulled him out of school at the age of seven to join the family's entertainment act for migrant workers in the American Southwest. He paid his dues learning to sing, dance and play frying pans and hubcaps as if they were percussion instruments. His career was interrupted during World War II, where he was a driver for the Army, but after the war he began performing comedy on the West coast in both Spanish and English.

Gonzalez-Gonzalez's career changed for the better after a February 12, 1953 appearance as a contestant on the hugely popular television quiz show You Bet Your Life. Lively and irreverent, he was completely at ease trading quips with the great Groucho Marx:

Marx: Pedro, we could do a great act together, what would you call us?

Pedro: It would be Gonzalez Gonzalez and Marx.

Marx: That's nice billing, two people in the act, and I get third place!

John Wayne happened to catch Gonzalez Gonzalez's star making turn on the show and signed him to a seven-year contract with his production company. He made his film debut in the Van Heflin western Wings of the Hawk (1953), but he gave his first notable performance in The High and the Mighty (1954) with Wayne. Although his characters in subsequent films were criticized years later for being no more than Latin stereotypes, his wit, energy, and easygoing charm made them always likable and feisty; and his best films: the fine noir thriller I Died a Thousand Times (1955); the Glenn Ford outing The Sheepman (1958); two more well-received John Wayne pictures Rio Bravo (1959) and McLintock! (1963); and two of the better Disney comedies of the era, The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin (1967) and The Love Bug (1968), proved these qualities in abundance.

Gonzalez Gonzalez is survived by his wife of 62 years, Leandra; son, Ramiro; two daughters, Yolanda and Rosie; seven grandchildren, including Clifton Collins Jr., himself an actor; and three great-grandchildren.

by Michael T. Toole