The Old Days

We sat in the gazebo at the River Cafe, had lunch, and talked for a good two hours. We couldn’t come to a consensus on when it was the last time we sat across from one another, but maybe 10 years? Christopher Riordan looked good. To me, he has always looked the same, a dancer’s body, his ”Indiana Jones” hat. He will be 88 this coming November.

He now lives in an actor’s retirement home in Los Angeles, and his biggest complaint about that is that his fellow residents are all sick with some ailment. Christopher has a hip that occasionally bothers him, but it’s nothing serious—part and parcel of an actor/dancer/choreographer’s 84-year and counting career.

I used to see Christopher often when he still lived here, 20 years ago. Yesterday, we chatted about buildings and homes and people who have passed and some that left town in a hurry! He has a treasure trove of photos he’s held onto his whole life. Every now and again, one will surface on Facebook with a storyline attached. His book is growing and growing in size, but he has yet to find a publisher.

Listening to him talk, the history of Hollywood is right there. He was there at the beginning, rubbing shoulders with and working for the biggest names in show business. He counted Elizabeth Taylor, not only as a castmate but also as a friend. Christopher rented the house across the street from Casa Kimberly at her suggestion. As Christopher tells it, she had to fly down often to keep tabs on ‘him.’ Meaning Richard Burton. So, he was in Hollywood at the beginning of the motion picture boom, appearing in ”My Fair Lady,” and dozens of other films. He was also boots on the ground in the early 60s when Vallarta began to blossom as a resort town, particularly among the movie stars.

He was discovered by Fred Astaire and choreographer Hermes Pan almost 65 years ago. Christopher danced in many Elvis films and would have danced in them all if he had not been working on other projects. Every year, he is invited to go to Elvis festivals, oddly enough, many of them in Canada; no mean feat, being Elvis’s ”favorite dancer.” Those words came from Elvis’s wife, Priscilla, whom Christopher met at an Elvis Festival fairly recently.

What I love about Christopher is that he never drops names, although he certainly could. Famous people just happened to be the ones he grew up with. Simple as that.

He will enjoy the rest of his vacation in Vallarta as long as he is not summoned back to work in television. We will try to get together one more time before he heads home.

From the first time I saw Christopher, probably in the late 90s, I knew there was something special about him, and that we would be friends. Little did I know, at first glance, that he was directly connected to the beginnings of Vallarta’s history in the 1960s, From Here.