Rio Hondo’s Man for All Roles : Theater: John Francis has been a student, teacher, actor and director at the school.

John Francis, a veteran actor and director, has had a long run at Rio Hondo College. One of its first students 27 years ago, he is now a theater professor who for the past two weeks has been directing the musical “42nd Street.”

“I just kind of latched on, and it’s been a big love affair ever since,” said Francis, who was the 20th student to enroll at the college when it opened in 1964 at the old Little Lake Elementary School in Santa Fe Springs.

The student body’s first secretary-treasurer and the first sports editor of El Paisano, the school newspaper, Francis graduated in 1967, a year after the new campus opened on a hill near Whittier.

Two years later, after a stint at Cal State Fullerton to get his bachelor’s degree, he returned to Rio Hondo to stay.

From 1969-82, during the college’s glory era in football and basketball, he was its sports information director.

During that period he also taught journalism, drama and speech at Serra High School in Gardena and at St. Paul High in Santa Fe Springs. After acquiring a master’s degree from Cal State Los Angeles in 1980, Francis became a journalism instructor at Rio Hondo.

One of his greatest satisfactions was seeing his son, John Francis II, now a student at Fresno State, become the editor of El Paisano.

A year ago, Francis, who lives in Alta Loma, became a professor of theater, a field he has loved since he performed in plays at Santa Fe High School.

Influenced and coached by Jean Korf, Rio Hondo’s first theater professor, Francis acted in 11 plays for her at the college. He has appeared in 77 productions since 1962, the last 30 or so as a paid actor in small theaters throughout Southern California.

Since 1973 he has directed 75 shows in colleges and community theaters, including “Oklahoma,” “West Side Story,” “12 Angry Jurors,” “Play It Again, Sam” and “Othello.” But the 10-performance run of “42nd Street” is the first show he has directed at Rio Hondo.

“It’s been going so well,” he said. “It’s been one nice day after another.”

Francis, 45, stood on the stage in the deserted Wray Theatre last week and went over a kissing scene with Leah McKinney, who plays the starlet Peggy Sawyer in the show.

“He’s wonderful,” McKinney, 21, said of her director. “He’s like a dad. Straightforward. Not too sweet, not too mean.”

“I don’t have my whip with me,” Francis joked.

McKinney, a student at Pasadena City College, who said she is black and Korean, plays a role that traditionally goes to a blonde or brunette.

“I asked him when I auditioned if he was going to be casting this color-blind.”

“And I told her,” said Francis, “ ‘I don’t care if you’re pink, purple or polka-dotted, as long as you’re good enough for the part.’ ”

The curtain is scheduled to come down on “42nd Street” after a matinee at 3 p.m. today.