José Vicente Ferrer de Otero y Cintrón (January 8, 1912 – January 26, 1992), best known as José Ferrer, was a Puerto Rican actor, as well as a theater and film director. He was the first Hispanic actor to win an Academy Award.
Early life
Ferrer was born in the
Santurce district of
San Juan, Puerto Rico, the son of Maria Providencia Cintron and Rafael Ferrer, an attorney and writer. He studied in the Swiss boarding school
Institut Le Rosey. In 1933, he graduated from
Princeton University, where he wrote a senior thesis,
French Naturalism and Pardo Bazán; he was also a member of the
Princeton Triangle Club.
Career
Theater
Ferrer made his
Broadway debut in 1935. In 1940, he played his first starring role on Broadway, the title role in
Charley's Aunt, partly in
drag. He played
Iago in
Margaret Webster's 1943 Broadway production of
Othello, starring
Paul Robeson in the
title role, Webster as
Emilia, and Ferrer's wife at the time,
Uta Hagen, as
Desdemona. It became the longest-running production of a
Shakespeare play staged in the U.S., a record it still holds. His Broadway directing credits include
The Shrike,
Stalag 17,
The Fourposter,
Twentieth Century,
Carmelina,
My Three Angels, and
The Andersonville Trial.
Cyrano de Bergerac
Ferrer may be best-remembered for his performance in the title role of
Cyrano de Bergerac, which he first played on
Broadway in 1946. Ferrer feared that the production would be a failure in rehearsals due to the open dislike for the play by director
Mel Ferrer (who was not related to José), so he called in
Joshua Logan (who had directed his star-making performance in
Charley's Aunt) to serve as "play doctor" for the production. Logan wrote that he simply had to eliminate pieces of business which director Ferrer had inserted in his staging; they presumably were intended to sabotage the more sentimental elements of the play that the director considered to be corny and in bad taste. The production became one of the hits of the 1946/47
Broadway season, winning Ferrer the first Best Actor
Tony Award for his depiction of the long-nosed poet/swordsman (tied with
Fredric March for
Ruth Gordon's play about her own early years as an actress,
Years Ago'').
He reprised the role of Cyrano onstage at the New York City Center under his own direction in 1953, as well as in two films: the
1950 film of
Edmond Rostand's play directed by
Michael Gordon and the 1964 French film
Cyrano et d'Artagnan directed by
Abel Gance.
Ferrer would go on to voice a highly truncated cartoon version of the play for an episode of The ABC Afterschool Special in 1974, and made his farewell to the part by performing a short passage from the play for the 1986 Tony Awards telecast.
Early films
Ferrer made his film debut in 1948 in the Technicolor epic
Joan of Arc as the weak-willed Dauphin opposite
Ingrid Bergman. Leading roles in the films
Whirlpool (opposite
Gene Tierney) (1949) and
Crisis (opposite
Cary Grant) (1950) followed, and culminated in the 1950 film
Cyrano de Bergerac. He next played the role of
Toulouse-Lautrec in
John Huston's fictional 1952
biopic,
Moulin Rouge.
Later stage career
Beginning circa 1950, Ferrer concentrated on film work, but would return to the stage occasionally. In 1959 Ferrer directed the original stage production of
Saul Levitt's
The Andersonville Trial, about the trial following the revelation of conditions at the infamous
Civil War prison. It was a hit and featured
George C. Scott. He took over the direction of the troubled musical
Juno from
Vincent J. Donehue, who had himself taken over from
Tony Richardson. The show folded after 16 performances and mixed-to extremely negative critical reaction. The show's commercial failure (along with his earlier flop,
Oh, Captain!), was a considerable setback to Ferrer's directing career. Nor did the short-lived
The Girl Who Came to Supper do much for his acting career. A notable performance of his later stage career was as
Miguel de Cervantes and his fictional creation
Don Quixote in the hit musical
Man of La Mancha. Ferrer took over the role from
Richard Kiley in 1967, and subsequently went on tour with it in the first national company of the show.
Other filmwork
(1954)]]
He portrayed the Rev. Davidson in 1953's
Miss Sadie Thompson (a remake of
Rain) opposite
Rita Hayworth; Barney Greenwald, the embittered defense attorney, in 1954's
The Caine Mutiny; and
operetta composer
Sigmund Romberg in the
MGM musical biopic
Deep in My Heart. In 1955 Ferrer directed himself in the film version of
The Shrike, with
June Allyson.
The Cockleshell Heroes followed a year later, along with
The Great Man, both of which he also directed. In 1958 Ferrer directed and appeared in
I Accuse! (as
Alfred Dreyfus) and
The High Cost of Loving. Ferrer also directed, but did not appear in,
Return to Peyton Place in 1961 and also the
remake of
State Fair in 1962.
Ferrer's other notable film roles include the Turkish Bey in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Herod Antipas in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), a budding Nazi in Ship of Fools, a pompous professor in Woody Allen's A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982), the treacherous Professor Siletski in the 1983 remake of To Be or Not to Be, and Shaddam Corrino IV in Dune in 1984. However, in an interview given in the 1980s, he bemoaned the lack of good character parts for aging stars, and readily admitted that he now took on roles mostly for the money.
In 1980, he had a memorable role as future Justice Abe Fortas, to whom he bore a strong resemblance, in the made-for-television film version of Anthony Lewis' Gideon's Trumpet, opposite Henry Fonda in an Emmy-nominated performance as Clarence Earl Gideon.
Radio and television
Among other radio roles, Ferrer starred as detective
Philo Vance in a 1945 series of the same name.
On May 8, 1958, Ferrer guest starred on NBC's The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford.
Ferrer, not usually known for regular roles in TV series, had a recurring role as Julia Duffy's WASPy father on the long-running television series, Newhart in the 1980s. He also had a recurring role as elegant and flamboyant attorney Reuben Marino on the soap opera Another World in the early 1980s. He narrated the very first episode of the popular 1964 sitcom Bewitched, in mock documentary style. He also provided the voice of the evil Ben Haramed on the 1968 Rankin/Bass Christmas TV special The Little Drummer Boy.
Ferrer would don the nose and costume of Cyrano for a last time in a TV commercial in the 1970s.
Awards
Ferrer received his first
Academy Award nomination as
Best Supporting Actor for his performance as the Dauphin who eventually becomes King of France in the
Ingrid Bergman Joan of Arc in 1948. He went on to win the
Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of
Cyrano de Bergerac in the
1950 film version of
Edmond Rostand's play, becoming the first Puerto Rican to win the award,
Before entering films, Ferrer won a Tony Award for his portrayal of Cyrano on the Broadway stage in a successful 1946 stage revival of the play. The four nominations for playing Cyrano - Tony, Oscar, and the two Emmy nominations - made him the first (and to date, the only) performer to be nominated for all three awards for playing the same character, and one of the very few actors to be nominated for an Emmy Award twice for playing the same character in two different productions of the same play.
In 1952 Ferrer won a Tony Award for directing three plays (The Shrike, Stalag 17, The Fourposter), in the same season, and earned another for his performance in The Shrike.
He was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1981.
In 1985, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.
Legacy
In 2005, the Hispanic Organization of Latin Actors (HOLA) renamed its Tespis Award to the HOLA José Ferrer Tespis Award.
Personal life
Ferrer had a decade-long first marriage to famed actress and acting teacher
Uta Hagen (1938–1948), with whom he had a daughter, Leticia ("Lettie") Ferrer. His second wife was dancer/actress
Phyllis Hill (1948–1953). His third marriage was to the singer
Rosemary Clooney, actor
George Clooney's aunt. The couple had five children:
Miguel Jose (born February 7, 1955); Maria P (born August 9, 1956); Gabriel V (born August 1, 1957), Monsita T (born October 13, 1958) and
Rafael F (born March 23, 1960). Ferrer and Clooney married in 1953, divorced in 1961, and remarried in 1964, only to divorce again three years later. Their son, Gabriel Ferrer, is married to singer
Debby Boone, daughter of
Pat and Shirley Boone.
He was the cousin of the tennis player Gigi Fernández.
At the time of his death, he was married to Stella Magee, whom he had met in the late sixties. Ferrer died following a brief battle with colon cancer in Coral Gables, Florida in 1992 and was interred in Santa Maria Magdalena de Pazzis Cemetery in Old San Juan in his native Puerto Rico.
Filmography
{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-
! Year
! Title
! Role
! class="unsortable" | Notes
|-
| 1948
|
Joan of Arc
|
The Dauphin, Charles VII
| Nominated —
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
|-
| 1949
|
Whirlpool
| David Korvo
|
|-
| 1950
|
Cyrano de Bergerac
|
Cyrano de Bergerac
|
|-
| 1950
|
Crisis
| Raoul Farrago
|
|-
| 1950
|
| José
|
|-
| 1952
|
Moulin Rouge
| Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
| Nominated —
Academy Award for Best Actor
|-
| 1952
|
Anything Can Happen
| Giorgi Papashvily
|
|-
| 1953
|
Miss Sadie Thompson
| Alfred Davidson
|
|-
| 1953
|
Producers' Showcase: "Cyrano de Bergerac"
|
Cyrano de Bergerac
| Nominated —
Emmy Award Best Actor - Single Performance
|-
| 1954
|
Deep in My Heart
| Sigmund Romberg
|
|-
| 1954
|
| Lt. Barney Greenwald
| Nominated —
BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actor
|-
| 1955
|
| Major Stringer
|
|-
| 1955
|
| Jim Downs
|
|-
| 1956
|
| Joe Harris
|
|-
| 1958
|
| Jim 'Jimbo' Fry
|
|-
| 1958
|
I Accuse!
| Capt.
Alfred Dreyfus
|
|-
| 1961
|
Return to Peyton Place
|
|
|-
| 1961
|
Forbid Them Not
| Narrator
|
|-
| 1962
|
Lawrence of Arabia
| Turkish Bey
|
|-
| 1963
|
Delay in Marienborn
| Cowan the Reporter
|
|-
| 1963
|
Nine Hours to Rama
| Supt. Gopal Das
|
|-
| 1964
|
Cyrano et d'Artagnan
|
Cyrano de Bergerac
|
|-
| 1965
|
Ship of Fools
| Siegfried Rieber
|
|-
| 1965
|
|
Herod Antipas
|
|-
| 1967
|
Cervantes
| Hassan Bey
|
|-
| 1967
|
Enter Laughing
| Mr. Marlowe
|
|-
| 1975
|
| Inspector Reed
|
|-
| 1976
|
| Ironman
|
|-
| 1976
|
Forever Young, Forever Free
| Father Alberto
|
|-
| 1976
|
Paco
| Fermin Flores
|
|-
| 1976
|
Voyage of the Damned
| Manuel Benitez
|
|-
| 1977
|
| Lionel McCoy
|
|-
| 1977
|
Who Has Seen the Wind
|
|
|-
| 1977
|
| Priest of the Brotherhood
|
|-
| 1977
|
Crash!
| Marc Denne
|
|-
| 1978
|
| Dr. Andrews
|
|-
| 1978
|
Dracula's Dog
| Inspector Branco
|
|-
| 1978
|
Fedora
| Doctor Vando
|
|-
| 1978
|
| Captain Nemo
|
|-
| 1979
|
Natural Enemies
| Harry Rosenthal
|
|-
| 1979
|
|
Athos
|
|-
| 1979
|
| Bishop
|
|-
| 1980
|
| Domenici
|
|-
| 1981
|
Bloody Birthday
| Doctor
|
|-
| 1982
|
Blood Tide
| Nereus
|
|-
| 1982
|
| Leopold
|
|-
| 1983
|
To Be or Not to Be
| Prof. Siletski
|
|-
| 1983
|
| Mayor Gordon Lane
|
|-
| 1984
|
Dune
| Padishah Emperor
Shaddam Corrino IV
|
|-
| 1984
|
| Dr. Hector Lomelin
|
|-
| 1987
|
|
|
|-
| 1990
|
Hired to Kill
| Rallis
|
|-
| 1990
|
Old Explorers
| Warner Watney
|
|-
| 1992
|
Laam Gong juen ji faan fei jo fung wan
|
|
|}
See also
List of famous Puerto Ricans
French immigration to Puerto Rico
List of Puerto Rican Academy Award winners and nominees
References
External links
Category:1912 births
Category:1992 deaths
Category:American film actors
Category:American radio actors
Category:American stage actors
Category:American television actors
Category:Best Actor Academy Award winners
Category:Best Drama Actor Golden Globe (film) winners
Category:Cancer deaths in Florida
Category:Deaths from colorectal cancer
Category:People from San Juan, Puerto Rico
Category:People from Santurce, Puerto Rico
Category:Princeton University alumni
Category:Puerto Rican actors
Category:Puerto Rican film actors
Category:RCA Victor artists
Category:United States National Medal of Arts recipients