José Ferrer

For other people named José Ferrer, see José Ferrer (disambiguation).

José Ferrer
in the trailer for Crisis (1950)
Born	José Vicente Ferrer de Otero y Cintrón January 8, 1912(1912-01-08) Santurce, San Juan, Puerto Rico
Died	January 26, 1992(1992-01-26) (aged 80) Coral Gables, Florida, United States
Occupation	Actor/Director
Spouse	Uta Hagen (1938–48) Phyllis Hill (1948–53) Rosemary Clooney (1953–61; 1964–67) Stella Magee (1977–92, his death)

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 (no relation), 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).

Ferrer in costume in an unnamed play at Maple Leaf Gardens

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. Tony Martinez continued in the role of Sancho Panza under Ferrer, as he had with Kiley.

Other filmwork

Ferrer as the defense attorney in The Caine Mutiny (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 Padishah Emperor 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. In the third season of Columbo Ferrer appears in the episode "Mind over Mayhem", in the main role of a ruthless military computer professor.

Legacy

• In 2005, the Hispanic Organization of Latin Actors (HOLA) renamed its Tespis Award to the HOLA José Ferrer Tespis Award.

Personal life

Ferrer was married five times:

• Uta Hagen (1938-1948): Ferrer and Hagen had one child, their daughter Leticia (born June 16, 1939). They divorced in 1948, partly due to Hagen's long-consealed affair with Paul Robeson, with whom Hagen and Ferrer had co-starred in the Broadway production of Othello.
• Phyllis Hill (1948-1953): Ferrer and Hill wed on May 27, 1948, and they moved to Burlington, Vermont in 1950, where they subsequently found it difficult to keep their marriage together. Jose returned to Puerto Rico because his mother died. He soon returned to Vermont smoking heavily. They divorced on January 12, 1953.
• Rosemary Clooney (1953-1961): Ferrer first married Clooney on June 1, 1953 in Durant, Oklahoma. They moved to Santa Monica, California in 1954, and then to Los Angeles in 1958. Ferrer and Clooney had five children: Miguel (born February 7, 1955), Maria (born May 29, 1956), Gabriel (born December 1, 1957), Monsita (born October 13, 1958) and Rafael (born March 23, 1960). They divorced for the first time in 1961.
• Rosemary Clooney (1964-1967): Ferrer and Clooney remarried on November 22, 1964 in Los Angeles; however, the marriage again crumbled while Ferrer was carrying on an affair with his bride-to-be Stella Magee. She found out about the affair, and they divorced for the last time in 1967.
• Stella Magee (1977-1992): Ferrer married Magee in 1977, and they remained married until his death.

He was the cousin of the tennis player Gigi Fernández.

Ferrer died following a brief battle with colon cancer in Coral Gables, Florida in 1992, and was interred in Santa María Magdalena de Pazzis Cemetery in Old San Juan in his native Puerto Rico.

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	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	Academy Award for Best Actor Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama
1950	Crisis	Raoul Farrago
1950	Secret Fury, TheThe Secret Fury	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	Caine Mutiny, TheThe Caine Mutiny	Lt. Barney Greenwald	Nominated — BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actor
1955	Cockleshell Heroes, TheThe Cockleshell Heroes	Major Stringer	Ferrer was also Director
1955	Shrike, TheThe Shrike	Jim Downs
1956	Great Man, TheThe Great Man	Joe Harris
1958	High Cost of Loving, TheThe High Cost of Loving	Jim 'Jimbo' Fry
1958	I Accuse!	Capt. Alfred Dreyfus
1961	Return to Peyton Place		as Director only
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	Greatest Story Ever Told, TheThe Greatest Story Ever Told	Herod Antipas
1967	Cervantes	Hassan Bey
1967	Enter Laughing	Mr. Marlowe
1975	Clan de los inmorales, ElEl Clan de los inmorales	Inspector Reed
1976	Big Bus, TheThe Big Bus	Ironman
1976	Forever Young, Forever Free	Father Alberto
1976	Paco	Fermin Flores
1976	Voyage of the Damned	Manuel Benitez
1977	Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover, TheThe Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover	Lionel McCoy
1977	Who Has Seen the Wind	Ben, TheThe Ben
1977	Sentinel, TheThe Sentinel	Priest of the Brotherhood
1977	Crash!	Marc Denne
1978	Swarm, TheThe Swarm	Dr. Andrews
1978	Dracula's Dog	Inspector Branco
1978	Fedora	Doctor Vando
1978	Return of Captain Nemo, TheThe Return of Captain Nemo	Captain Nemo
1979	Natural Enemies	Harry Rosenthal
1979	Fifth Musketeer, TheThe Fifth Musketeer	Athos
1979	Life of Sin, AA Life of Sin	Bishop
1980	Big Brawl, TheThe Big Brawl	Domenici
1981	Bloody Birthday	Doctor
1982	Blood Tide	Nereus
1982	Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, AA Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy	Leopold
1983	To Be or Not to Be	Prof. Siletski
1983	Being, TheThe Being	Mayor Gordon Lane
1984	Dune	Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV
1984	Evil That Men Do, TheThe Evil That Men Do	Dr. Hector Lomelin
1987	Sun and the Moon, TheThe Sun and the Moon
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

External links

• José Ferrer at the Internet Broadway Database
• José Ferrer at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• José Ferrer at the Internet Movie Database