José Ferrer

José Vicente Ferrer de Otero y Cintrón (January 8, 1912 – January 26, 1992), best known as José Ferrer, was a Puerto Rican actor, theater, and film director.

He was the first Puerto Rican, as well as the first Hispanic actor, to win an Academy Award (in 1950, for Cyrano de Bergerac).

To honor his roots, he donated his Oscar award to the University of Puerto Rico. The prolific and distinguished thespian also won several Tony Awards. In 1947, he won the Tony Award for his theatrical performance of Cyrano de Bergerac, and then in 1952, he won the Distinguished Dramatic Actor Award for The Shrike, and also the Outstanding Director Award for directing all three of The Shrike, The Fourposter, and Stalag 17.

Jose Ferrer's contributions to American theater were recognized in 1981, when he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. In 1985 he received the National Medal of Arts from Ronald Reagan, becoming the first actor to receive that honor. On April 26, 2012, the United States Postal Service issued a stamp in Jose Ferrer's honor in their Distinguished Americans series.

Spouses

Uta Hagen (1938–1948)
Phyllis Hill (1948–1953)
Rosemary Clooney
(1953–1961 and 1964–1967)
Stella Magee (1977–1992) 

Children

Leticia (Letty) Ferrer (b. 1940)
Miguel Ferrer (1955–2017)
Maria Ferrer (b. 1956)
Gabriel Ferrer (b. 1957)
Monsita Ferrer (b. 1958)
Rafael Ferrer (b. 1960)

Early life

Ferrer was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the son of Maria Providencia Cintron, a woman who came from the small mountain town of Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, and Rafael Ferrer, an attorney and writer from the capital city of the island, San Juan, Puerto Rico. He studied at the prestigious Swiss boarding school Institut Le Rosey.[3] In 1938, Ferrer completed his bachelor's degree at Princeton University, where he wrote his senior thesis on "French Naturalism and Pardo Bazán". Ferrer 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 Broadway production of Othello (1943), which starred Paul Robeson in the title role, Webster as Emilia, and Ferrer's wife, Uta Hagen, as Desdemona. This became the longest-running production of a Shakespearean play presented in the United States, a record that 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 film work

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, such as his roles in the horror potboilers The Swarm, in which he played a doctor, and Dracula's Dog, in which he played a police inspector.

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. During those years he guest-starred on several television series, such as Quincy, M.E., in which he played a doctor suspected of unethical behavior. In the third season of Columbo, Ferrer appeared in the episode "Mind over Mayhem", in the main role of a ruthless military computer professor.

Legacy

• Jose Ferrer was the first Hispanic actor to win an Academy Award.

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

• Jose Ferrer was honored for his theatrical and cinematic works with an induction into the American Theatre Hall of Fame and a National Medal of Arts, becoming the first actor and Hispanic to be presented with the prestigious award.

• Jose Ferrer's sons Rafael Ferrer and Miguel Ferrer are also actors.

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-concealed 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 the woman who would become his last wife, Stella Magee. Clooney found out about the affair, and she and Ferrer divorced for the last time in 1967.
• Stella Magee (1977–1992): Ferrer married Magee in 1977, and they remained so until his death.

He is a cousin of professional tennis player Gigi Fernández.

Jose Ferrer was fluent in Spanish, English, French, and Italian.

Ferrer donated his Academy Award trophy to the University of Puerto Rico as a tribute to his roots.

Following a brief battle with colon cancer, Ferrer died 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

• 1948 Joan of Arc
• 1949 Whirlpool
• 1950 Cyrano de Bergerac
• 1950 Crisis
• 1950 The Secret Fury
• 1952 Moulin Rouge
• 1952 Anything Can Happen
• 1953 Miss Sadie Thompson
• 1953 Producers' Showcase: "Cyrano de Bergerac"
• 1954 Deep in My Heart
• 1954 The Caine Mutiny
• 1955 The Cockleshell Heroes
• 1955 The Shrike
• 1956 The Great Man
• 1958 The High Cost of Loving
• 1958 I Accuse!
• 1961 Return to Peyton Place
• 1961 Forbid Them Not
• 1962 Lawrence of Arabia
• 1963 Stop Train 349
• 1963 Nine Hours to Rama
• 1964 Cyrano et d'Artagnan
• 1965 Ship of Fools
• 1965 The Greatest Story Ever Told
• 1967 Cervantes
• 1967 Enter Laughing
• 1975 El Clan de los inmorales
• 1976 The Big Bus
• 1976 Forever Young, Forever Free
• 1976 Paco
• 1976 Voyage of the Damned
• 1977 The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover
• 1977 Who Has Seen the Wind
• 1977 The Sentinel
• 1977 Crash!
• 1978 The Swarm
• 1978 Dracula's Dog
• 1978 Fedora
• 1978 The Return of Captain Nemo
• 1979 Natural Enemies
• 1979 The Fifth Musketeer
• 1979 A Life of Sin
• 1980 The Big Brawl
• 1981 Bloody Birthday
• 1982 Blood Tide
• 1982 A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy
• 1983 To Be or Not to Be
• 1983 The Being
• 1984 Dune
• 1984 The Evil That Men Do
• 1987 The Sun and the Moon
• 1988 Hitler's SS Portrait in Evil
• 1990 Hired to Kill
• 1990 Old Explorers
• 1992 Laam Gong juen ji faan fei jo fung wan