Bonar Colleano (14 March 1924 – 18 August 1958) was a charismatic, American-born British stage and motion-picture performer.
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Colleano was born Bonar Sullivan in New York City. Following childhood experiences with the Ringling Brothers Circus and in his family's famous circus, he entered films in 1944. He lived as a British residency, spending the several years performing in music halls, the legitimate stage, and radio. After years of playing caricatured Americans in British films, his first important role came with the popular wartime drama, The Way to the Stars (also known as Johnny in the Clouds, 1945) and later he starred in a Hollywood production, Stanley Kramer's Eight Iron Men (1952). His later screen roles included Lenny, in the oddball Shakespeare derivation Joe MacBeth (1955).
Colleano's stage work included the role of Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire at the Aldwych Theatre, London, with Vivien Leigh.
He was from a well known Australian circus family and was a nephew of Con Colleano, the first tightrope walker to perform a forward somersault on the wire.
In 1946 he married actress Tamera Lees, but the couple divorced in 1951. His second wife was actress Susan Shaw, who declined into alcoholism after his death. Their son, Mark Colleano (born March 4, 1955 ), is also an actor.
Colleano died, aged 34, when he crashed his sports car in Birkenhead shortly after exiting the Queensway tunnel. He was driving back from Liverpool's New Shakespeare Theatre, where he had been appearing in a stage production of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? His passenger, fellow actor and friend Michael Balfour, required 98 stitches, but he eventually recovered.
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