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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 (aged 80) Coral Gables, Florida, United States
Occupation	Actor/Director
Years active	1935–1992
Spouse(s)	Uta Hagen (1938-1948) Phyllis Hill (1948-1953) Rosemary Clooney (1953-1961) Rosemary Clooney (1964-1967) Stella Magee (19??-1992; his death)

José Vicente Ferrer de Otero y Cintrón^[1] (January 8, 1912 – January 26, 1992), best known as José Ferrer, was a Puerto Rican actor, as well as a theater and film director.

Early life

Ferrer was born in the Santurce district of San Juan, Puerto Rico, the son of Maria Providencia (née Cintron) and Rafael Ferrer, an attorney and writer.^[2] 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.^[3] The production became one of the hits of the 1946/47 Broadway season, winning José the first 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: his Academy Award-winning turn in 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. He also played Cyrano in two television productions, for The Philco Television Playhouse in 1949 and Producers' Showcase in 1953. Ferrer was nominated for an Emmy Award for both presentations, which (taken with his Oscar and Tony) made him the first (and to date, the only) performer to be nominated for all three awards for playing the same character.^[4]

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

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 1979, 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.^[5]

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.

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.^[6] 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,^[6] only weeks after being subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee as a suspected Communist, charges that Ferrer vehemently denied and his career was unscathed. (Three other people connected with the film - screenwriter Carl Foreman, director Michael Gordon, and actor Morris Carnovsky, who was seen as Le Bret - were, in fact, blacklisted.) Ferrer was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for the second and final time for his portrayal of Toulouse-Lautrec in the 1952 non-musical film Moulin Rouge (no relation to the Nicole Kidman film of the same name).^[6]

Ferrer was also nominated for an Emmy Award twice - in 1949 and 1955. Both nominations were for playing the role of Cyrano in two different (and severely truncated) television productions of Cyrano de Bergerac. The first was telecast on Philco Television Playhouse, and the second on Producers' Showcase.^[7]

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. 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.

In 1985, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.

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). By his third marriage to Rosemary Clooney (actor George Clooney's aunt), Ferrer 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 were 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.

At the time of his death, he was married to Stella Magee, whom he 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

References

Sources

• Lifetime Honors - National Medal of Arts.

External links

• José Ferrer at the Internet Broadway Database
• José Ferrer at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• José Ferrer at the Internet Movie Database
• José Ferrer at Find a Grave