Background

José Vicente Ferrer Otero y Cintran was born on January 8, 1912, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He belonged to a notable and affluent Puerto Rican family known for its involvement in the island's cultural and literary landscape. His father, Rafael Ferrer, was a well-known lawyer. His mother was Providencia Cintrón.

Education

Ferrer attended elementary school at the San Agustin College in Río Piedras. When José was a young boy, his family moved to New York in search of help for Ferrer, who had been born with a cleft palate. On their arrival in New York, his father continued working as an attorney and Ferrer attended La Salle College, where he graduated from high school at the age of 14.

Although Ferrer gained immediate admission to Princeton University, he went first to Switzerland, where he attended the Swiss boarding school Institut Le Rosey. In Switzerland, Ferrer received advanced musical training and excelled as a pianist. He used his musical talents throughout his career. On his return to the United States, Ferrer enrolled in Princeton, where he studied architecture and graduated in 1933.

While at Princeton, he formed a band called José Ferrer and His Pied Pipers. Assisted by his fellow Princetonian Jimmy Stewart, the 14-member band was a hit on campus and toured Europe during the summer of 1930 with considerable success. He had multiple roles as the band's director, singer, piano player, saxophonist, and clarinetist. In addition to his musical interests, he participated in school theatrical productions at the Triangle Club. His first incursion into theater was as a director of the musical Fol-de-Rol.

After his graduation from Princeton, Ferrer tried his luck as a musical performer on a Long Island showboat, where he debuted in the melodrama The Periwinkle. However, he moved on to Columbia University, where he did graduate work in literature and romance languages.

Later in life, the University of Puerto Rico awarded Ferrer his first honorary doctorate in 1949. As an act of goodwill and admiration toward his homeland, he donated his Oscar to the university. Ferrer was also awarded an honorary Master's of Fine Arts from Princeton, as well as an honorary doctorate from Bradley University in Illinois.

Career

In 1935 Ferrer joined a Broadway production company where Joshua Logan, a member of his former band, José Ferrer and His Pied Pipers, worked. He was given a job as a stagehand and worked sporadically in several walk-on parts. One of his fellow actors spotted the actor's potential talent and persuaded the producers to give him a one-line role as a policeman in the production of A Slight Case of Murder (1935). The next year he landed a more important role as one of a trio of Virginia Military Institute cadets in the comedy Brother Rat. In 1936 he played the leading role in Phillip Barry's Spring Dance at the Empire Theater. He continued reading for several different parts and asking for more prominent and demanding acting opportunities.

Ferrer's first notable theatrical role was Iago in Shakespeare's Othello in 1943. The critically acclaimed play was groundbreaking in many ways: it was an adaptation done by Paul Robeson, an African-American, and the producers cast the first Puerto Rican in the lead role on Broadway. One of the most important roles of his lifetime was as Cyrano de Bergerac, which he played on Broadway in 1946. This performance won him a Tony in 1947.

In 1948, while still working in theater, Ferrer began a film career. His first movie was Joan of Arc (1948) alongside Ingrid Bergman. Although he was nominated for an Oscar, it was a mediocre film. His Broadway success Cyrano de Bergerac was adapted for film in 1950 and his role won him an Oscar as best actor the same year, making Ferrer the first Puerto Rican to win both a Tony and an Oscar. Fellow Puerto Rican Rita Moreno later replicated this achievement.

In the early 1950s he was caught up in the general hysteria of the McCarthy era but was not blacklisted thanks in part to a successful public relations campaign launched under the advice of former Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas. His сurrent wife, actress Uta Hagen, was blacklisted and had considerable problems finding acting jobs for the rest of her career.

During the 1950s, which were considered by many critics as the height of his career, Ferrer appeared in many films such as Whirlpool (1950), Moulin Rouge (1952), The Caine Mutiny (1954), The Great Man (1956), and I Accuse! (1958), the last two of which he also directed.

The final important period of Ferrer's career in Hollywood was in the 1960s, when he appeared in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), and Ship of Fools (1965). He appeared in more than 40 movies from the 1970s to the 1990s and entertainment critics consider him one of the best character actors of the twentieth century. Ferrer died in Coral Gables, Florida, on January 26, 1992, after a brief illness. His ashes were taken to his beloved Puerto Rico shortly after his death.

Achievements

• José Ferrer was a Puerto Rican actor, producer and film director, famous for his roles in such films as Cyrano de Bergerac, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Nine Hours to Rama and Dune. In 1951, Ferrer became the first Hispanic actor to win an Academy Award. He also received the Golden Globe for Best Actor in 1951. In 1947, he received the Tony Award for his theatrical performance of Cyrano de Bergerac and in 1952, he won the Distinguished Dramatic Actor Award for The Shrike, and also the Outstanding Director Award for directing the plays The Shrike, The Fourposter, and Stalag 17. He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. In 1985, Ferrer received the National Medal of Arts from Ronald Reagan, becoming the first actor and Hispanic to receive that honor.

Works

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  • Nine Hours to Rama

    (In this fact-based film, disillusioned Indian Nathuram Go...)

    1963
  • Kojak: The Marcus-Nelson Murders

    (Based on a real-life case, Lieutenant Theo Kojack (Telly ...)

    1973
  • The Greatest Story Ever Told

    (Max Von Sydow, John Wayne, Charlton Heston, Sidney Poitie...)

    1965
  • Return To Peyton Place

    (The residents of Peyton Place are not happy when its most...)

    1961
  • Watch Life Of Sin

    (A South American reporter (Raul Julia) investigates the l...)

    1979
  • Moulin Rouge

    (Visually exquisite biopic of Toulouse-Lautrec, the crippl...)

    1952
  • Dune

    (In the year 10191, a spice called melange is the most val...)

    1984
  • Cyrano de Bergerac

    (Cyrano de Bergerac is a 1950 American adventure film base...)

    1950
  • The Shrike

    (In a state-run mental hospital, theatrical director Jim D...)

    1955
  • Ship Of Fools

    (When an eclectic group of passengers boards a cruise ship...)

    1965
  • Paco

    (A Colombian orphan (Panchito Gomez) seeks his uncle (Jose...)

    1976
  • Battle Creek Brawl

    (Impressed by his martial art skills, a mob kidnaps Jerry'...)

    1980
  • Lawrence of Arabia

    (Lawrence, a lieutenant in the British Army, is asked by C...)

    1962
  • E'Lollipop

    (A South African boy (Muntu Ndebele) follows his white orp...)

    1975
  • The Evil That Men Do

    (A professional killer comes out of retirement to investig...)

    1984
  • Zoltan… Hound of Dracula

    (A group of soldiers accidentally unleash Dracula's servan...)

    1978
  • To Be or Not To Be

    (An actor and his wife struggle to survive and make a livi...)

    1983
  • Gideon's Trumpet

    (In 1961, Clarence Earl Gideon (Henry Fonda) is arrested o...)

    1980
  • Crash!

    (When his patient Kim is nearly killed in a motor accident...)

    1976

Views

Quotations: "A man, when he wishes, is the master of his fate."

"We can make ourselves actors, but only the audience can make a star."

"The truth is I made a few good movies in the '50s, then went into freefall."

Membership

José Ferrer was a member of the Princeton Triangle Club and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Personality

A constant element in Ferrer's life was his love for his native Puerto Rico. In 1970, when he was playing in Man of La Mancha on Broadway, he took the production of the island so that his fellow Puerto Ricans would have the chance to see the musical. In a newspaper column published by Puerto Rican newspaper, El Nuevo Dia, notable Puerto Rican scholar José Ferrer Canales recalled how Ferrer identified with the Puerto Ricans who moved to New York during the first wave of migration from the island in the 1940s.

Ferrer never hesitated to greet Puerto Rican servers at restaurants, telling them that he was also Puerto Rican. He always looked forward to the time when Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans would stop being provincial and open themselves to the world to showcase their natural talents and abilities.

Connections

José Ferrer married Uta Hagen in 1938. The marriage produced a daughter, Leticia Thyra Ferrer. Ferrer and Hagen 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. In 1948 José Ferrer married Phyllis Hill and they moved to Burlington, Vermont in 1950. Ferrer returned to Puerto Rico because his mother died. Ferrer and Hill divorced on January 12, 1953.

In 1953 José Ferrer married Rosemary Clooney. They moved to Santa Monica, California, in 1954, and then to Los Angeles in 1958. The marriage produced five children: Miguel, Maria, Gabriel, Monsita and Rafael. Ferrer and Clooney divorced in 1961, but in 1964 they remarried. The marriage again crumbled because 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 again in 1967. In 1977 José Ferrer married Stella Magee and they remained together until his death.

Father:

Rafael Ferrer

Mother:

Maria Providencia Cintron

ex-wife:

Uta Hagen

Uta Hagen was an American actress who is famous for her role of Martha in the 1962 Broadway premiere of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Daughter:

Leticia Thyra Ferrer

ex-wife:

Phyllis Hill

ex-wife:

Rosemary Clooney

Rosemary Clooney was an American singer and actress.

Son:

Miguel Ferrer

Miguel Ferrer was an American actor and voice actor.

Daughter:

Maria Ferrer

Son:

Gabriel Ferrer

Daughter:

Monsita Ferrer

Son:

Rafael Ferrer

Rafael Ferrer is an American actor and voice actor.

Wife:

Stella Magee

nephew:

George Clooney

colleague:

Mala Powers

References

• From Cyrano to Magoo: My Years with Jose Ferrer and Jim Backus After detailing his experiences with The Beach Boys in his book, Endless Summer: My Life With The Beach Boys, Jack Lloyd now retraces his life as he emerges from the psychedelic drug scene of the 1960s with rock stars Jimi Hendrix and Eric Burdon to a chance meeting with award-winning actor and film star, José Ferrer.
  2011
• Films in Review
  1987