Anthony Quinn

Mexican-born actor, artist, and writer

• Born: April 21, 1915
• Birthplace: Chihuahua, Mexico
• Died: June 3, 2001
• Place of death: Boston Massachusetts

Quinn gained renown playing supporting roles and won two Academy Awards as a supporting actor. In addition to film, he acted on Broadway and in television and was cast in several international films.

Early Life

Anthony Quinn was the first of two children of Francesco Quinn, a soldier, railroad worker, and migrant worker, and Manuela Oaxaca, a laundress and migrant worker. Quinn’s father was the son of an Irish railroad worker who had married a Mexican. His mother had an Indian mother and Mexican father. Both parents fought with Pancho Villa during the Mexican Revolution. Quinn was separated from his father as a baby, but the family reunited when Quinn was two years old. They relocated from Juarez, Mexico, to El Paso, Texas and later settled in East Los Angeles.

After his father died in 1926, Quinn worked a number of jobs to supplement the family income. His jobs included electrician’s assistant, janitor at a meat-packing plant, and fruit picker. He also started boxing and had some success but left the sport once he realized he lacked a “killer instinct.” Although he worked briefly at a dance hall, he had his heart set on becoming an architect. During eleventh grade at Polytechnic High School, Quinn won first prize for his plans for a supermarket. Part of the prize was an introduction to Frank Lloyd Wright. It was Wright who called Quinn’s attention to his speech impediment, caused by a tight frenum, a piece of skin under the tongue.

Quinn had surgery to correct the problem but was left unable to speak properly. It was suggested he take voice lessons, to learn to control his now-freed tongue. He found a school run by former actor Katherine Hamil. Unable to pay tuition, Quinn traded work as a janitor for lessons. After Max Pollock, director of the school’s production of Noël Coward’s play Hay Fever (1925), watched Quinn reciting lines, he offered Quinn the part of Simon. Quinn received good notices, found he liked acting, and appeared in another play, Maxim Gorky’s The Lower Depths (1912). Quinn began working with the Gateway Players and was noticed by Mae West, who was looking for “Latin types” to play gigolos in a new play she was producing. Subsequent roles did not materialize, and Quinn began to doubt acting as a career choice. He had one nonspeaking role in the film Parole (1936) but was ready to sign onto a fishing boat bound for the Orient when he saw a newspaper ad for a casting call for Native Americans for a Cecil B. De Mille film The Plainsman (1936), starring Gary Cooper. Quinn auditioned, representing himself as a full-blooded Cheyenne and pretended to speak only Cheyenne. His “ethnic” looks and tall, trim build impressed De Mille. Quinn got his first speaking part and signed a long-term contract with Paramount Studios.

Life’s Work

Other roles followed for Quinn; however, most were in B-films. By 1940, he had acted in twenty films. Because he was dark and his looks were somewhat unusual, he lost roles to more conventional-looking actors. He played gangsters, Native Americans, and various ethnic roles. In 1941, he played a matador in Blood and Sand. After this role, Quinn thought he could escape from being typecast, but that was not the case. Most of his subsequent pictures were forgettable. He decided to return to the stage and in 1947 relocated to New York City to act in Emmet Lavery’s new play The Gentleman from Athens. Quinn had the lead in the comedy about a Greek American gangster who is elected to the United States Senate; he was so confident of the play’s success that he invested $25,000 in it. The play closed after six performances, but Quinn caught the attention of director Elia Kazan, who offered him the role of Stanley Kowalski in the touring company of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire (1947). The show toured for two years and also played again on Broadway, with Quinn in the lead. Success in this role won Quinn a costarring role with Marlon Brando in Kazan’s film about the Mexican Revolution, Viva Zapata! (1952). Playing Eufemio Zapata, brother of Emiliano, Quinn won his first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Quinn traveled to Rome to work with some important Italian film directors. He made several films, including Ulysses (1954) with Kirk Douglas, and starred as Attila the Hun in Attila (1954). His most outstanding role was as the circus strongman Zampano in Federico Fellini’s La Strada (1954). The film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film in 1956 and made Quinn an international star. Back in the United States, he had a number of good roles. Playing Paul Gauguin in Lust for Life (1956), he won a second Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Quinn was in demand in Hollywood and on Broadway. In 1956 he appeared on Broadway in Becket as King Henry II; starred as Quasimodo in the film The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1956); and in 1962 returned to Broadway in the debut of Tchin-Tchin, a comedy by Sidney Michaels. The same year, he costarred in Lawrence of Arabia as an Arab warlord.

In 1964, Quinn played Alexis Zorba in Zorba the Greek, based on the Nikos Kazantzakis novel; it became his signature role, and his performance was nominated for an Oscar. When the musical Zorba (1968) flopped on Broadway, Quinn, neither a singer nor dancer, revived it. He played the part on tour in 1983 and in New York until August, 1986, never missing one of the 1,240 performances. During the 1990’s, Quinn continued to make films and also starred in the made-for-television film The Old Man and the Sea (1990), playing Santiago. His final film was Avenging Angelo (2002) with Sylvester Stallone. Quinn played a Mafia chief.

Besides being a successful actor, Quinn also was a talented painter and sculptor. In 1982 his show of painting and sculpture in Honolulu sold out, earning $2 million. Quinn also wrote two autobiographies.

Quinn was married three times and fathered thirteen children. He first married Katherine De Mille, an actor, the adopted daughter of Cecil B. Mille, on October 3, 1937. They had five children and divorced on January 21, 1965. Quinn married Iolanda Addolori, a costume designer, on January 2, 1966; they had three children and divorced on August 19, 1997. His third marriage was to Kathy Benvin, his secretary, on December 7, 1997; they had two children. Quinn, who became a naturalized United States citizen in 1947, died from respiratory failure.

Significance

In a career that spanned more than fifty years, Quinn appeared in more than one hundred films and a number of plays. From humble beginnings, he became an award-winning actor. In 1952, Quinn was the first Mexican American to win an Academy Award. He also was the recipient of the Cecil B. De Mille award in 1987 for his “outstanding contribution to the world of entertainment.”

Bibliography

Gates, Anita. “Anthony Quinn Dies at Eighty-six.” The New York Times, June 4, 2001, p. B6. The obituary includes an overview of Quinn’s life and career.

Natale, Richard. “Quinn Defined by ‘Zorba.’” Daily Variety, June 4, 2001, p. 6. A lengthy obituary, focusing on Quinn’s career as an “ethnic” actor.

Quinn, Anthony. The Original Sin: A Self-Portrait. Boston: Little, Brown, 1972. An autobiography organized around visits to a psychiatrist in which Quinn looks back on events in his past.

Quinn, Anthony, and Daniel Paisner. One Man Tango. New York: HarperCollins, 1995. Quinn’s second autobiography includes more information on his film roles than his first book.