José Vicente Ferrer de Otero y Cintrón[1] (January 8, 1912 – January 26, 1992) was a Puerto Rican actor and director of stage, film and television. He was one of the most celebrated and esteemed Hispanic American actors—or, indeed, actors of any ethnicity—during his lifetime and after, with a career spanning nearly 60 years between 1935 and 1992. He achieved prominence for his portrayal of Cyrano de Bergerac in the play of the same name, which earned him the inaugural Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play in 1947. He reprised the role in a 1950 film version and won an Academy Award for Best Actor, making him both the first Hispanic and the first Puerto Rican–born actor to win an Academy Award.
Ferrer was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the son of Rafael Ferrer, a local attorney and writer, and María Providencia Cintrón, of Yabucoa. His parents were both of Spanish descent. He was the grandson of Gabriel Ferrer Hernández, a doctor and advocate of Puerto Rican independence from Spain. He had two younger sisters, Elvira and Leticia.[3]
The family moved to New York in 1914, when Ferrer was two years old. He studied at the Swiss boarding school Institut Le Rosey.[4] He was adept in several languages, including Spanish, English, French, and Italian.
Ferrer's first professional appearance as an actor was at a "showboat" theater on Long Island in the summer of 1934.
In 1935, Ferrer was the stage manager at the Suffern Country Playhouse, operated by Joshua Logan, whom Ferrer had known at Princeton. Ruth Gordon and Helen Hayes recommended him to Jed Harris.
He could also be seen in Stick-in-the-Mud (1935) and Spring Dance (1936). Ferrer's first big success was in Brother Rat (1936–38) which ran for 577 performances. In Clover only ran for three performances. How to Get Tough About It (1938) also had a short run, as did Missouri Legend (1938).
Mamba's Daughters (1939) ran for 163 performances. Ferrer followed it with Key Largo (1939–40) with Paul Muni and directed by Guthrie McClintic, which went for 105 shows and was later turned into a film.
Ferrer had a huge personal success in the title role of Charley's Aunt (1940–41), partly in drag, under the direction of Joshua Logan. It went for 233 performances.
Ferrer made his debut on Broadway as director with Vickie (1942) in which he also starred. It only had a short run.
He played Iago in Margaret Webster's Broadway production of Othello (1943–44), which starred Paul Robeson in the title role, Webster as Emilia, and Ferrer's wife, Uta Hagen, as Desdemona. That production still holds the record for longest-running repeat performance of a Shakespearean play presented in the United States, going for 296 performances (it would be revived in 1945).
Ferrer produced and directed, but did not appear in, Strange Fruit (1945–46), starring Mel Ferrer (no relation).
Among other radio roles, Ferrer starred as detective Philo Vance in a 1945 series of the same name.[6]
Cyrano de Bergerac
Ferrer in costume in an unnamed play at Maple Leaf Gardens
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.[7] 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.
On January 9, 1949, Ferrer made his television debut when he starred in The Philco Television Playhouse's one-hour adaptation of the play.[8]
Ferrer directed, but did not appear in, As We Forgive Our Debtors (1947), which ran 5 performances. There was another short run for Volpone (1947) which Ferrer adapted and played the title role.[9]
Early films
Ferrer made his film debut in the Technicolor epic Joan of Arc (1948) as the weak-willed Dauphin opposite Ingrid Bergman as Joan. Ferrer's performance earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
At the City Center, he acted in revivals of Angel Street (1948) and The Alchemist (1948) and directed S. S. Glencairn (1948) and The Insect Comedy (1948) (also appearing in the latter).[10]
Ferrer then played the title role in Cyrano de Bergerac (1950), directed by Michael Gordon and produced by Stanley Kramer. Ferrer won the Best Actor Oscar, becoming the first actor to win the Oscar for the same role which won him the Tony. The film was widely seen although it lost money.[12] Ferrer donated the Oscar to the University of Puerto Rico, and it was subsequently stolen in 2000.[13]
Ferrer returned to Broadway for a revival of Twentieth Century (1950–51) which he directed and starred in, opposite Gloria Swanson; it went for 233 performances. Immediately following, he produced and directed, but did not appear in, Stalag 17 (1951–52), a big hit running for 472 performances. Even more popular was The Fourposter (1951–53) in which he directed Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy; it ran for 632 performances.
Ferrer returned to cinema screens in the comedy Anything Can Happen (1952), directed by George Seaton, where Ferrer played an immigrant.
More popular was Moulin Rouge (1952) in which Ferrer played the role of Toulouse-Lautrec under John Huston's direction.[14] Ferrer received 40% of the profits[15] as well as his third and final Oscar nomination.
Back on Broadway, Ferrer directed and starred in The Shrike (1952), which ran for 161 performances.[16]
His next two shows were as director only: Horton Foote's The Chase (1952) only had a short run but My Three Angels (1953–54), went for 344 performances.[17]
Ferrer had another cinema hit with Miss Sadie Thompson (1953) starring Rita Hayworth.[18] Ferrer briefly revived some of his shows at the City Centre in 1953: Cyrano, The Shrike, Richard III, Charley's Aunt.[19]
Ferrer as Lieutenant Barney Greenwald in The Caine Mutiny, released in 1954
He returned to films with The Caine Mutiny (1954) for Kramer, co-starring with Humphrey Bogart and Van Johnson, playing defense lawyer Barney Greenwald; the film was a huge hit.[20] Greenwald's Jewish faith, so prominent in the novel that it informed his judgments of the U.S.S. Caine's officers, was downplayed in the film, as Ferrer, being Puerto Rican, was nominally Roman Catholic.
Back on Broadway, Ferrer co-wrote and directed the stage musical Oh, Captain! (1958) with Tony Randall, which only had a short run. He directed and starred in Edwin Booth (1958), playing the title role; it was not a success.
Ferrer took over the direction of the troubled musical Juno (1959) from Vincent J. Donehue, who had himself taken over from Tony Richardson. The show, which starred Shirley Booth, folded after 16 performances and mixed to extremely negative critical reaction.
However, he followed it directing the original stage production of Saul Levitt's The Andersonville Trial (1959–60), about the trial following the revelation of conditions at the infamous Civil War prison. It was a hit and featured George C. Scott, running for 179 performances.
Ferrer had a key support role in the film Lawrence of Arabia (1962) which was a huge success. Although Ferrer's performance was only small he said it was his best on screen.
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 1966 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.
Ferrer starred in Carl Reiner's Enter Laughing (1967) and did a production of Kismet (1967) on TV. He went to Europe to do Cervantes (1967) and appeared in A Case of Libel (1968) for US TV. He also provided the voice of the evil Ben Haramed in the 1968 Rankin/Bass Christmas TV special The Little Drummer Boy. In 1968 the IRS sent him a tax bill of $122,000 going back to 1962.[28]
Around 1973, he narrated A Touch of Royalty, a documentary on the life and death of Puerto Rico's baseball star Roberto Clemente. Ferrer voiced both versions, Spanish and English.
Ferrer voiced a highly truncated cartoon version of Cyrano for an episode of The ABC Afterschool Special in 1974.
During the Bicentennial, Ferrer narrated the world premiere of Michael Jeffrey Shapiro's A Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776 for narrator and orchestra with Martin Rich leading the Philharmonic Symphony of Westchester.
Ferrer was a replacement cast member in a production of David Mamet's A Life in the Theatre (1977–78). He produced and starred in White Pelicans (1978) and directed Carmelina (1979) on stage but it only ran 17 performances.
Ferrer made his farewell to Cyrano by performing a short passage from the play for the 1986 Tony Awards telecast.
Although not the original actor to play the character, Ferrer, beginning in the third season, had a recurring role as Julia Duffy's WASPy father in the long-running television series Newhart in the 1980s.
In an interview given in the 1980s, he bemoaned the lack of good character parts for aging stars, and 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.
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.
Ferrer's sons Rafael Ferrer and Miguel Ferrer, his daughter (Letty Ferrer), and his granddaughter Tessa Ferrer also became actors and actresses.
Ferrer donated his Academy Award to the University of Puerto Rico. The award was stolen after being misplaced during the remodeling of the university's theater.
Ferrer was married five times and had six children:
Uta Hagen (1938–1948): Ferrer and Hagen met while playing summer stock in Ridgefield, Connecticut in 1938.[33] They had one child, Leticia (born October 15, 1940). 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.[34]
Phyllis Hill (1948–1953): Ferrer and Hill wed on May 27, 1948, and they moved to Burlington, Vermont in 1950. Ferrer returned to Puerto Rico because his mother died. They divorced on January 12, 1953.
Rosemary Clooney (1953–1961): Ferrer first married Clooney on July 13, 1953, in Durant, Oklahoma.[35] They moved to Santa Monica, California, in 1954, and then to Los Angeles in 1958. Ferrer and Clooney had five children in quick succession: Miguel (February 7, 1955 – January 19, 2017), Maria (born August 9, 1956), Gabriel (born August 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 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.
Stella Magee (1977–1992): They remained together until his death in 1992.
Replacement for Richard Kiley on Broadway, May 28 – June 9, 1966 National Tour Sep 24, 1966 – Apr 09, 1967 Replacement for David Atkinson on Broadway, April 11 – July 13, 1967 Replacement for Richard Kiley on National Tour July 15 – August 7, 1967 Replacement for Richard Kiley on National Tour September 23, 1968 – September 13, 1969
^ ab"Stage, Film Actor Jose Ferrer Dies". Los Angeles Times 27 January 1992: VYA3
^Spector, Susan (1982). Uta Hagen. The Early Years: 1919-1951. Dissertation. New York University. p. 121.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
