Melchor Gastón Ferrer[1][2] (August 25, 1917 – June 2, 2008) was an American actor, director, and producer, active in film, theatre, and television. He achieved prominence on Broadway before scoring notable film hits with Scaramouche (1952), Lili (1953), and Knights of the Round Table (also 1953). He starred opposite his wife, actress Audrey Hepburn, in War and Peace (1956) and produced her film Wait Until Dark (1967).
Ferrer was born in Elberon, New Jersey, of Spanish and Irish descent. His father, Dr. José María Ferrer (December 3, 1857 – February 23, 1920),[2] was born in Havana, Cuba, of Spanish ancestry.[4][5] José was an authority on pneumonia and served as chief of staff of St. Vincent's Hospital in New York City. He was 59 years old at the time of Mel's birth and died three years later.[6] Mel Ferrer's US-born mother, Mary Matilda Irene (née O'Donohue; January 28, 1878 – February 19, 1967),[7] was a daughter of coffee broker Joseph J. O'Donohue, New York's City Commissioner of Parks, a founder of the Coffee Exchange, and a founder of the Brooklyn-New York Ferry. An ardent opponent of Prohibition, Irene Ferrer (as she was known) was named in 1934 as the New York State chairman of the Citizens Committee for Sane Liquor Laws.[8] Mel's parents married on October 17, 1910, in New York.[2]
His mother's family, the O'Donohues, were prominent Roman Catholics. One of his aunts, Marie Louise O'Donohue, was named a papal countess,[9] while another aunt, Teresa Riley O'Donohue, a leading figure in American Roman Catholic charities and welfare organizations, was granted permission by Pope Pius XI to install a private chapel in her New York City apartment.[10]
Ferrer had three siblings. His elder sister, Dr. María Irené Ferrer (July 30, 1915 – November 12, 2004), was a cardiologist and educator who helped refine the cardiac catheter and electrocardiogram.[11] She died in 2004 in Manhattan at 89 of pneumonia and congestive heart failure.[11] Their brother, Dr. Jose M. Ferrer (November 23, 1912 – December 24, 1982),[2] was a surgeon; he died at 70 from complications of abdominal surgery. Their younger sister, Teresa Ferrer (March 30, 1919 – February 12, 2002), was the religion editor of The New York Herald Tribune and an education editor for Newsweek. She died at 82 from a thoracic aneurysm.[8][12]
Ferrer was privately educated at the Bovée School in New York (where one of his classmates was the future author Louis Auchincloss) and Canterbury Prep School in Connecticut. He attended Princeton University until his sophomore year, when he dropped out to devote more time to acting.[citation needed]
He worked as an editor of a small Vermont newspaper and wrote the children's book Tito's Hats (Garden City Publishing, 1940).[a]
Career
Early theatre work
Ferrer began acting in summer stock as a teenager and in 1937 won the Theatre Intime award for best new play by a Princeton undergraduate; the play was called Awhile to Work and co-starred another college student, Frances Pilchard, who would become Ferrer's first wife later the same year.[13] At 21, he was appearing on the Broadway stage as a chorus dancer, making his debut there as an actor two years later. He appeared as a chorus dancer in two unsuccessful musicals, Cole Porter's You Never Know and Everywhere I Roam. After a bout with polio, Ferrer worked as a disc jockey in Texas and Arkansas and moved to Mexico to work on the novel Tito's Hat (published 1940).[citation needed]
His first acting roles were in a revival of Kind Lady (1940) and Cue for Passion (1940).[14][15]
Ferrer made his screen acting debut with a starring role in Lost Boundaries (1949), playing a black person who passes for white. The film was controversial but much acclaimed.[18]
Ferrer went to MGM, replacing Fernando Lamas as the villain in Scaramouche (1952). The film, particularly notable for a long, climactic sword fight between Ferrer and Stewart Granger, was a huge hit. The studio kept him on for Lili (1953) as the title character (played by Leslie Caron)'s love interest. It was another big success; Ferrer and Caron also got a hit single out of it, "Hi-Lili-Hi-Lo". Saadia (1953), which Ferrer made with Cornel Wilde, was a flop, but Knights of the Round Table (1954), in which Ferrer played King Arthur, was another hit. Ferrer met actress Audrey Hepburn at a party; she wanted to do a play together. They appeared in Ondine (1954) on Broadway, and married in Switzerland in September 1954.[19]
Ferrer produced and starred in the biopic El Greco (1966), playing the famous painter. He also produced Wait Until Dark (1967), starring his wife, another big hit.
Ferrer married five times, to four women, with whom he had six children. His wives were:
Frances Gunby Pilchard, his first and third wife, an actress who became a sculptor.[21] They married in 1937, and divorced in 1939 after having one child together, who died before their divorce.[22][23]
Barbara C. Tripp, whom Ferrer married in 1940 and later divorced. They had two children: daughter Mela Ferrer and son Christopher Ferrer.
Frances Gunby Pilchard, for the 2nd time; they remarried in 1944, and divorced in 1953, after having two more children together: Pepa Philippa Ferrer, who was conceived during his marriage with Tripp, and Mark Young Ferrer.
^Some sources spell his first name as MELCHIOR but this is incorrect based on Ferrer's records at Princeton University. Also he was named for his paternal grandfather, Melchor Ferrer. And the name MELCHOR G. FERRER was used on the cover of Tito's Hats, a children's book that Ferrer wrote in 1940.
