For other people named Anthony Quinn see Anthony Quinn (disambiguation)
Anthony Quinn (April 21, 1915 – June 3, 2001) was a two-time Academy Award-winning Mexican/American actor, as well as a painter and writer. He is perhaps best known in the US for his roles in two Hollywood films, the title role in Zorba the Greek and his Oscar-winning performance in Viva Zapata!, while in the rest of the world he is associated with his role of the brutish circus strongman Zampanò in Federico Fellini's La strada.
Quinn was born Antonio Rudolfo Oaxaca Quinn in Chihuahua, Chihuahua, Mexico. His father, Frank "Francisco" Quinn, was Irish-born and moved to Mexico in order to fight alongside Pancho Villa. His mother, Manuela "Nellie" Oaxaca, was Mexican. He was raised in the Catholic religion (for a time wanting to become a priest). Quinn grew up in the Boyle Heights and the Echo Park neighborhoods of Los Angeles, California, attending Hammel St. Elementary School, and the Polytechnic High School and later Belmont High School. He did not graduate. In the 1990s, Tucson High School in Tucson, Arizona awarded him a high school diploma.
In his youth, Quinn boxed, then studied art and architecture under Frank Lloyd Wright at the latter's Arizona residence and Wisconsin studio, Taliesin, and the two men became friends. When Quinn revealed that he was drawn to acting, Wright encouraged this major change in career direction. In an interview Quinn said that he told Wright that he had been offered $700 a week by a studio and didn't know what to do. Wright told him "Take it, you'll never make that much with me."
After a brief stint in the theater, Quinn launched his film career playing character roles in several 1936 films, including Parole (his debut) and The Milky Way. He mainly played "ethnic" villains in Paramount films through the 1940s in films such as Dangerous to Know (1938) and Road to Morocco. By 1947, he was a veteran of over 50 films and had played everything from Indians, Mafia dons, Hawaiian chiefs, Filipino freedom-fighters, Chinese guerrillas, and comical Arab sheiks, but he was not a major star. So he made a successful return to the theater, including playing Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway.
In 1947, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Returning to the screen in the early 1950s, Quinn specialized in tough, macho roles. He was cast in a series of B-adventures like Mask of the Avenger (1951). A big break was his playing opposite Marlon Brando in Elia Kazan's Viva Zapata! (1952). His supporting role as Zapata's brother won Quinn his first Oscar, the first Mexican-American to win any Academy Award. He appeared in several Italian films starting in 1953, turning in one of his best performances as a dim-witted, thuggish, and volatile strongman in Federico Fellini's La strada (1954), playing alongside Giulietta Masina. Quinn won his second Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for portraying the painter Gauguin in Vincente Minnelli's Van Gogh biopic, Lust for Life (1956). This award was all the more remarkable given that he was onscreen for all of 8 minutes. The following year, he received yet another Oscar nomination for his part in George Cukor's Wild Is the Wind. In The River's Edge (1957), he played the husband of the former girlfriend (played by Debra Paget) of a killer, played by Ray Milland, who turns up with a stolen fortune and forces Quinn and Paget at gunpoint to guide him safely to Mexico. Quinn starred in The Savage Innocents 1959 (film), in which he starred as Inuk, who finds himself caught between two clashing cultures.
As the decade came to a close, Quinn allowed his age to show, and he began his transformation into a major character actor. His formerly trim physique filled out, his hair grayed, and his once smooth, swarthy face weathered into an appealing series of crags and crinkles. His careworn demeanor made him a convincing Greek resistance fighter in The Guns of Navarone (1961), an ideal ex-boxer in Requiem for a Heavyweight, and a natural for the role of Auda ibu Tayi in Lawrence of Arabia (both 1962). In that year, he also played the title role in Barabbas, based on the novel by Pär Lagerkvist. The film is an Easter season favorite down to the present day. The success of Zorba the Greek in 1964 was arguably the high water mark of Quinn's career, and resulted in another Oscar nomination. Later successes that decade include his title role in the The Magus, based on the novel by John Fowles, and The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1969).
He appeared on Broadway to great acclaim in Becket, as King Henry II to Laurence Olivier's Thomas Becket in 1960. An erroneous story arose in later years that during the run, Quinn and Olivier switched roles and Quinn played Becket to Olivier's King. In fact, Quinn left the production for a film, never having played Becket, and director Peter Glenville suggested a road tour with Olivier as Henry. Olivier happily acceded and Arthur Kennedy took on the role of Becket for the tour and brief return to Broadway.
In 1971, he starred in the short-lived television drama Man in the City. In 1977, He starred in the movie Mohammad, Messenger of God (aka The Message) about the origin of Islam, and the message of prophet Mohammad. His subsequent television appearances were sporadic (among them Jesus of Nazareth).
On January 5, 1982, the Belvedere County Public Library in East Los Angeles was renamed in honor of Anthony Quinn. The present library sits on the site of his family's former home.
In 1982, he starred in the Lion of the Desert, together with Irene Papas, Oliver Reed, Rod Steiger, and John Gielgud. Quinn played the real-life Bedouin leader Omar Mukhtar who fought Mussolini's Italian troops in the deserts of Libya. The film, produced and directed by Moustapha Akkad, is now critically acclaimed, but performed poorly at the box office because of negative publicity in the West at the time of its release, stemming from its having been partially funded by Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi. In 1983, he reprised his most famous role, playing Zorba the Greek for 362 performances in a successful revival of the Kander and Ebb musical Zorba.
His film career slowed during the 1990s, but Quinn nonetheless continued to work steadily, appearing in Jungle Fever (1991), Last Action Hero (1993), and A Walk in the Clouds (1995). In 1994, he played Zeus semi-regularly on the syndicated series Hercules.
When Quinn made an appearance on The Tonight Show hosted by Jay Leno, the orchestra played Syrtaki aka "Zorba's Dance", the theme from Zorba the Greek. Quinn came on stage dancing a few steps of the dance, to huge applause. But once seated, he remarked, "I hate that song! Everywhere I go, they play that song!"
Quinn's personal life was as volatile and passionate as the characters he played in films.
Quinn had three known mistresses and fathered a total of 13 children, among them Alex A. Quinn, Francesco Quinn, Lorenzo, Valentina, and Sean Quinn, a New Jersey real estate agent.
Quinn spent his last years in Bristol, Rhode Island. He died aged 86 at Boston, Massachusetts from pneumonia and respiratory failure while suffering from terminal throat cancer, shortly after completing his role in the film Avenging Angelo (2002). His funeral was held in a Baptist church; late in life, he had joined the Four Square evangelical Christian community. He is buried in a family plot near Bristol.
Prior to his acting career, Quinn painted and sketched winning various awards and competitions throughout his teenage years. Fine art later gave Anthony Quinn an identity outside the world of acting—unscripted and his own. Always searching and exploring, Anthony Quinn worked on perfecting his artistic style throughout the world wherever filming and his output of paintings and sculptures was extraordinary. He championed many of the concepts central to modernist sculpture, including “truth to material,� direct carving, and inspiration from so-called primitive art, all of which became central to twentieth century practice. “Found Art� was another inspiration—he found art in everything from tree branches and shells to architectural fragments.
Art critic and professor of Art and Philosophy, Dr. Donald Kuspit, explains “examining Quinn’s many expressions of creativity together—his art and acting—we can see that he was a creative genius, by which I mean that the works that he made and surrounded himself with are of an imaginative piece, not simply passing fancies…�
Early in life Quinn had interest in painting and drawing. Throughout his teenage years he won various art competitions in California and focused his studies at Polytechnic High School in Los Angeles on drafting. Later, Quinn studied briefly under Frank Lloyd Wright through the Taliesin Fellowship—an opportunity created by winning first prize in an architectural design contest. Through Wright’s recommendation, Quinn took acting lessons as a form of post-operative speech therapy, which led to an acting career that spanned over six decades.
Apart from art classes taken in Chicago during the 1950s, Quinn never attended art school; nonetheless, taking advantage of books, museums, and amassing a sizable collection, he managed to give himself an effective education in the language of modern art. Although Quinn remained mostly self-taught, intuitively seeking out and exploring new ideas, there is observable history in his work because he had assiduously studied the modernist masterpieces on view in the galleries of New York, Mexico City, Paris, and London. When filming on location around the world, Quinn was exposed to regional contemporary art styles exhibited at local galleries and studied art history in each area.
In an endless search for inspiration, he was influenced by his Mexican ancestry, decades of residency in Europe, and lengthy stays in Africa and the Middle East while filming in the 1970s and 1980s.
By the early 1980s, his work had caught the eyes of various gallery owners and was exhibited internationally, in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, and Mexico City. His work is now represented in both public and private collections throughout the world. Since his death in 2001, Quinn's art has grown significantly in popularity selling in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. More recently, his art has increased in cultural importance and evolved from commercial gallery setting to the institution of the fine art museum through an international traveling exhibition. Various publications have been written on Anthony Quinn's artistic drive and style and his work continues to be interpreted and studied.
He wrote two memoirs, The Original Sin (1972) and One Man Tango (1997), a number of scripts, and a series of unpublished stories currently in the collection of his archive.
