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Zorba the Greek' star Anthony Quinn dies
Compiled from Times wires
© St. Petersburg Times, PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Anthony Quinn, the barrel-chested Oscar winner remembered for his roles as the earthy hero of Zorba the Greek and the fierce Bedouin leader in Lawrence of Arabia, died Sunday (June 3, 2001). He was 86. Mr. Quinn died of respiratory failure at a Boston hospital, said Providence Mayor Vincent "Buddy" Cianci, a friend. Mr. Quinn lived in nearby Bristol. "He was larger than life," Cianci said. "I was proud to call him a friend." Mr. Quinn, who appeared in more than 100 feature films, won Academy Awards for best supporting actor in Viva Zapata! and Lust for Life. Born in Mexico and raised in poverty in East Los Angeles, Mr. Quinn went from stage and B-movie roles to become an international leading man renowned for his big-man sensitivity and honest acting style. In a film career that spanned more than 50 years, Mr. Quinn portrayed characters including kings, Indians, a pope, a boxer and an artist. "I never get the girl," Mr. Quinn once joked in an interview. "I wind up with a country instead." Anthony Rudolph Oaxaca Quinn was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, to Frank Quinn of Irish descent and Manuella Oaxaca of Mexican and Indian heritage, both of whom fought in the Mexican Revolution with Pancho Villa. Fearing for his life from federal troops, Mr. Quinn's father escaped to the United States. Manuella, carrying the infant Anthony in her arms, soon followed. After living in El Paso, Frank Quinn moved his family to California, where they traveled up and down the San Joaquin and Napa valleys picking fruit. Mr. Quinn worked alongside his parents at ages 4 and 5, earning 10 cents an hour. Mr. Quinn took courses in art and architecture at Polytechnic High School, but never earned a degree. Largely self-educated, as a young man he embarked on a self-improvement program in which he read a book, listened to a new symphony and familiarized himself with a different artwork each week. He once met architect Frank Lloyd Wright and showed him plans he had drawn for a supermarket. But Wright's advice had nothing to do with art. He told the youth to have an operation to remove the excess skin that attached his tongue to the floor of his mouth so he would have proper elocution. Wright, who remained a lifelong friend, also pointed Mr. Quinn toward acting lessons after the surgery so that he could practice proper speech. Mr. Quinn had a stint as a professional boxer that included 16 straight victories, but hung up his gloves after he was knocked out in his 17th fight, feeling he lacked the "killer instinct." Mr. Quinn made his acting debut in 1936 at age 21 in Mae West's play Clean Beds, imitating John Barrymore, for whom the role was originally written. On opening night in Los Angeles, Barrymore came to see the play, throwing the cast and director into a panic. After the show, Barrymore came backstage to praise the young man who had portrayed him. Barrymore became a friend and mentor. In 1937, Mr. Quinn married Cecil B. de Mille's adopted daughter, Katherine, whom he met on the set of Plainsman. Mr. Quinn and de Mille had five children. Their eldest son, Christopher, drowned in 1941 as a toddler when he wandered onto the estate of W.C. Fields -- down the street from the Quinn residence -- and fell into the fish pond. Mr. Quinn and de Mille divorced in 1965 when it was revealed that Mr. Quinn had a child by Iolanda Addolori, a wardrobe assistant on the set of Barabbas, a film Mr. Quinn made in Italy. He later married Addolori. Thrice a husband and a reported 13 times a father (according to this year's version of Celebrity Biographies), Mr. Quinn told the Chicago Tribune last year: "I love, love, love women." He also had well-known dalliances with actors such as Carole Lombard, Rita Hayworth, Ingrid Bergman and her daughter Pia Lindstrom among others. Mr. Quinn appeared in numerous films between 1936 and 1947, usually in bit parts. He made his Broadway debut in 1947 in Gentleman from Athens, and followed this with a successful two-year stint as Stanley Kowalski in the road company of Elia Kazan's production of A Streetcar Named Desire. Mr. Quinn achieved stardom as a film actor in the 1950s. His breakthrough role -- as well as first Oscar -- came in the 1952 film Viva Zapata! playing opposite Marlon Brando as the older brother of the great Mexican revolutionary, Emiliano Zapata. Mr. Quinn then went to Italy in search of starring roles he could not seem to get in Hollywood. He appeared in La Strada, directed by Federico Fellini, as the circus strongman Zampano. He also portrayed the artist Gauguin in Lust for Life, earning his second Oscar. He was on screen in the film for only eight minutes. Mr. Quinn cemented his position as a major film star in the early 1960s, appearing in such films as The Guns of Navarone, Lawrence of Arabia and Requiem for a Heavyweight. The performance Mr. Quinn is most associated with, however, came in 1964 as Alexis Zorba, the Greek peasant in Zorba the Greek. Nearly 20 years later, he reprised the role on Broadway, eventually taking the show on a three-year U.S. tour that spanned more than 1,200 performances and grossed more than $48-million, making it one of the most lucrative revivals in theater history. It was as the Broadway Zorba that he finally came to grips with his son's death more than 40 years before. Zorba also lost a son, and refers to him twice in the course of the show. "I have never, never, never talked about my son's death," Mr. Quinn said. "I've never used the term death in connection with my son. But every night doing the show I had to say, "He's dead.' "At first I cut the line out of the play," he said. "The director came to me and said: "It's wrong. I know how painful it is but you'll have to do it.' He loved his son very much, this Zorba. He left his family because he couldn't bear being with them after the loss of his son. "Zorba and I are very much alike." As his film career slowed in recent years, Mr. Quinn devoted most of his time to painting and sculpting. Cianci said Mr. Quinn had moved to Bristol because "he wanted to get away from all that New York stuff, all the Hollywood hustle and bustle." He had recently worked in television, appearing in a 1990 TV movie based on Ernest Hemingway's classic The Old Man and the Sea and the 1996 HBO movie, Gotti. Mr. Quinn said in a 1987 interview that he reached most of the goals he set for himself as a young boy. "I never satisfied that kid, but I think he and I have made a deal now," he said, referring to his younger self. "It's like climbing a mountain: I didn't take him up Mount Everest, but I took him up Mount Whitney. "And I think that's not bad." Mr. Quinn is survived by his third wife, Kathy Benvin, whom he married in 1997 after divorcing Addolori, and his children: Christina, Kathleen, Valentina and Duncan from his marriage with de Mille; Francesco, Daniele and Lorenzo with Addolori; Antonia and Ryan with Benvin; Alex and Sean with an unidentified German woman, and an unidentified son with an unidentified French woman. -- Information from the Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times was used in this report. Anthony Quinn's film careerMovies in which Quinn appeared (some foreign productions not included): Parole!, 1936 Sworn Enemy, 1936 Night Waitress, 1936 The Plainsman, 1937 Swing High Swing Low, 1937 Waikiki Wedding, 1937 Last Train From Madrid, 1937 Partners in Crime, 1937 Daughter of Shanghai, 1937 The Buccaneer, 1938 Dangerous to Know, 1938 Tip-Off Girls, 1938 Hunted Men, 1938 Bulldog Drummond in Africa, 1938 King of Alcatraz, 1938 King of Chinatown, 1939 Union Pacific, 1939 Island of Lost Men, 1939 Television Spy, 1939 Emergency Squad, 1940 Road to Singapore, 1940 Parole Fixer, 1940 The Ghost Breakers, 1940 City for Conquest, 1940 Texas Rangers Ride Again, 1940 Blood and Sand, 1941 Knockout, 1941 Thieves Fall Out, 1941 Bullets for O'Hara, 1941 They Died With Their Boots On, 1941 The Perfect Snob, 1941 Larceny Inc, 1942 Road to Morocco, 1942 The Black Swan, 1942 The Ox-Bow Incident, 1943 Guadalcanal Diary, 1943 Buffalo Bill, 1944 Roger Touhy-Gangster, 1944 Ladies of Washington, 1944 Irish Eyes Are Smiling, 1944 China Sky, 1945 Back to Bataan, 1945 Where Do We Go From Here? 1945 California, 1947 Sinbad the Sailor, 1947 The Imperfect Lady, 1947 Black Gold, 1947 Tycoon, 1947 The Brave Bulls, 1951 Mask of the Avenger, 1951 The Brigand, 1952 World in His Arms, 1952 Against All Flags, 1952 Viva Zapata, 1952 Ride Vaquero, 1953 City Beneath the Sea, 1953 Seminole, 1953 Blowing Wild, 1953 East of Sumatra, 1953 Angels of Darkness, 1954 Attila, 1954 Fatal Desire, 1954 The Long Wait, 1954 La Strada, 1954 Ulysses, 1954 Magnificent Matador, 1955 Naked Street, 1955 Seven Cities of Gold, 1955 Lust for Life, 1956 Man From Del Rio, 1956 The Wild Party, 1956 The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1956 The Ride Back, 1957 Wild Is the Wind, 1957 The River's Edge, 1957 Attila the Hun, 1958 Hot Spell, 1958 The Black Orchid, 1958 Last Train From Gun Hill, 1959 Warlock, 1959 Heller With a Gun, 1959 Savage Innocents, 1959 Heller in Pink Tights, 1960 Portrait in Black, 1960 Guns of Navarone, 1961 Becket, 1961 Barabbas, 1962 Requiem for a Heavyweight, 1962 Lawrence of Arabia, 1962 Behold a Pale Horse, 1964 The Visit, 1964 Zorba the Greek, 1964 High Wind in Jamaica, 1965 Marco the Magnificent, 1965 Lost Command, 1966 The 25th Hour, 1967 The Happening, 1967 The Rover, 1967 Guns for San Sebastian, 1968 The Shoes of the Fisherman, 1968 The Magus, 1968 The Secret of Santa Vittoria, 1969 A Dream of Kings, 1969 Flap, 1970 A Walk in the Spring Rain, 1970 RPM, 1970 The City, 1971 Jesus of Nazareth, 1971 Across 110th Street, 1972 Arruza, 1973 Deaf Smith and Johnny Ears, 1973 The Don Is Dead, 1973 The Destructors, 1974 The Inheritance, 1976 High Rollers, 1976 Tigers Don't Cry, 1976 Mohammed Messenger of God, 1977 Caravans, 1978 The Children of Sanchez, 1978 The Greek Tycoon, 1978 The Inheritance, 1978 The Passage, 1979 Lion of the Desert, 1979 High Risk, 1981 The Salamander, 1981 Treasure Island, 1986 Revenge, 1990 Ghosts Can't Do It, 1990 A Star for Two, 1991 Only the Lonely, 1991 Jungle Fever, 1991 Mobsters, 1991 Last Action Hero, 1993 A Walk in the Clouds, 1995 Somebody to Love, 1996 Seven Servants, 1996 Ringside, 1999
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