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The 86-year-old actor appeared in more than 100 feature films and won two Academy Awards.
Compiled from Times wires
© St. Petersburg Times, published June 4, 2001
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.
Movies 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