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Fortunio Bonanova
Acting
Biography
Fortunio Bonanova, pseudonym of Josep Lluís Moll, (13 January 1895 – 2 April 1969) was a Spanish baritone singer and a film, theater, and television actor. He occasionally worked as a producer and director.
According to Lluis Fàbregas Cuixart, the pseudonym Fortunio Bonanova referred to his desire to seek fortune, and his love of the Bonanova neighborhood in his native Palma.
As a young man, living under his birthname, he was a professional telegraph operator. He studied music with the Italian Giovachini. In 1921, he debuted as a singer in Tannhäuser, at the Teatre Principal in Palma. That year, along with a group of Majorcan intellectuals and Jorge Luis Borges (who was briefly living in M…
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Fortunio Bonanova, pseudonym of Josep Lluís Moll, (13 January 1895 – 2 April 1969) was a Spanish baritone singer and a film, theater, and television actor. He occasionally worked as a producer and director. According to Lluis Fàbregas Cuixart, the pseudonym Fortunio Bonanova referred to his desire to seek fortune, and his love of the Bonanova neighborhood in his native Palma. As a young man, living under his birthname, he was a professional telegraph operator. He studied music with the Italian Giovachini. In 1921, he debuted as a singer in Tannhäuser, at the Teatre Principal in Palma. That year, along with a group of Majorcan intellectuals and Jorge Luis Borges (who was briefly living in Majorca with his parents and sister), he signed the Ultraist Manifesto, using the name Fortunio Bonanova. Also in 1921, he appeared in a silent film of Don Juan Tenorio by the brothers Baños, which was shown the following year in New York City and Hollywood. He later directed his own Don Juan in 1924. In 1927, he acted in Love of Sunya, directed by Albert Parker and starring Gloria Swanson. In 1932 he had small parts in Hollywood productions featuring Joan Bennett and Mary Astor. In the same period, he appeared in New York in several operas as well as the zarzuelas La Canción del Olvido ("The song of forgetting"), La Duquesa del Tabarín ("The Duchess of Tabarín"), Los Gavilanes, and La Montería. In 1934, he returned to Spain, where he had a major role in the film El Desaparecido ("The disappeared one") written and directed by Antonio Graciani. In 1935 he acted and sang in the film Poderoso Caballero ("A Big Guy"), directed by Màximo Nossik. In 1936, with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, he returned to the United States, where he played the role of Captain Bill in a film called Capitán Tormenta, directed by Jules Bernhardt. A sequence of increasingly larger acting and singing roles mostly in English-language films followed, especially after 1940. Among his roles were Signor Matiste, Susan Alexander Kane's opera coach in Citizen Kane (1941); General Sebastiano in Five Graves to Cairo (1943); Don Miguel in The Black Swan (1942); Fernando in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943); Sam Garlopis in Double Indemnity (1944); and a singing Christopher Columbus in Where Do We Go From Here?. He continued for the next several decades in a miscellany of character roles.
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BODY OF WORK
Fortunio Bonanova's Filmography
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Death Whistles the Blues
as Comisario Fenton
The Ballad of Hector the Stowaway Dog
as Inspector
The Running Man
as Spanish Bank Manager
Thunder in the Sun
as Fernando Christophe
The Saga of Hemp Brown
as Serge Bolanos
An Affair to Remember
as Courbet
Jaguar
as Francisco Servente
Kiss Me Deadly
as Carmen Trivago
New York Confidential
as Senor
With This Ring
as Senor Corelli, Opera Singer
The Girl on The Roof
as TV host
Conquest of Cochise
as Mexican Minister
Second Chance
as Mandy, hotel owner
So This Is Love
as Dr. Marafioti
The Moon Is Blue
as Television Performer
Thunder Bay
as Sheriff Antoine Chighizola
Havana Rose
as Ambassador DeMarco
September Affair
as Grazzi
Nancy Goes to Rio
as Ricardo Domingos
Whirlpool
as Feruccio di Ravallo
Bad Men of Tombstone
as John Mingo
Adventures of Don Juan
as Don Serafino Lopez
Angel on the Amazon
as Sebastian Ortega
Romance on the High Seas
as Plinio
Rose of Santa Rosa
as Don Manuel Ortega
The Fugitive
as The Governor's Cousin
The Kneeling Goddess
Fiesta
as Antonio Morales
Monsieur Beaucaire
as Don Carlos
Pepita Jiménez
as Don Pedro Vargas
No Poster
Hit the Hay
as Mario Alvini
Man Alive
as Prof. Zorado
The Red Dragon
as Insp. Luis Carvero
A Bell for Adano
as Gargano
La pícara Susana
as Conde Mauricio Tonescu
Where Do We Go from Here?
as Christopher Columbus
Brazil
as Senor Renaldo Da Silva
Mrs. Parkington
as Signor Cellini
Double Indemnity
as Sam Garlopis
My Best Gal
as Charlie
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
as Old Baba
Going My Way
as Tomaso Bozanni
The Sultan's Daughter
as Kuda
For Whom the Bell Tolls
as Fernando
Dixie
as Waiter
Five Graves to Cairo
as Gen. Sebastiano
The Black Swan
as Don Miguel (uncredited)
Girl Trouble
as Simon Cordoba
Larceny, Inc.
as Anton Copoulos
Obliging Young Lady
as Chef
Four Jacks and a Jill
as Mike - Nightclub Owner (uncredited)
Mr. and Mrs. North
as Buano
Two Latins from Manhattan
as Armando Rivero
A Yank in the R.A.F.
as Louie - Headwaiter
Unfinished Business
as Impresario
Moon Over Miami
as Mr. Pretto, the Hotel Manager
Blood and Sand
as Pedro Espinosa
They Met in Argentina
as Pedro, Ranch Blacksmith (uncredited)
Citizen Kane
as Signor Matiste
That Night in Rio
as Pereira, the Headwaiter
The Mark of Zorro
as Sentry (uncredited)
Down Argentine Way
as Hotel Manager
I Was an Adventuress
as Orchestra Leader
Bulldog Drummond in Africa
as African Police Corporal
Tropic Holiday
as Barrera
Romance in the Dark
as Tenor
El carnaval del diablo
Poderoso caballero
El desaparecido
A Successful Calamity
as Pietro Rafaelo
Careless Lady
as Rodriguez
Pacto con el Diablo (o el socio, Mr. Davis)
No Poster
Las cuatro plumas
Don Juan Tenorio
as Don Juan Tenorio