The Full Biography
Anthony Quinn. Actor. Painter. The man from Chihuahua who made every nationality look like a hometown.
This is his story.
The image most people still carry is a man on a Cretan beach, arms wide, teaching a buttoned-up Englishman how to dance after a ruin. The year was 1964. The picture was Zorba the Greek. What the still cannot show is the Mexican Revolution, East Los Angeles odd jobs, two supporting Oscars before the dance, and a studio that spent twenty years asking him to be every ethnicity except the one on his birth certificate.
He was born Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca on April 21, 1915, in Chihuahua, during the Revolution. His mother, Manuela, was Mexican. His father, Frank Quinn, had Irish in the file and fought with Pancho Villa’s forces; the family crossed into Texas and then to Los Angeles after the father was gone. He grew up poor in the east of the city. He boxed, preached on street corners, did odd jobs — butcher, taxi, a mouth that could sell — and walked onto stages because the face read as force. He studied architecture with Frank Lloyd Wright for a stretch, a first instrument the stills skip. Hollywood hired him in 1936 as a utility ethnic: Indian, Arab, Italian, Greek, whatever the call sheet needed. Cecil B. DeMille used him. In 1937 he married Katherine DeMille, the director’s adopted daughter. The marriage lasted into the 1960s and put him, for a time, inside the town’s furniture. The town still asked him to be someone else’s country.
Broadway gave him a different file. He took over Stanley Kowalski from Marlon Brando — national tour, then Broadway — and earned a Tony nomination as Henry II in Becket (1961), opposite Laurence Olivier. He did not win a Tony. Then the pictures got serious. Elia Kazan’s Viva Zapata! (1952), as Eufemio Zapata beside Brando, brought the first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He was the first Mexican-born actor to win an Oscar. The town had used his face for years before it gave him the statue — Indians, Arabs, extras in DeMille epics, a Cheyenne, a Filipino, whatever the call sheet printed. La Strada (1954), for Federico Fellini, is the brutal tenderness of Zampanò, a strongman who can be terrible and broken in the same body, Giulietta Masina as Gelsomina. Lust for Life (1956), as Paul Gauguin opposite Kirk Douglas’s van Gogh, brought the second supporting Oscar. Two statues in four years. The utility ethnic had become a man the Academy had to name.
Before those statues there were already years of the call sheet. The Plainsman. Union Pacific. Road to Morocco as a bit. The Ox-Bow Incident as a Mexican accused. Guadalcanal Diary. He was working. He was not yet a climate. The DeMille marriage put him at tables. The parts still asked him to be someone else’s country. That is the first long chapter, and it is easy to skip because Zorba is so loud. The chapter is why the two Oscars matter. They were not a debut. They were a correction.
What came next was a lead’s run. Wild Is the Wind (1957) brought a Best Actor nomination, Anna Magnani across the room. Hot Spell. The Black Orchid. He was no longer only the brother or the sheikh. The Guns of Navarone (1961) put him in a war ensemble — Peck, Niven, Quinn — that the public treated as an event. Barabbas (1961). Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962), from the Serling play, a fighter who is finished. Lawrence of Arabia (1962), as Auda abu Tayi, is a sheikh the picture cannot quite contain — a force David Lean hired and then had to share the frame with. Then Zorba. Michael Cacoyannis, from the Kazantzakis novel. Crete. Alan Bates as the Englishman. Lila Kedrova as Hortense. The sirtaki on the beach after the ruin. The Academy nominated him for Best Actor. He did not win. He did not need to. The beach did the rest.
A High Wind in Jamaica (1965). The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968), a pope from the East. The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1969) with Anna Magnani again. The Greek Tycoon (1978) asked him to occupy a climate the columns already knew. He took the work. Some hundred and fifty films by the end. The studio had asked him to be every nationality. He used the asking back. The painter’s studio was already the second room. The memoirs would name the appetites. The dance would outlive the call sheet.
The turn is not the dance. The turn is the second Oscar, and the decision to stop being only the brother, the painter, the sheikh. Zorba is a lead, a life force, a man who treats disaster as a reason to move. He painted and sculpted for keeps — exhibitions, sales, a second studio. He wrote memoirs, The Original Sin and One Man Tango, candid on the appetites and the children. He did not ask the public to pretend he had been Zorba at home.
Six things most people never knew
- He was born in the Mexican Revolution. Chihuahua, 1915. The “man of the world” began as a child of a war.
- The first Oscar was a first for a Mexican-born actor. 1952, Viva Zapata! The town had used his face for years before it gave him the statue.
- He replaced Brando as Kowalski. Tour and Broadway. The Tony nomination came for Becket. He never took the statue home.
- He painted and sculpted for keeps. Exhibitions, sales, a second studio. The house was full of his own work.
- The memoirs are candid on purpose. He wrote about the appetites and the children and did not ask the public to pretend he had been Zorba at home.
- He worked into the 1990s. Some 150 films. The last years were not a cameo career. They were a man who did not know how to stop.
After Katherine there were other marriages, including Iolanda Addolori and, in the last chapter, Kathy Benvin. He had children across the decades; the count is part of the public file and he did not hide it. Friends from the sets describe a man who could be royal about a mark and sudden in a room. The painter is the same man with less sweat. The Wright stretch, the odd jobs, the DeMille table, the two Oscars, the beach, the second studio — those are not a montage. They are a life that the call sheet kept trying to reduce to a nationality. He used the reduction back. Chihuahua is still the first room. The dance is still the climate. The bronzes are still in the house.
The later years
Home, after Zorba had become a climate, was pictures, sculpture, and a large family. He played Zorba on stage when the film would no longer hold him — a 1980s tour of the musical that treated the dance as a job he still knew how to do. People asked him to do it at dinners. Sometimes he did. He had outlived the studio habit of assigning him a nationality at the door. He had not outlived the dance. The face still read as force on a talk show. The hands, in the studio, read as a second career that was not a hobby. He kept a studio the way a man keeps a second address. The bronzes have weight. The canvases have the same force the call sheet once rented. Exhibitions sold. Collectors who had never seen La Strada bought a Quinn because the name still read as force.
The pictures in the last two decades were not a cameo career. He toured Zorba as a stage musical in the 1980s, the dance as a nightly job. Revenge (1990) with Kevin Costner. Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever (1991), a father in a Brooklyn climate. Last Action Hero (1993) put him in a joke the picture was already making. A Walk in the Clouds (1995) with Keanu Reeves, a vineyard father the camera still trusted. Gotti on television. He took the work that used the face while the face still answered. He showed the paintings and the bronzes in galleries that did not need a movie still in the window. Rome and New York and the Rhode Island house all held the work. The memoirs sat on a table. The Original Sin (1972) and One Man Tango (1995) did not sand the appetites. Thirteen children, in the count the columns use. He did not hide the number. Kathy Benvin was the last marriage; two of the last children were hers. Bristol, Rhode Island, and New York were addresses. Boston, in the last chapter, was medical as much as geographic.
He died in Boston on June 3, 2001, of pneumonia and respiratory failure. He was eighty-six. He is buried in Bristol, Rhode Island, in a cemetery that is not a Hollywood lawn. The last public life had been honors and a face that still read as force, a man who had worked into the 1990s because he did not know how to stop. The children keep the name in different trades — actors, artists, a household that never fit a single marriage plot. The paintings still sell. The beach still plays. He had already, in Zapata’s brother and Gauguin and Zampanò and Zorba, written the public man. The last years were the second studio, the last pictures, the large table, and a death in a hospital that was not Crete. Chihuahua was the first room. East Los Angeles was the odd jobs. The Oscars were the correction. The dance was the climate. The studio of his own hands was the life after the call sheet thinned. East Los Angeles still claims the odd jobs. The Academy still claims the two statues. Bristol claims the grave. Film students still steal the beach and miss Zampanò, which is the better argument: a man who can be tender and terrible in the same body, hired as every country but his own. The two Oscars were a correction. The beach was a climate. The second studio was the job he gave himself when the call sheet thinned. He did not know how to stop. The bronzes, the memoirs, and the last pictures still say so. He had two jobs. He kept both.
What those last decades actually were is easy to miss because the sirtaki is so loud. They were a painter’s hours. They were a father of a household that did not fit a single marriage plot. They were a man who had been hired as every country but his own and then used the hiring back, until the town had to say Mexican-born on the Oscar line. They were Zorba on a stage after Zorba on a beach. They were a body that still wanted a call time. He did not have the most delicate career in pictures. He had one of the most used, and then he used it back. That is the arc. That is the story.
Katherine DeMille had been the first marriage and the town’s furniture; that household ended, and the children of it remained. Iolanda Addolori, an Italian costume assistant he met on Barabbas, was the long middle marriage and more children. Kathy Benvin was the last. The columns made a sport of the count. He did not hide the count. He wrote it. The bronzes and the canvases were not a retirement hobby. They were a second studio he had been running while the first one still called. Exhibitions in Europe and in the United States sold the work. Film students who only know the beach are missing the second room. The second room is why the last years were not a cameo career. They were a man who had two jobs and did not know how to stop either of them. Bristol held the last house. Boston held the last hospital. The grave is in Rhode Island, a Mexican-born man buried in a New England cemetery, which is a last joke the call sheet would have understood: another nationality, this time chosen, this time final.
After he was gone
The children keep the name in different trades. The paintings still sell. Zorba still plays, and a certain kind of viewer still thinks the sirtaki is a documentary of his personality. La Strada is the better argument: a man who can be tender and terrible in the same body. Film students still steal the beach. Chihuahua still claims the boy. East Los Angeles still claims the odd jobs. The Oscars claim the two statues. He claimed the work.
He did not have the most delicate career in pictures. He had one of the most used, and then he used it back. The still on the sand will last. The boy from Chihuahua, hired as every country but his own, is the part the still cannot show. If you only remember the dance, you have the climate. If you remember Zapata, Fellini, and the second studio, you have him.
Portrait: Unknown author · Public domain (PD-US, no copyright notice) · via Wikimedia Commons