Fortunio Bonanova is the pseudonym of
Josep Lluís Moll (January 13, 1895 – April 2, 1969), who was a
baritoneBaritone is a type of classical male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek βαρύτονος, meaning 'deep sounding', music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second G below middle C to the F above...
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 de MallorcaPalma is the major city and port on the island of Majorca and capital city of the autonomous community of the Balearic Islands in Spain. The names Ciutat de Mallorca and Ciutat were used before the War of the Spanish Succession and are still used by people in Majorca...
.
As a young man, living under his birthname, he was a professional telegraph operator.
Fortunio Bonanova is the pseudonym of
Josep Lluís Moll (January 13, 1895 – April 2, 1969), who was a
baritoneBaritone is a type of classical male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek βαρύτονος, meaning 'deep sounding', music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second G below middle C to the F above...
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 de MallorcaPalma is the major city and port on the island of Majorca and capital city of the autonomous community of the Balearic Islands in Spain. The names Ciutat de Mallorca and Ciutat were used before the War of the Spanish Succession and are still used by people in Majorca...
.
As a young man, living under his birthname, he was a professional telegraph operator. He studied
musicMusic is an art form whose medium is sound. Common elements of music are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
with the
ItalianItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
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 BorgesJorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , best known as Jorge Luis Borges, was an Argentine writer and poet born in Buenos Aires. In 1914, his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school and traveled to Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and...
(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 TenorioDon Juan Tenorio: Drama religioso-fantástico en dos partes , is a play written in 1844 by José Zorrilla. It is the more Romantic of the two principal Spanish-language literary interpretations of the myth of Don Juan...
by the brothers Baños, which was shown the following year in
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
and Hollywood. He would later direct his own
Don Juan in 1924.
In 1927, he acted in
Love of Sonya, directed by
Albert ParkerAlbert Parker was the owner of The Claxton Bakery and creator of the Old Fashion Claxton Fruitcake. Parker got his start working with Savino Tos, the founder and previous owner of The Claxton Bakery, in 1927 when he was eleven years old. In 1945, Tos sold the bakery to Albert Parker and retired...
and starring
Gloria SwansonGloria Swanson was an American actress. She was most prominent during the silent film era as both an actress and a fashion icon, especially under the direction of Cecil B. DeMille. She was also one of the first stars to challenge the Hays Code by producing the banned Sadie Thompson in 1928...
. In 1932 he had small parts in Hollywood productions featuring
Joan BennettJoan Geraldine Bennett was an American stage, film and television actress. Besides acting on the stage, Bennett appeared in more than 70 motion pictures from the era of silent movies through half a century of the sound era...
and
Mary AstorMary Astor was an American actress. Most remembered for her role as Brigid O'Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon with Humphrey Bogart, Astor began her long motion picture career as a teenager in the silent movies of the early 1920s.She eventually made a successful transition to talkies, but almost...
. In the same period, he appeared in New York in several
operaOpera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score. Opera is part of the Western classical music tradition. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
s and, more notably, in the
zarzuelaZarzuela is a Spanish lyric-dramatic genre that alternates between spoken and sung scenes, the latter incorporating operatic and popular song, as well as dance...
s
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
SpainSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain , is a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.
[The Spanish constitution does not establish any official denomination of the country, even though España , Estado español and Nación española are used interchangeably...]
, where he had a major role in the film
El Desaparecido ("He who disappeared") 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 WarThe Spanish Civil War was a major conflict that devastated Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939. It began after an attempted coup d'état by a group of Spanish Army generals against the government of the Second Spanish Republic, then under the leadership of president Manuel Azaña...
, 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 Susan's opera coach in
Citizen KaneCitizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, and the first feature film directed by Orson Welles. It was nominated for Academy Awards in nine categories, but won only for Best Original Screenplay by Herman Mankiewicz and Welles...
(1941), General Sebastiano in
Five Graves to CairoFive Graves to Cairo is a 1943 World War II film by Billy Wilder, starring Franchot Tone and Anne Baxter.-Plot:A British tank commander survives a battle with Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps in the North African desert. He finds sanctuary in a small desert hotel owned by Farid...
(1943), Don Miguel in
The Black SwanThe Black Swan is a 1942 swashbuckler Technicolor film by Henry King, based on a novel by Rafael Sabatini, and starring Tyrone Power and Maureen O'Hara. It was nominated for three Academy Awards, and won one for Best Cinematography, Color.-Plot:...
(1942), Fernando in
For Whom the Bell TollsFor Whom the Bell Tolls is a 1943 film in Technicolor based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway. It stars Gary Cooper, Ingrid Bergman, Akim Tamiroff and Katina Paxinou. This was Ingrid Bergman's first technicolor film. Hemingway handpicked Cooper and Bergman for their roles. The film was adapted for...
(1943), Sam Garlopis in
Double Indemnity (1944) and a singing
Christopher ColumbusChristopher Columbus was a navigator, colonizer and explorer whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean led to general European awareness of the American continents in the Western Hemisphere...
in
Where Do We Go From Here?Where Do We Go From Here is an original movie musical produced by Twentieth Century-Fox in 1945 starring Fred MacMurray, June Haver, Joan Leslie, Gene Sheldon, Anthony Quinn and Fortunio Bonanova. The score was composed by Kurt Weill with lyrics by Ira Gershwin. Gregory Ratoff directed and Morrie...
. He continued for the next several decades in a miscellany of character roles.
Bonanova was also an uncredited technical consultant for the film
Blood and SandBlood and Sand is a Technicolor film produced by 20th Century Fox, directed by Rouben Mamoulian and starring Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell, Rita Hayworth, and Alla Nazimova...
(1941), and produced and appeared in the Spanish-language film
La Inmaculada (the title is a name of the
Virgin MaryThe Blessed Virgin Mary, sometimes shortened to the Blessed Virgin or the Virgin Mary, is a traditional title used by most Christians and most specifically used by liturgical Christians such as Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholics, and some others to...
, cognate to the English word "Immaculate"; 1939).
In the 1950's, he appeared in an episode of
I Love LucyI Love Lucy is an American television sitcom, starring Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance and William Frawley. The black-and-white series originally ran from October 15, 1951 to April 1, 1960 on CBS...
as a fake psychic who uses his stage apparatus to make it appear as though Lucy is able to speak Spanish to her mother-in-law.
Bonanova died in 1969 in
Woodland, CaliforniaWoodland is the county seat of Yolo County, California, located approximately northwest of Sacramento, and is a part of the Sacramento - Arden-Arcade - Roseville Metropolitan Statistical Area...
of a cerebral hemorrhage.
External links