José Ferrer

José Vicente Ferrer de Otero y Cintrón was born on January 8, 1912, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the son of Rafael Ferrer, an attorney and writer, and María Providencia Cintrón, of Yabucoa. His grandfather, Gabriel Ferrer Hernández, was a doctor and advocate of Puerto Rican independence from Spain. Following the death of his mother, the family relocated to New York in 1914, when Ferrer was two years old. His upbringing in a wealthy household was shaped by the arts, music, and humanities. He received part of his early education at Colegio San José in Río Piedras before enrolling at the Swiss boarding school Institut Le Rosey. Despite speech difficulties in his early years, he eventually became fluent in five languages, including Spanish, English, French, and Italian.

Ferrer earned a bachelor's degree in architecture from Princeton University in 1933, where his senior thesis examined French Naturalism and Pardo Bazán. At Princeton he was a member of the Triangle Club, played piano in a band called José Ferrer and His Pied Pipers, and participated in theatrical productions alongside James Stewart and Joshua Logan. He subsequently studied Romance languages at Columbia University during 1934–35. His first professional acting appearance came in the summer of 1934 at a showboat theater on Long Island. In 1935, he worked as stage manager at the Suffern Country Playhouse, run by Logan, and was recommended to theatrical producer Jed Harris by Ruth Gordon and Helen Hayes.

Ferrer made his Broadway debut in 1935 in A Slight Case of Murder, which ran for 69 performances. He appeared in additional productions that year and in 1936, including Stick-in-the-Mud and Spring Dance, before achieving his first substantial Broadway success in Brother Rat, which ran for 577 performances between 1936 and 1938. Several shorter-lived productions followed, among them In Clover, How to Get Tough About It, and Missouri Legend, all in 1938. Mamba's Daughters ran for 163 performances in 1939, and Key Largo, starring Paul Muni and directed by Guthrie McClintic, followed with 105 performances through 1939–40. Ferrer scored a major personal success in the title role of Charley's Aunt, directed by Joshua Logan, which ran for 233 performances between 1940 and 1941. He later replaced Danny Kaye in the musical Let's Face It! in 1943.

Ferrer made his Broadway directing debut with Vickie in 1942, in which he also performed. The following year he played Iago in Margaret Webster's Broadway production of Othello, which starred Paul Robeson in the title role, Webster as Emilia, and Ferrer's then-wife Uta Hagen as Desdemona. That production ran for 296 performances between 1943 and 1944, a record for the longest-running Shakespearean play in the United States at the time, and was revived in 1945. Ferrer produced and directed Strange Fruit in 1945–46, starring Mel Ferrer, though he did not appear in it himself. He also directed As We Forgive Our Debtors in 1947, and adapted and performed the title role in Volpone that same year.

The role that brought Ferrer his greatest theatrical recognition was Cyrano de Bergerac, which he first performed on Broadway in 1946. Concerned during rehearsals that the production was in trouble, he brought in Joshua Logan as a play doctor. The production became one of the major hits of the 1946–47 Broadway season and earned Ferrer the inaugural Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play in 1947. He had another Broadway success with The Silver Whistle in 1948–49, which ran for 219 performances, and directed and starred in a revival of Twentieth Century opposite Gloria Swanson in 1950–51, which also ran for 233 performances.

Ferrer's Broadway career continued to generate significant recognition in the early 1950s. He won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play in 1952 for The Shrike, and that same year received the Tony Award for Best Director for The Shrike, The Fourposter, and Stalag 17. His Broadway credits across his career, which spanned from 1935 to 1987, also included Man of La Mancha, The Girl Who Came to Supper, Oh Captain!, Happy Birthday Mr. Abbott!, and A Gala Tribute to Joshua Logan. In 1981, Ferrer was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in recognition of his contributions to American theatre.

Ferrer's film career was equally distinguished. He made his screen debut in the Technicolor production Joan of Arc in 1948, playing the Dauphin opposite Ingrid Bergman, a performance that earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He reprised the role of Cyrano de Bergerac in a 1950 film directed by Michael Gordon and produced by Stanley Kramer, winning the Academy Award for Best Actor. The win made him both the first Hispanic and the first Puerto Rican-born actor to receive that honor, and also the first actor to win an Oscar for a role that had previously earned him a Tony. Following the Oscar win, Ferrer was welcomed with fanfare in Puerto Rico, and he donated the award to the University of Puerto Rico, where it was later stolen in 2000. His subsequent film roles included Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in Moulin Rouge in 1952, defense attorney Barney Greenwald in The Caine Mutiny in 1954, Alfred Dreyfus in I Accuse! in 1958, which he also directed, the Turkish Bey in Lawrence of Arabia in 1962, Siegfried Rieber in Ship of Fools in 1965, and Emperor Shaddam IV in Dune in 1984.

On January 9, 1949, Ferrer made his television debut in a one-hour adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac on The Philco Television Playhouse. He also starred as detective Philo Vance in a 1945 radio series of the same name. In 1985, President Reagan presented Ferrer with the National Medal of Arts, making him the first actor to receive that honor. Ferrer was the father of actor Miguel Ferrer, the brother of Rafael Ferrer, the grandfather of actress Tessa Ferrer, and the uncle of actor George Clooney. He died on January 26, 1992, at the age of 80, having maintained a career in acting and directing that spanned nearly six decades.