Juan Hernandez

Juano G. Hernández, born July 19, 1896, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Jose Guillermo and Clara de Ponce, was a stage and film actor whose career spanned vaudeville, Broadway, radio, film, and television. He died on July 17, 1970, in San Juan, two days before his seventy-fourth birthday, of a cerebral hemorrhage, and was buried at Cementerio Buxeda Memorial Park in Río Piedras, Puerto Rico.

Following the death of his mother, Hernández was taken by his father, a merchant sailor, to Brazil, where he was raised by an aunt. The subsequent death of his father left him without financial support. He worked as a sailor and settled in Rio de Janeiro, where he was hired by a circus operated by Arab street performers and made his first appearance as an acrobat in 1922. He also performed in São Paulo. Hernández later joined traveling circuses that moved throughout the Americas, eventually reaching New Orleans, where he pursued self-education through mail-in English classes and fiction writing. He subsequently lived in the Caribbean, where he worked as a professional boxer under the name "Kid Curley," competing as a featherweight with a record of 3-7-1 with two knockouts. He had four children, three of them with his first wife, Haydee Bello Paoli.

In New York City, Hernández worked in vaudeville and minstrel shows, sang in a church choir, and wrote radio scripts. He studied Shakespeare to improve his diction, which enabled him to pursue radio work. He co-starred in radio's first all-black soap opera, We Love and Learn, and appeared in Mandrake the Magician opposite Raymond Edward Johnson and Jessica Tandy, as well as The Shadow, Tennessee Jed, and Against the Storm. His participation in The Cavalcade of America, a series focused on American history and inventiveness, brought him widespread recognition. For CBS, he appeared in John Henry: Black River Giant in 1933 and The Story of Ruby Valentine in 1942. In 1922, he appeared in Blackbirds with the Providence Town Players, and his Broadway debut came in the chorus of the 1927 musical production Show Boat. He went on to appear in a total of eight plays during this period, including Fast and Furious in 1931.

Hernández's verified Broadway credits between 1936 and 1939 include Sweet River, Brown Sugar, and the musical Swingin' The Dream. The external record also lists his appearance in Brown Sugar in 1937, along with Strange Fruit, Black Souls, and Set My People Free. It was while performing in Set My People Free that he was first noticed by an MGM scout.

Hernández appeared in 26 films throughout his career. He portrayed a revolutionary soldier in the silent film The Life of General Villa. His talking picture debut came in Oscar Micheaux's independent film The Girl from Chicago in 1932, in which he played a Cuban racketeer. Micheaux produced race films directed at Black audiences. Hernández also appeared, uncredited, as a police officer in the 1932 musical crime drama Harlem Is Heaven, starring Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, followed by Lying Lips in 1939 and The Notorious Elinor Lee in 1940.

His first mainstream Hollywood film was Intruder in the Dust in 1949, based on William Faulkner's novel, in which he played Lucas Beauchamp, a poor Mississippi farmer unjustly accused of murdering a white man. The role earned him a Golden Globe Award nomination for New Star of the Year, and the New York Times listed the film among the ten best of that year. The production was filmed in Oxford, Mississippi, where Hernández navigated segregation during the filming process. In the 1950 western Stars in My Crown, directed by Jacques Tourneur and starring Joel McCrea, he played a freed slave who refuses to sell his land and confronts a lynch mob, a role that made him a target of the Ku Klux Klan. That same year he appeared in Young Man With a Horn as Art Hazzard, a jazz trumpet player who mentors a musician played by Kirk Douglas, and in The Breaking Point with John Garfield, for which the New York Times described his performance as "quietly magnificent." He played a judge in the 1955 film Trial, received favorable notices for his work in Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker in 1965, and continued working in Something of Value in 1957, Machete and St. Louis Blues in 1958, and Sergeant Rutledge. In the final two years of his life he appeared in The Extraordinary Seaman in 1969 with David Niven, The Reivers in 1969 with Steve McQueen, and They Call Me Mister Tibbs! in 1970 with Sidney Poitier.

On television, Hernández made guest appearances on approximately a dozen U.S. network programs. He appeared three times between 1960 and 1961 on the ABC series Adventures in Paradise, starring Gardner McKay. In 1959, he starred in an Alfred Hitchcock Presents adaptation of Ambrose Bierce's short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. He also appeared in the 1961 CBS television film The Dispossessed, as well as Naked City, The Defenders, The Dick Powell Show, and Studio One.

In 1955, Hernández opened a drama school in Hollywood, which he was forced to close after promised financial support did not materialize. Among those he trained were Sammy Davis Jr., Rock Hudson, and Sidney Poitier. He was recruited by the University of Puerto Rico to teach drama and English, where his students included actor Henry Darrow. The university awarded him an honorary degree. Later in life, Hernández returned to Puerto Rico, where he worked as a drama instructor and theatre and radio producer. He purchased land in Trujillo Alto intended for development into cinema studios, which also housed a small amusement park. Together with Julio Torregrosa, he wrote a screenplay about the life of Puerto Rico's first boxing champion, Sixto Escobar. He translated the script into English and submitted it to Hollywood studios, and it was nearly sold at the time of his death.