Juano Hernandez

Juano G. Hernandez (July 19, 1896 – July 17, 1970) was a Puerto Rican stage, radio, and film actor born in San Juan to Jose Guillermo and Clara de Ponce. Following his mother's death, his father, a merchant sailor, brought him to Brazil, where he was raised by an aunt and acquired the nickname "Huano." The deaths of both parents left Hernandez without financial support or formal schooling. He found work as a sailor and settled in Rio de Janeiro, where in 1922 he made his first appearance as an acrobat with a circus operated by Arab street performers. He subsequently performed in both Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo before joining traveling circuses that moved throughout the Americas, eventually reaching New Orleans. In that city he pursued self-education through mail-in English courses and worked on fiction writing. He also spent time in the Caribbean, where he boxed professionally under the name "Kid Curley," compiling a record of 3-7-1 with two knockouts as a featherweight. Hernandez had four children, three of them with his first wife, Haydee Bello Paoli.

Upon arriving in New York City, Hernandez worked in vaudeville and minstrel shows, sang in a church choir, and wrote radio scripts. He studied Shakespeare to refine his diction, which allowed him to transition into radio work. He co-starred in radio's first all-black soap opera, We Love and Learn, and appeared on Mandrake the Magician opposite Raymond Edward Johnson and Jessica Tandy, as well as on The Shadow, Tennessee Jed, and Against the Storm. His participation in The Cavalcade of America, a series devoted to American history and inventiveness, made him widely recognized. For CBS he appeared in John Henry: Black River Giant in 1933 and The Story of Ruby Valentine in 1942. In 1922 he had appeared in Blackbirds with the Providence Town Players, and his Broadway debut came in the chorus of the 1927 musical Show Boat.

Hernandez appeared on Broadway from 1931 to 1948, accumulating credits that included Savage Rhythm, Black Souls, Sailor Beware!, The Marriage of Cana, Set My People Free, Brown Sugar, Strange Fruit, and Fast and Furious, among a total of eight productions. It was during the run of Set My People Free that an MGM scout first took notice of him.

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

His entry into mainstream Hollywood came with Intruder in the Dust (1949), based on William Faulkner's novel, in which he played Lucas Beauchamp, a poor Mississippi farmer wrongly 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 named the film among the ten best of the year. Filming took place in Oxford, Mississippi, where Hernandez navigated segregation on set. Faulkner himself praised both the film and Hernandez's performance. In 2001, film historian Donald Bogle wrote that the film broke new ground in the cinematic portrayal of Black Americans and that Hernandez's performance and presence ranked above that of nearly any other Black actor to appear in an American film.

In the 1950 western Stars in My Crown, directed by Jacques Tourneur and starring Joel McCrea, Hernandez played a freed slave who refuses to sell his land and confronts a lynch mob; the role 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 alongside John Garfield, for which the New York Times described his work as "quietly magnificent." He played a judge in the 1955 film Trial, which centered on a politically charged court case, and received favorable notices for his performance in Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker (1965). During this period he was reported to be the highest-paid Black actor in Hollywood. Additional film credits include Something of Value (1957), Machete (1958), St. Louis Blues (1958), and Sergeant Rutledge. In the final two years of his life he appeared in The Extraordinary Seaman (1969) with David Niven, The Reivers (1969) with Steve McQueen, and They Call Me Mister Tibbs! (1970) with Sidney Poitier.

On television, Hernandez made guest appearances on roughly a dozen American network programs. He appeared three times on the ABC series Adventures in Paradise between 1960 and 1961, and in 1959 starred in an Alfred Hitchcock Presents adaptation of Ambrose Bierce's An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. He also appeared in the 1961 CBS television film The Dispossessed and had roles on Naked City, The Defenders, The Dick Powell Show, and Studio One.

In 1955 Hernandez opened a drama school in Hollywood, though it closed after promised financial support failed to materialize. Among those he trained were Sammy Davis Jr., Rock Hudson, and Sidney Poitier. He was later recruited by the University of Puerto Rico to teach drama and English; his students there included actor Henry Darrow, and the institution awarded him an honorary degree. Returning to Puerto Rico in his later years, Hernandez worked as a drama instructor and theatre and radio producer. He purchased land in Trujillo Alto intended for development into cinema studios and a small amusement park. Together with Julio Torregrosa he wrote a screenplay about the life of Puerto Rico's first boxing champion, Sixto Escobar; after Steve McQueen died he was unable to secure funding in Puerto Rico and translated the script into English, sending it to Hollywood companies, where it was nearly sold at the time of his death.

Hernandez died in San Juan on July 17, 1970, two days before his seventy-fourth birthday, of a cerebral hemorrhage. He was interred at Cementerio Buxeda Memorial Park in Río Piedras, Puerto Rico.