Fortunio Bonanova

Biography

Fortunio Bonanova, pseudonym of Josep Lluís Moll, (13 January 1895 – 2 April 1969) was a Spanish baritone 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. As a young man, living under his birthname, he was a professional telegraph operator. He studied music with the Italian 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 Borges (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 Tenorio by the brothers Baños, which was shown the following year in New York City and Hollywood. He later directed his own Don Juan in 1924. In 1927, he acted in Love of Sunya, directed by Albert Parker and starring Gloria Swanson. In 1932 he had small parts in Hollywood productions featuring Joan Bennett and Mary Astor. In the same period, he appeared in New York in several operas as well as the zarzuelas 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 Spain, where he had a major role in the film El Desaparecido ("The disappeared one") 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 War, 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 Signor Matiste, Susan Alexander Kane's opera coach in Citizen Kane (1941); General Sebastiano in Five Graves to Cairo (1943); Don Miguel in The Black Swan (1942); Fernando in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943); Sam Garlopis in Double Indemnity (1944); and a singing Christopher Columbus in Where Do We Go From Here?. He continued for the next several decades in a miscellany of character roles.

Known For

Signor Matiste

Citizen Kane

Sam Garlopis

Double Indemnity

Louie - Headwaiter

A Yank in the R.A.F.

Mandy, hotel owner

Second Chance

Courbet

An Affair to Remember

Don Serafino Lopez

Adventures of Don Juan

Feruccio di Ravallo

Whirlpool

Senor

New York Confidential

Gen. Sebastiano

Five Graves to Cairo

The Governor's Cousin

The Fugitive

Sheriff Antoine Chighizola

Thunder Bay

Plinio

Romance on the High Seas

Mr. Pretto, the Hotel Manager

Moon Over Miami

Hotel Manager

Down Argentine Way

Old Baba

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

Antonio Morales

Fiesta

Insp. Luis Carvero

The Red Dragon

Signor Cellini

Mrs. Parkington

Anton Copoulos

Larceny, Inc.

Television Performer

The Moon Is Blue

Grazzi

September Affair

Ricardo Domingos

Nancy Goes to Rio

La diosa arrodillada

Serge Bolanos

The Saga of Hemp Brown

Barrera

Tropic Holiday

Prof. Zorado

Man Alive

Dr. Marafioti

So This Is Love

Mike - Nightclub Owner (uncredited)

Four Jacks and a Jill

Senor Corelli, Opera Singer

With This Ring

Pereira, the Headwaiter

That Night in Rio

Mario Alvini

Hit the Hay

Christopher Columbus

Where Do We Go from Here?

African Police Corporal

Bulldog Drummond in Africa

TV host

Die Jungfrau auf dem Dach

Orchestra Leader

I Was an Adventuress

Pedro Espinosa

Blood and Sand

Rodriguez

Careless Lady

Simon Cordoba

Girl Trouble

Waiter

Dixie

Don Pedro Vargas

Pepita Jimenez

Sebastian Ortega

Angel on the Amazon

Charlie

My Best Gal

Senor Renaldo Da Silva

Brazil

Tomaso Bozanni

Going My Way

Francisco Servente

Jaguar

Kuda

The Sultan's Daughter

Sentry (uncredited)

The Mark of Zorro

Fernando

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Pietro Rafaelo

A Successful Calamity

John Mingo

Bad Men of Tombstone

Mexican Minister

Conquest of Cochise

Fernando Christophe

Thunder in the Sun

Don Juan Tenorio

Don Juan Tenorio

El carnaval del diablo

Impresario

Unfinished Business

Chef

Obliging Young Lady

Armando Rivero

Two Latins from Manhattan

La pícara Susana

Tenor

Romance in the Dark

Ambassador DeMarco

Havana Rose

Poderoso caballero

Gargano - Chief of Police

A Bell for Adano

Carmen Trivago

Kiss Me Deadly

Comisario Fenton

La muerte silba un blues

Buano

Mr. and Mrs. North

Spanish Bank Manager

The Running Man

Don Miguel (uncredited)

The Black Swan

Pacto con el Diablo (o el socio, Mr. Davis)

Inspector

The Ballad of Hector the Stowaway Dog

Las cuatro plumas

Don Carlos

Monsieur Beaucaire