Fortunio Bonanova | WatchedThis

Fortunio Bonanova

Fortunio Bonanova

Acting

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.

Filmography Movies

Acting

Poster for Citizen Kane
MOVIE

Citizen Kane

8.0(6.0K)
Citizen Kane
Signor Matiste
Poster for Double Indemnity
MOVIE

Double Indemnity

8.1(2.0K)
Double Indemnity
Sam Garlopis
Poster for A Yank in the R.A.F.
MOVIE

A Yank in the R.A.F.

5.6(0.0K)
A Yank in the R.A.F.
Louie - Headwaiter
Poster for Second Chance
MOVIE

Second Chance

6.0(0.0K)
Second Chance
Mandy, hotel owner
Poster for An Affair to Remember
MOVIE

An Affair to Remember

7.4(0.5K)
An Affair to Remember
Courbet
Poster for Adventures of Don Juan
MOVIE

Adventures of Don Juan

6.8(0.0K)
Adventures of Don Juan
Don Serafino Lopez
Poster for Whirlpool
MOVIE

Whirlpool

6.5(0.1K)
Whirlpool
Feruccio di Ravallo
Poster for New York Confidential
MOVIE

New York Confidential

6.0(0.0K)
New York Confidential
Senor
Poster for Five Graves to Cairo
MOVIE

Five Graves to Cairo

7.0(0.1K)
Five Graves to Cairo
Gen. Sebastiano
Poster for The Fugitive
MOVIE

The Fugitive

6.0(0.0K)
The Fugitive
The Governor's Cousin

Production

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

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

Pacto con el Diablo (o el socio, Mr. Davis)
Director
Las cuatro plumasMOVIE
MOVIE

Las cuatro plumas

Las cuatro plumas
Director
Las cuatro plumasMOVIE
MOVIE

Las cuatro plumas

Las cuatro plumas
Adaptation
Las cuatro plumasMOVIE
MOVIE

Las cuatro plumas

Las cuatro plumas
Editor

Gallery

Fortunio Bonanova portrait