August 21 | 12 Movies
When José Ferrer made his Hollywood debut in Joan of Arc (1948), he was already a seasoned staged veteran and a bona-fide Broadway star. Since making his Broadway debut in 1935 at the age of 23, the Puerto Rican-born, New York-raised actor had starred in a series of long-running hit productions, playing Iago opposite Paul Robeson in Shakespeare's "Othello," and winning the very first Tony Award for Best Actor for the title role in "Cyrano de Bergerac." A year later, he received his first Oscar nomination for his performance as the weak-willed Dauphin opposite Ingrid Bergman in Joan of Arc, launching him on a successful screen career. On August 21, TCM celebrates Ferrer’s career in 12 films for his first Summer Under the Stars showcase.
Ferrer brought a powerful presence to the screen with largely understated performances. Thoughtful and introspective, he projected authority through confidence and his resonant baritone voice. Initially, however, his talent was put in the service of villains and antagonists: the French king in Joan of Arc, a lethal hypnotist in Whirlpool (1950) and the brutal dictator of a fictional Latin American country in Crisis (1950), where Cary Grant stars as an American brain surgeon "detained" by the despot (a character loosely inspired by Juan Peron of Argentina) to perform a life-saving operation.
It wasn't long before he reprised his greatest stage success on the screen. Cyrano de Bergerac (1950) is a 17th-century French soldier, poet, romantic and a swashbuckling hero with a nose of such epic length that he is constantly defending himself against insults. Ferrer is grand and flamboyant, bringing a larger-than-life theatricality to the role and flair to the swordplay, yet under his bravado and eloquence is insecurity and pain. It's a magnificent performance and, just a few years after winning a Tony for his stage portrayal, he took home an Academy Award for his screen incarnation: the first actor to win both the Tony and the Oscar for the same role, and the first Hispanic actor to win the Best Actor award.
Even with his Hollywood success, Ferrer repeatedly returned to the New York stage, and he optioned a novel about Post-Impressionist French painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec for a stage adaptation. The project took a turn when filmmaker John Huston reached out with a proposal to bring the story to the screen. Ferrer signed a deal for a share of the profits and the leading role in Moulin Rouge (1952). Toulouse-Lautrec stood under five feet tall due to a childhood injury, so a number of tricks were used to capture the painter's diminutive stature, including concealed platforms and trenches in the set floor, body doubles and carefully planned camera angles. For key scenes showing his entire body, Ferrer wore a painful harness that bound his legs behind him while he walked on knee pads. The device, which he designed himself, was so tight that it cut off circulation, necessitating frequent breaks to massage his legs and get the blood flowing again. Though Huston was frustrated at the censorship compromises, Ferrer was proud of what they got on the screen. "I’ve always felt suggestion is every bit as good as statement and that picture makes explicit what was going on." He earned his third Oscar nomination for the performance.
Miss Sadie Thompson (1953), the third major studio film adaptation of the W. Somerset Maugham story, cast Ferrer opposite Rita Hayworth as a self-righteous missionary determined to get the vivacious, free-spirited Sadie deported from an island in the South Pacific populated by lonely American Marines. The production faced much tougher censorship demands than the previous versions, both made in the pre-Code era. A prostitute fleeing her past in the original story, Sadie's profession had to be changed to singer. It was shot on location in Hawaii in 3D, a fad that had run its course by the time of the film's release. After two weeks, the 3D prints were pulled from theaters and replaced with standard versions.
Ferrer doesn't appear until the third act of The Caine Mutiny (1954), yet he commands the screen when he appears, no small feat given he's up against Humphrey Bogart in one of his most memorable performances. Ferrer plays a grounded Navy flier and lawyer assigned to defend two young naval officers in a court-martial, an assignment he would prefer to turn down. During shooting on his first scene, Ferrer cracked up the film company in the studio when he made his entrance on his knees (channeling his character in Moulin Rouge) and quipped, "Anybody want to buy a painting?"
For Deep in My Heart (1954), Ferrer took on a very different role: composer Sigmund Romberg, who wrote such hit Broadway musicals as "Maytime," "The Student Prince," "The Desert Song" and "The New Moon." Ferrer was not the first choice for the production; Romberg himself was initially signed to play himself but he died of a stroke before the production began. It's the only singing role in Ferrer's screen career. He acquits himself with aplomb, displaying rarely unleashed energy and comic chops when he performs an entire show in digest form to a prospective investor, playing all the parts, singing, dancing and even punctuating with pratfalls. He even duets with his then-wife, and soon-to-be aunt to actor George, Rosemary Clooney, marking their only screen appearance together. Just be warned that at one point he dons blackface to sing "Jazza-Dada-Doo."
Already a successful Broadway director, Ferrer made his Hollywood directorial debut by adapting one of his stage successes: The Shrike (1955), in which he also stars as a theater director who suffers a nervous breakdown. After being cast in The Cockleshell Heroes (1955), a World War II thriller loosely based on a real-life mission behind Nazi lines, producers Albert R. Broccoli (who went on to create the James Bond movie franchise) and Irving Allen tapped him to direct as well. His second go behind the camera was a big hit in England but it made few ripples at the American box office.
Ferrer was more in his element with The Great Man (1956), a scathing satire of the underbelly of the entertainment business. Based on a novel by Al Morgan and co-written by Moran and Ferrer, it is loosely inspired by Arthur Godfrey, a popular radio and TV personality who bullied and was vindictive behind the scenes. Ferrer stars as the Broadway columnist and radio personality whose efforts to produce a radio tribute to a beloved TV and radio star uncover his hidden sins. To prepare for the production, a modestly budgeted film with a tight shooting schedule, Ferrer rehearsed extensively with the cast, using his own living room as a rehearsal space. Though a financial disappointment, it earned Ferrer a nomination from the Directors Guild of America and a Golden Globe nomination for supporting actor Ed Wynn, a comedian whose single scene is a dramatic tour de force.
The High Cost of Loving (1958) uses humor to examine the pressures of married and professional life in the modern world, with Ferrer again directing and starring as a middle-aged husband and loyal employee in a small company bought by a major corporation, which puts his future in question. Ferrer's inventiveness is on display in the opening scene, a 10-minute sequence of a middle-class couple (Ferrer and Gena Rowlands in her film debut) waking up and preparing for the day in a cleverly choreographed dance of a morning routine. Not a word is spoken in the scene yet the easy interaction of their morning duet suggests an intimacy and affection years into their marriage.
I Accuse! (1958) dramatizes the infamous Dreyfus Affair with Ferrer directing and starring as Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer wrongly convicted of treason in late 19th-century France. The real-life scandal revealed the deep anti-Semitic prejudices in French society at the time and the revelations were apparently still a sore spot in France decades later. The French government refused to allow the film to be shot in France, so it was shot on location in England and Belgium.
Ferrer stayed offscreen in his next two directorial efforts, Return to Peyton Place (1961) and State Fair (1962). Both made a profit (which his previous couple of films had failed to accomplish) but were still considered disappointments by 20th Century-Fox. Ferrer returned to Broadway and to the big screen in supporting parts, including small but essential roles in the epics Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). Though he had aged out of leading man roles, his dignified presence and silky, cultured voice kept him busy on both the big and small screens for years to come.
He brought his gravitas to The Swarm (1978), an Irwin Allen disaster thriller that pits an all-star cast against a strain of killer bees invading from Africa. Ferrer joined a cast that includes Michael Caine, Katharine Ross and Olivia de Havilland, but the most formidable costars were the millions of bees—as many as 22 million by one account—cared for by a hundred bee wranglers. He showed his too-rarely-seen comedy chops in Woody Allen's A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy (1982), a turn-of-the-century romantic comedy shot largely outdoors on the rural Rockefeller estate an hour from New York City. Ferrer had a recurring role on the sitcom "Newhart" and appeared on the iconic children's series "Sesame Street" in 1988. Among his six children, four became actors, most notably Miguel Ferrer, who starred in Robocop (1987) and the TV series "Twin Peaks." When he died in 1992 at the age of 80, he left behind a legacy of great performances and a new generation of actors.
