Fortunio Bonanova

Personal Info

Known For Actor

Gender Male

Birthday 1895-01-13

Deathday 1969-04-02 (74 years old)

Place of Birth Palma de Mallorca, Mallorca, Balearic Islands, Spain

Also Known As Josep Lluís Moll

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

Actor

1964
Death Whistles the Blues

as Comisario Fenton

1963
The Running Man

as Spanish Bank Manager

1959
Thunder in the Sun

as Fernando Christophe

1958
The Saga of Hemp Brown

as Serge Bolanos

1958
77 Sunset Strip

as Santos

1957
1956
Jaguar

as Francisco Servente

1955
Kiss Me Deadly

as Carmen Trivago

1953
1953
Conquest of Cochise

as Mexican Minister

1953
Second Chance

as Mandy, hotel owner

1953
So This Is Love

as Dr. Marafioti

1953
The Moon Is Blue

as Television Performer

1953
Thunder Bay

as Sheriff Antoine Chighizola

1951
Havana Rose

as Ambassador DeMarco

1951
I Love Lucy

as Professor

1950
1950
Nancy Goes to Rio

as Ricardo Domingos

1950
Whirlpool

as Feruccio di Ravallo

1949
Bad Men of Tombstone

as John Mingo

1948
Adventures of Don Juan

as Don Serafino Lopez

1948
Angel on the Amazon

as Sebastian Ortega

1947
The Fugitive

as The Governor's Cousin

1947
The Kneeling Goddess

as Nacho Gutiérrez

1947
Fiesta

as Antonio Morales

1946
Pepita Jimenez

as Don Pedro Vargas

1945
Hit the Hay

as Mario Alvini

1945
Man Alive

as Prof. Zorado

1945
The Red Dragon

as Insp. Luis Carvero

1945
A Bell for Adano

as Gargano - Chief of Police

1945
Where Do We Go from Here?

as Christopher Columbus

1944
Brazil

as Senor Renaldo Da Silva

1944
Mrs. Parkington

as Signor Cellini

1944
Double Indemnity

as Sam Garlopis

1944
My Best Gal

as Charlie

1944
Going My Way

as Tomaso Bozanni

1943
1943
Dixie

as Waiter

1943
Five Graves to Cairo

as Gen. Sebastiano

1942
The Black Swan

as Don Miguel (uncredited)

1942
Girl Trouble

as Simon Cordoba

1942
Larceny, Inc.

as Anton Copoulos

1942
Four Jacks and a Jill

as Mike - Nightclub Owner (uncredited)

1942
1941
Two Latins from Manhattan

as Armando Rivero

1941
A Yank in the R.A.F.

as Louie - Headwaiter

1941
Unfinished Business

as Impresario

1941
Moon Over Miami

as Mr. Pretto, the Hotel Manager

1941
Blood and Sand

as Pedro Espinosa

1941
Citizen Kane

as Signor Matiste

1941
That Night in Rio

as Pereira, the Headwaiter

1940
The Mark of Zorro

as Sentry (uncredited)

1940
Down Argentine Way

as Hotel Manager

1940
I Was an Adventuress

as Orchestra Leader

1938
Bulldog Drummond in Africa

as African Police Corporal

1938
Tropic Holiday

as Barrera

1938
1932
A Successful Calamity

as Pietro Rafaelo

1932
Careless Lady

as Rodriguez

1922
Don Juan Tenorio

as Don Juan Tenorio

Director

Writer

1928
Las cuatro plumas

as Adaptation

Editor

1928