Fortunio Bonanova
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.
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Movies (74)
Death Whistles the Blues
1964 · Comisario Fenton
The Ballad of Hector the Stowaway Dog
1964 · Inspector
The Running Man
1963 · Spanish Bank Manager
Thunder in the Sun
1959 · Fernando Christophe
The Saga of Hemp Brown
1958 · Serge Bolanos
An Affair to Remember
1957 · Courbet
Jaguar
1956 · Francisco Servente
Kiss Me Deadly
1955 · Carmen Trivago
New York Confidential
1955 · Senor
With This Ring
1954 · Senor Corelli, Opera Singer
The Girl on The Roof
1953 · TV host
Conquest of Cochise
1953 · Mexican Minister
Second Chance
1953 · Mandy, hotel owner
So This Is Love
1953 · Dr. Marafioti
The Moon Is Blue
1953 · Television Performer
Thunder Bay
1953 · Sheriff Antoine Chighizola
Havana Rose
1951 · Ambassador DeMarco
September Affair
1950 · Grazzi
Nancy Goes to Rio
1950 · Ricardo Domingos
Whirlpool
1950 · Feruccio di Ravallo
Bad Men of Tombstone
1949 · John Mingo
Adventures of Don Juan
1948 · Don Serafino Lopez
Angel on the Amazon
1948 · Sebastian Ortega
Romance on the High Seas
1948 · Plinio
Rose of Santa Rosa
1947 · Don Manuel Ortega
The Fugitive
1947 · The Governor's Cousin
The Kneeling Goddess
1947
Fiesta
1947 · Antonio Morales
Monsieur Beaucaire
1946 · Don Carlos
Pepita Jiménez
1946 · Don Pedro Vargas
Hit the Hay
1945 · Mario Alvini
Man Alive
1945 · Prof. Zorado
The Red Dragon
1945 · Insp. Luis Carvero
A Bell for Adano
1945 · Gargano
La pícara Susana
1945 · Conde Mauricio Tonescu
Where Do We Go from Here?
1945 · Christopher Columbus
Brazil
1944 · Senor Renaldo Da Silva
Mrs. Parkington
1944 · Signor Cellini
Double Indemnity
1944 · Sam Garlopis
My Best Gal
1944 · Charlie
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
1944 · Old Baba
Going My Way
1944 · Tomaso Bozanni
The Sultan's Daughter
1943 · Kuda
For Whom the Bell Tolls
1943 · Fernando
Dixie
1943 · Waiter
Five Graves to Cairo
1943 · Gen. Sebastiano
The Black Swan
1942 · Don Miguel (uncredited)
Girl Trouble
1942 · Simon Cordoba
Larceny, Inc.
1942 · Anton Copoulos
Obliging Young Lady
1942 · Chef
Four Jacks and a Jill
1942 · Mike - Nightclub Owner (uncredited)
Mr. and Mrs. North
1942 · Buano
Two Latins from Manhattan
1941 · Armando Rivero
A Yank in the R.A.F.
1941 · Louie - Headwaiter
Unfinished Business
1941 · Impresario
Moon Over Miami
1941 · Mr. Pretto, the Hotel Manager
Blood and Sand
1941 · Pedro Espinosa
They Met in Argentina
1941 · Pedro, Ranch Blacksmith (uncredited)
Citizen Kane
1941 · Signor Matiste
That Night in Rio
1941 · Pereira, the Headwaiter
The Mark of Zorro
1940 · Sentry (uncredited)
Down Argentine Way
1940 · Hotel Manager
I Was an Adventuress
1940 · Orchestra Leader
Bulldog Drummond in Africa
1938 · African Police Corporal
Tropic Holiday
1938 · Barrera
Romance in the Dark
1938 · Tenor
El carnaval del diablo
1936
Poderoso caballero
1935
El desaparecido
1934
A Successful Calamity
1932 · Pietro Rafaelo
Careless Lady
1932 · Rodriguez
Pacto con el Diablo (o el socio, Mr. Davis)
1929 · Director
Las cuatro plumas
1928 · Director, Adaptation, Editor
Don Juan Tenorio
1922 · Don Juan Tenorio
