1895-01-13 Palma de Mallorca, Mallorca, Balearic Islands, Spain
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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The Ballad of Hector the Stowaway Dog | Inspector | 1964-01-05 |
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La muerte silba un blues | Comisario Fenton | 1964-07-04 |
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The Running Man | Spanish Bank Manager | 1963-10-01 |
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Thunder in the Sun | Fernando Christophe | 1959-04-08 |
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The Saga of Hemp Brown | Serge Bolanos | 1958-10-01 |
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An Affair to Remember | Courbet | 1957-07-11 |
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Jaguar | Francisco Servente | 1956-01-19 |
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New York Confidential | Senor | 1955-02-15 |
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Kiss Me Deadly | Carmen Trivago | 1955-04-28 |
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With This Ring | Senor Corelli, Opera Singer | 1954-01-01 |
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The Moon Is Blue | Television Performer | 1953-07-08 |
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Conquest of Cochise | Mexican Minister | 1953-09-01 |
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Die Jungfrau auf dem Dach | TV host | 1953-12-16 |
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So This Is Love | Dr. Marafioti | 1953-07-15 |
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Second Chance | Mandy, hotel owner | 1953-07-18 |
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Thunder Bay | Sheriff Antoine Chighizola | 1953-05-21 |
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Havana Rose | Ambassador DeMarco | 1951-09-15 |
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September Affair | Grazzi | 1950-10-18 |
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Nancy Goes to Rio | Ricardo Domingos | 1950-03-10 |
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Whirlpool | Feruccio di Ravallo | 1950-01-13 |
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Bad Men of Tombstone | John Mingo | 1949-01-21 |
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Romance on the High Seas | Plinio | 1948-06-25 |
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Adventures of Don Juan | Don Serafino Lopez | 1948-12-24 |
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Angel on the Amazon | Sebastian Ortega | 1948-11-01 |
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The Fugitive | The Governor's Cousin | 1947-11-11 |
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Fiesta | Antonio Morales | 1947-06-12 |
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La diosa arrodillada | 1947-08-13 | |
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Rose of Santa Rosa | Don Manuel Ortega | 1947-12-25 |
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Pepita Jimenez | Don Pedro Vargas | 1946-02-22 |
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Monsieur Beaucaire | Don Carlos | 1946-09-04 |
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A Bell for Adano | Gargano - Chief of Police | 1945-06-21 |
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Man Alive | Prof. Zorado | 1945-11-16 |
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The Red Dragon | Insp. Luis Carvero | 1945-08-01 |
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Where Do We Go from Here? | Christopher Columbus | 1945-05-23 |
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La pícara Susana | 1945-05-31 | |
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Hit the Hay | Mario Alvini | 1945-11-29 |
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Going My Way | Tomaso Bozanni | 1944-01-01 |
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My Best Gal | Charlie | 1944-03-28 |
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Brazil | Senor Renaldo Da Silva | 1944-11-30 |
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Double Indemnity | Sam Garlopis | 1944-07-06 |
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Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves | Old Baba | 1944-01-14 |
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Mrs. Parkington | Signor Cellini | 1944-10-12 |
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For Whom the Bell Tolls | Fernando | 1943-07-12 |
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The Sultan's Daughter | Kuda | 1943-12-16 |
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Five Graves to Cairo | Gen. Sebastiano | 1943-05-26 |
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Dixie | Waiter | 1943-06-23 |
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The Black Swan | Don Miguel (uncredited) | 1942-12-04 |
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Larceny, Inc. | Anton Copoulos | 1942-04-24 |
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Four Jacks and a Jill | Mike - Nightclub Owner (uncredited) | 1942-01-23 |
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Girl Trouble | Simon Cordoba | 1942-10-09 |
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Mr. and Mrs. North | Buano | 1942-01-23 |
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Obliging Young Lady | Chef | 1942-04-01 |
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Unfinished Business | Impresario | 1941-08-27 |
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Two Latins from Manhattan | Armando Rivero | 1941-10-02 |
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Blood and Sand | Pedro Espinosa | 1941-05-30 |
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That Night in Rio | Pereira, the Headwaiter | 1941-04-11 |
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Citizen Kane | Signor Matiste | 1941-04-17 |
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Moon Over Miami | Mr. Pretto, the Hotel Manager | 1941-07-04 |
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A Yank in the R.A.F. | Louie - Headwaiter | 1941-09-26 |
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Down Argentine Way | Hotel Manager | 1940-10-11 |
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I Was an Adventuress | Orchestra Leader | 1940-05-10 |
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The Mark of Zorro | Sentry (uncredited) | 1940-11-08 |
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Romance in the Dark | Tenor | 1938-03-24 |
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Bulldog Drummond in Africa | African Police Corporal | 1938-08-05 |
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Tropic Holiday | Barrera | 1938-06-29 |
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El carnaval del diablo | 1936-12-01 | |
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Poderoso caballero | 1935-01-01 | |
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A Successful Calamity | Pietro Rafaelo | 1932-09-17 |
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Careless Lady | Rodriguez | 1932-04-02 |
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Pacto con el Diablo (o el socio, Mr. Davis) | 1929-01-01 | |
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Las cuatro plumas | 1928-12-22 | |
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Don Juan Tenorio | Don Juan Tenorio | 1922-10-26 |
