
Fortunio Bonanova
Personal Info
Known for
Acting
Gender
Male
Birthday
1895-01-13
Day of Death
1969-04-02 (74 years old)
Place of Birth
Palma de Mallorca, Mallorca, Balearic Islands, Spain
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
Acting
(1964)
Death Whistles the Blues
as Comisario Fenton
(1964)
The Ballad of Hector the Stowaway Dog
as Inspector
(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
(1957)
An Affair to Remember
as Courbet
(1956)
Jaguar
as Francisco Servente
(1955)
Kiss Me Deadly
as Carmen Trivago
(1955)
New York Confidential
as Senor
(1954)
With This Ring
as Senor Corelli, Opera Singer
(1953)
Second Chance
as Mandy, hotel owner
(1953)
Thunder Bay
as Sheriff Antoine Chighizola
(1953)
The Moon Is Blue
as Television Performer
(1953)
Conquest of Cochise
as Mexican Minister
(1953)
So This Is Love
as Dr. Marafioti
(1953)
The Girl on The Roof
as TV host
(1951)
Havana Rose
as Ambassador DeMarco
(1950)
Whirlpool
as Feruccio di Ravallo
(1950)
September Affair
as Grazzi
(1950)
Nancy Goes to Rio
as Ricardo Domingos
(1949)
Bad Men of Tombstone
as John Mingo
(1948)
Romance on the High Seas
as Plinio
(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)
Fiesta
as Antonio Morales
(1947)
The Kneeling Goddess
as Nacho Gutiérrez
(1946)
Monsieur Beaucaire
as Don Carlos
(1946)
Pepita Jimenez
as Don Pedro Vargas
(1945)
Man Alive
as Prof. Zorado
(1945)
Where Do We Go from Here?
as Christopher Columbus
(1945)
A Bell for Adano
as Gargano - Chief of Police
(1945)
The Red Dragon
as Insp. Luis Carvero
(1945)
Hit the Hay
as Mario Alvini
(1945)
(1944)
Double Indemnity
as Sam Garlopis
(1944)
Going My Way
as Tomaso Bozanni
(1944)
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
as Old Baba
(1944)
Mrs. Parkington
as Signor Cellini
(1944)
Brazil
as Senor Renaldo Da Silva
(1944)
My Best Gal
as Charlie
(1943)
For Whom the Bell Tolls
as Fernando
(1943)
Five Graves to Cairo
as Gen. Sebastiano
(1943)
Dixie
as Waiter
(1943)
The Sultan's Daughter
as Kuda
(1942)
The Black Swan
as Don Miguel (uncredited)
(1942)
Larceny, Inc.
as Anton Copoulos
(1942)
Obliging Young Lady
as Chef
(1942)
Girl Trouble
as Simon Cordoba
(1942)
Four Jacks and a Jill
as Mike - Nightclub Owner (uncredited)
(1942)
Mr. and Mrs. North
as Buano
(1941)
Citizen Kane
as Signor Matiste
(1941)
Blood and Sand
as Pedro Espinosa
(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)
Two Latins from Manhattan
as Armando Rivero
(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)
Romance in the Dark
as Tenor
(1936)
(1935)
(1932)
A Successful Calamity
as Pietro Rafaelo
(1932)
Careless Lady
as Rodriguez
(1929)
(1928)
(1922)
Don Juan Tenorio
as Don Juan Tenorio
Crew
(1929)
(1928)
Las cuatro plumas
Director, Adaptation, Editor