Fortunio Bonanova
Acting • Born 1895-01-13 – Died 1969-04-02
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.
Filmography
80 credits
Citizen Kane
Movie • 1941
Signor Matiste
Double Indemnity
Movie • 1944
Sam Garlopis
A Yank in the R.A.F.
Movie • 1941
Louie - Headwaiter
Second Chance
Movie • 1953
Mandy, hotel owner
An Affair to Remember
Movie • 1957
Courbet
Adventures of Don Juan
Movie • 1948
Don Serafino Lopez
Whirlpool
Movie • 1950
Feruccio di Ravallo
New York Confidential
Movie • 1955
Senor
Five Graves to Cairo
Movie • 1943
Gen. Sebastiano
Thunder Bay
Movie • 1953
Sheriff Antoine Chighizola
The Fugitive
Movie • 1947
The Governor's Cousin
Romance on the High Seas
Movie • 1948
Plinio
Moon Over Miami
Movie • 1941
Mr. Pretto, the Hotel Manager
Down Argentine Way
Movie • 1940
Hotel Manager
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
Movie • 1944
Old Baba
Fiesta
Movie • 1947
Antonio Morales
The Red Dragon
Movie • 1945
Insp. Luis Carvero
Mrs. Parkington
Movie • 1944
Signor Cellini
Larceny, Inc.
Movie • 1942
Anton Copoulos
The Moon Is Blue
Movie • 1953
Television Performer
September Affair
Movie • 1950
Grazzi
Nancy Goes to Rio
Movie • 1950
Ricardo Domingos
The Kneeling Goddess
Movie • 1947
The Saga of Hemp Brown
Movie • 1958
Serge Bolanos
Tropic Holiday
Movie • 1938
Barrera
Man Alive
Movie • 1945
Prof. Zorado
So This Is Love
Movie • 1953
Dr. Marafioti
Four Jacks and a Jill
Movie • 1942
Mike - Nightclub Owner (uncredited)
With This Ring
Movie • 1954
Senor Corelli, Opera Singer
That Night in Rio
Movie • 1941
Pereira, the Headwaiter
Hit the Hay
Movie • 1945
Mario Alvini
Where Do We Go from Here?
Movie • 1945
Christopher Columbus
Bulldog Drummond in Africa
Movie • 1938
African Police Corporal
The Girl on The Roof
Movie • 1953
TV host
I Was an Adventuress
Movie • 1940
Orchestra Leader
Blood and Sand
Movie • 1941
Pedro Espinosa
Careless Lady
Movie • 1932
Rodriguez
Girl Trouble
Movie • 1942
Simon Cordoba
Dixie
Movie • 1943
Waiter
Pepita Jimenez
Movie • 1946
Don Pedro Vargas
Angel on the Amazon
Movie • 1948
Sebastian Ortega
My Best Gal
Movie • 1944
Charlie
Brazil
Movie • 1944
Senor Renaldo Da Silva
Going My Way
Movie • 1944
Tomaso Bozanni
Jaguar
Movie • 1956
Francisco Servente
The Sultan's Daughter
Movie • 1943
Kuda
The Mark of Zorro
Movie • 1940
Sentry (uncredited)
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Movie • 1943
Fernando
A Successful Calamity
Movie • 1932
Pietro Rafaelo
Bad Men of Tombstone
Movie • 1949
John Mingo
Conquest of Cochise
Movie • 1953
Mexican Minister
Thunder in the Sun
Movie • 1959
Fernando Christophe
Don Juan Tenorio
Movie • 1922
Don Juan Tenorio
El carnaval del diablo
Movie • 1936
Unfinished Business
Movie • 1941
Impresario
Obliging Young Lady
Movie • 1942
Chef
Two Latins from Manhattan
Movie • 1941
Armando Rivero
La pícara Susana
Movie • 1945
Romance in the Dark
Movie • 1938
Tenor
Havana Rose
Movie • 1951
Ambassador DeMarco
Poderoso caballero
Movie • 1935
A Bell for Adano
Movie • 1945
Gargano - Chief of Police
Kiss Me Deadly
Movie • 1955
Carmen Trivago
Death Whistles the Blues
Movie • 1964
Comisario Fenton
Mr. and Mrs. North
Movie • 1942
Buano
The Running Man
Movie • 1963
Spanish Bank Manager
The Black Swan
Movie • 1942
Don Miguel (uncredited)
Pacto con el Diablo (o el socio, Mr. Davis)
Movie • 1929
The Ballad of Hector the Stowaway Dog
Movie • 1964
Inspector
Las cuatro plumas
Movie • 1928
Monsieur Beaucaire
Movie • 1946
Don Carlos
Rose of Santa Rosa
Movie • 1947
Don Manuel Ortega
77 Sunset Strip
TV • 1958
Santos
December Bride
TV • 1954
General Electric Theater
TV • 1953
I Love Lucy
TV • 1951
Professor
The Count of Monte Cristo
TV • 1956
Racket Squad
TV • 1951
The Abbott and Costello Show
TV • 1952
Uncle Bozzo
The Abbott and Costello Show
TV • 1952
Prof. Roberto