Fortunio Bonanova

Birthday: 1895-01-13
Deathday: 1969-04-02
Birthplace: Palma de Mallorca, Mallorca, Balearic Islands, Spain
Gender: Male
Owned By: Unowned

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.

Credits

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