JOSE FERRER CYRANO DE BERGERAC FILM MOVIE
“They’ll say: ‘Oh, he’s a stage personality he’s box-office poison he’s too intellectual he’s an egghead he’s arrogant he’s egomaniacal.’ Nobody once asked me to act in a movie in four years. “Go to anyone in Hollywood, even now, and ask them how come they did not use me for some picture they made and I can tell you what they’ll say,” he told The New York Times. He struggled to find consistent work, at one point going through a “ four-year famine” where he couldn’t get hired. Barranger, in her biography of actress and producer Margaret Webster, argues that he earned his freedom by giving up four names-but he avoided the dreaded blacklist. There’s some debate over how the HUAC reached that outcome-the drama professor Milly S. Trade publications had speculated in the lead-up to the Academy Awards that red paranoia could influence the outcome for the first time in Oscar history, after a teachers association rescinded an award to Ferrer for his Cyrano performance. Ferrer knew as well as anyone that the HUAC held his career in their hands. He had changed his mind about the HUAC mission, he insisted, and recognized that some of the organizations he had supported in the past had red ties-he just didn’t do his research at the time. According to Frost, Hopper kept a file on Ferrer’s political activities and covered his subpoena with much suspicion, insisting that he was “in the Red searchlight” and would likely return for further testimony.įerrer vehemently denied any communist sympathies. As the history professor Jennifer Frost writes, Hopper bolstered the HUAC proceedings with many anticommunist columns. The influential gossip columnist Hedda Hopper also stoked the paranoia. At the time, his name had appeared in Red Channels, a pamphlet circulated in the 1950s that listed entertainers suspected of communist affiliations-and implicitly suggested you not hire them. “Any attempts to curb freedom of expression, and to set arbitrary standards of Americanism, are in themselves disloyal to both the spirit and the letter of our Constitution.”įerrer would have to answer for that letter in 1951, when he was subpoenaed by the HUAC. “Any investigation into the political beliefs of the individual is contrary to the basic principles of our democracy,” it read. The letter called the HUAC investigations into Hollywood, which had already generated a “blacklist” of entertainers considered unemployable due to communist leanings, “morally wrong.” He fought against segregation in D.C., attended “crisis” meetings on atomic energy and foreign policy, and signed a letter in 1947 condemning the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). When Ferrer wasn’t working, he lent his name to various progressive causes. It was his first movie role, and he was immediately nominated for an Oscar. He broke into Hollywood five years later, with his performance as the Dauphin in the 1948 Joan of Arc. He found early success in a 1940 production of the comedy Charley’s Aunt, but it was his turn as Iago in a 1943 production of Othello-which also starred Paul Robeson and Ferrer’s then-wife Uta Hagen-that made him a true star. After college, Ferrer began working in theater, building experience as a stage manager in Suffern before transitioning to Broadway. He fenced, played piano at the concert level, and got into Princeton at the age of 14. It was a place he’d occupy even in death, when his history-making Oscar disappeared.įerrer was the extremely accomplished son of Rafael Ferrer and Maria Providencia Cintron, who moved their family from Puerto Rico to America when José was six. The dichotomy of this moment, both a coronation and a threat, perfectly encapsulated Ferrer’s uneasy place in Hollywood, where he was often considered too left-wing, too snobby, too difficult. That phrasing carried extra meaning, for just as Ferrer was being handed Hollywood’s highest honor-making him the first Latino actor to win an Oscar-he was being investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee for possible ties to communism. The dichotomy of this moment, both a coronation and a threat, perfectly encapsulated Ferrer’s uneasy place in Hollywood.