Fortunio Bonanova Photo

Fortunio Bonanova

Acting

2.2 Popularity Jan 13, 1895 (74 years old) 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 des...

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 84

1964
Death Whistles the Blues Movie

as Comisario Fenton

1963
The Running Man Movie

as Spanish Bank Manager

1959
Thunder in the Sun Movie

as Fernando Christophe

1958
77 Sunset Strip TV

as Santos

1958
The Saga of Hemp Brown Movie

as Serge Bolanos

1957
An Affair to Remember Movie

as Courbet

1956
Jaguar Movie

as Francisco Servente

1955
Kiss Me Deadly Movie

as Carmen Trivago

1955
1954
With This Ring Movie

as Senor Corelli, Opera Singer

1953
The Girl on The Roof Movie

as TV host

1953
Conquest of Cochise Movie

as Mexican Minister

1953
Second Chance Movie

as Mandy, hotel owner

1953
So This Is Love Movie

as Dr. Marafioti

1953
The Moon Is Blue Movie

as Television Performer

1953
Thunder Bay Movie

as Sheriff Antoine Chighizola

Photos 1

Fortunio Bonanova Photo

Personal Details

Known For Acting
Gender Male
Birthday January 13, 1895 (74 years old)
Died April 02, 1969
Place of Birth Palma de Mallorca, Mallorca, Balearic Islands, Spain
Also Known As Josep Lluís Moll
Years Active 1922 - 1964
Popularity 2.2
Career Stats
84 Total Credits
72 Movie Roles
8 TV Roles
1 Photos