One of the greats passed on today, one of my all time favorite actors.
God I loved Anthony Quinn… I first met him on-screen opposite Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power in THEY DIED WITH THEIR BOOTS ON and THE BLACK SWAN respectively… and had no idea the same man played those roles.
Seriously, how could a man be both Chief Crazy Horse… the man that Flynn’s Custer pardons from being hung and allows to escape, only to meet him once again upon the field of Little Big Horn. And then Wogan in THE BLACK SWAN… I dearly love THE BLACK SWAN, it was one of the first swashbucklers that I saw in color… and what color, watching Quinn narrowing his eyes as a pirate… He’s just too cool.
I was introduced to Anthony Quinn in small parts, little side role in hundreds of films… As a kid I watched him in KING OF CHINATOWN and UNION PACIFIC…. But then when I was Eleven years old I saw a film and a role of Anthony Quinn’s that chilled me and sobered me completely.
THE OX-BOW INCIDENT… Here Quinn shows everyone on the planet Earth what he’s capable of… I watched two innocent men hung to death… Watching Quinn’s begging… the look in his eyes, his body language… The way other men looked at him coldly, the way Fonda looked at him with sympathy… How could sympathy not come in? How could mercy not disable the mob mindset? Again it was a small role, but alongside Dana Andrews… if you didn’t care for the men that were having their necks stretched… then THE OX-BOW INCIDENT wouldn’t be one of the top ten westerns of all time (in my book). At this point, I knew the name of Anthony Quinn…
A scant bit of time passed before I saw GUNS OF NAVARONE and Quinn became a god in my book. An astounding mythic role. Colonel Andrea Stavros. I just said that out loud and I started crying. Oh man… God I love this character. I love this film and I loved Anthony Quinn… The flash in my mind was of him nearly drowning… Gregory Peck jabbing that spear thing for him to grab ahold of… Quinn in the water… injured… swimming with the one arm… Salt water blowing into his face… confused, certain that the man he has sworn to kill and his friend will kill him… Oh man… Remember that scene where he becomes a jelly spined coward to lure the Germans in? Or how about when Peck is telling Anthony Quayle about how Stavros has sworn to kill him… and out the front of the window you can see that sheep skinned wool vested Quinn in the pounding rain, tirelessly pumping the bilge… unfettering… unerring… constant determination. Or when Quinn catches Peck falling from the cliff… Oh God we lost a big one today folks…
We lost Auda Abu Tayi and his twenty-three great wounds are gone and the river to his people has dried up… Mountain Rivera will not be hit again and Barabbas will cease to drink… Alexis Zorba will give no more advice about the need for madness. Guaguin will no longer critique Van Gogh. Oh… and Zampanò’s rubber boots are empty.
Quinn played almost every ethnic group known to man, but came from Mexico… one that great country’s greatest actors… if not the greatest.
Anthony Quinn is gone, curl up tonight with his films… hear the cannons roar, watch him stride into center ring as a strong man, let Notre Dame’s bells ring, but whatever you try… you won’t forget Anthony Quinn… He was a big man in a world of little men.
REMEMBER THESE:
"Damn it boss, I like you too much not to say it. You've got everthing except one thing: madness! A man needs a little madness, or else..." "...he never dares cut the rope and be free."
" I carry twenty-three great wounds all got in battle. Seventy-five men have I killed with my own hands in battle. I scatter, I burn my enemies' tents. I take away their flocks and herds. The Turks pay me a golden tresure, yet I am poor! Because *I* am a river to my people!"
"There is a third choice"
FATHER GEEK here with a few more words about this highly honored actor who made the world his stage. Harry put it quite well in the above paragraphs, but I feel compelled to add some thoughts of my own.
I first took notice of Anthony Quinn in VIVA ZAPATA back in 1952, I was just 7 but as Brando's brother Quinn cut a role I would never forget. He won an Oscar for it too and another for LUST FOR LIFE. The Academy would nominate him for 2 more for WILD IS THE WIND and the great ZORBA THE GREEK. He was twice nominated for the BAFTA, 3 times for Golden Globes as well as for a Golden Laurel and a Golden Satellite. He won Germany's Golden Camera, a Cecil B. DeMille Award, and a National Board of Review Award among others in his long long career in front of the camera. He once said. "In Europe an actor is an artist. In Hollywood, if he isn't working, he's a bum."
Anthony Quinn made over 150 motion pictures between 1936 and 2001. The ones that are forever etched in Father Geek's brain are BLACK SWAN, OX BOW INCIDENT, SINBAD THE SAILOR, VIVA ZAPATA, ULYSSES (55), LUST FOR LIFE, BLOOD AND SAND, LAST TRAIN FROM GUN HILL, REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA and THE GUNS OF NAVARONE. My Dad's mother (died in 1971) loved Tony Quinn and took me to see five of the above films and probably a dozen others of his. She grew up in New Mexico when it was just a territory and we would often talk about the "kid from Chihuahua" who made it to the big time in Hollywood.
Anthony Quinn left a dozen offspring and over 10 times that in films to the world. Father Geek will still miss the thought of him sharing the same timeline with me though. Vaya Con Dios, Antonio Rudolfo Oxaca Quinn...
