Jose Ferrer ~ Best Actor 1950

Husband to Rosemary Clooney, uncle to George Clooney and father in law to singer Debbie Boone, Jose Ferrer received his Oscar for playing the famous poetic swordsman with the huge nose CYRANO DE BEFRGERAC.

Ferrer, who was born in the Santurce district of San Juan, Puerto Rico. In 1933 he graduated from Princeton University, where he wrote a senior thesis titled French Naturalism and Pardo Bazán and was a member of the Princeton Triangle Club. Ferrer made his Broadway debut in 1935. In 1940, he played his first starring role on Broadway, the title role in Charley’s Aunt — part of it in drag. He played Iago in Margaret Webster’s 1943 Broadway production of Othello, starring Paul Robeson in the title role, Webster as Emilia, and Ferrer’s wife at the time, Uta Hagen, as Desdemona. It became the longest-running production of a Shakespeare play staged in the U.S., a record it still holds. Then, in 1946, he played the title role in Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, a performance which won him a Tony Award and then took the role to the big screen where he won the Oscar.

Ferrer made his film debut with Ingrid Bergman in Joan of Arc in 1948, for which he received his first Academy Award nomination, for “Best Supporting Actor”. Ferrer won an Academy Award as “Best Actor” for his portrayal of Cyrano de Bergerac in the 1955 film version of Cyrano de Bergerac, becoming the first Puerto Rican to win the award, only weeks after being subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee as a suspected Communist, charges that Ferrer vehemently denied.

Ferrer had five children with singer-actress Rosemary Clooney: Miguel was born in 1955, Maria in 1956, Gabriel in 1957, Monsita in 1958, and Rafael in 1960. Clooney was Ferrer’s third wife. The two were married in 1953, divorced in 1961, and remarried in 1964, only to be divorced again in 1967. Ferrer had previously been married to famed actress and acting teacher Uta Hagen (1938–1948), by whom he had a daughter, Leticia (Lettie), and actress Phyllis Hill (1948–1953). At the time of his death, Ferrer was married to Stella Magee, whom he married in the late sixties.

José Ferrer died following a brief battle with colon cancer on January 26, 1992 in Coral Gables, Florida at the age of 83. He was laid to rest in Santa Maria Magdalena de Pazzis Cemetery in Old San Juan.