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By RON MILLER
of TheColumnists.comYOU NEVER really could ignore Anthony Quinn. He was in your face from the moment he appeared on screen in any movie or TV show. If you were lucky enough to see him perform on stage, you always had the feeling he might suddenly leap into the audience, grab you by the scruff of the neck and haul you up onstage to drink ouzo and dance with him.
And if you ever found yourself face to face with Quinn in person, you could count on your timbers being shivered in short order because he usually took over whatever room he happened to be in at the time. The emotional force of Anthony Quinn in person was something like the six-octave voice of Yma Sumac, rising to impossible heights at one moment, then suddenly plunging to murmur softly in your ear.
Yet Quinn, who died last week at age 86, apparently went quietly in his sleep, not raging against the night as anyone who ever met him might expect him to do. I'd like to think he was at peace in the full knowledge that he had left behind a vast legacy of creative work that people will continue to enjoy for decades to come.
There's a great temptation to say Quinn was the greatest Latino movie star of the 20th century, a two-time Oscar winner who was a genuine star from the mid-1940s through the 1990s and into the first months of the new century. But Quinn would rise up from his grave and grab anyone by the throat who dared to put him in the category of "Latino" anything.
Not that Quinn was uncomfortable being part Latino. He commonly referred to himself as "an Irish Mexican," which was correct. (His mother was Mexican; his father, Irish.) He just didn't like any actor being put in an ethnic box because he figured it led directly to typecasting, the fate worse than death to a man who knew he was a superb character actor capable of making you believe he was whatever the script said he was.
That became very clear to me the first time I met Quinn in person. That was in San Franciso in 1972 at a small critics luncheon to promote his autobiography, 'The Original Sin." He was then in the midst of a controversy over his plans to play Haiti's black emperor, Henri Christophe, in a film he was going to produce and possibly direct. Black critics had jumped on him for even thinking of "blacking up" to play the character.
"I resent it when people ask me if I'm going to 'cork up' for the part," Quinn fumed. "It's like asking me if I'm going to put on a false nose to play Gauguin. Makeup is makeup! Should Sammy Davis, Jr., get the part just because he's black? Would you prefer Stepin Fetchit or Anthony Quinn?"
The point he made that day was a good one--and long before "political correctness" really became a major issue in Hollywood. Laurence Olivier faced the same sort of criticism for daring to play Shakespeare's Othello on screen, wearing dark makeup to resemble a moor. Meanwhile, Quinn already had played virtually every nationality on screen from Frenchman to Eskimo--quite convincingly, as far as moviegoing audiences were concerned.
Quinn already was running against the flow of public thought, though, and he never did play Henri Christophe. Still, he had built a solid, enduring career in Hollywood despite his willingness to tweak the noses of producers--and powerful political pressure groups.
That day, for instance, he took potshots at the growing Latino movement in America by declaring his distaste for the word "chicano," a term then being heavily pushed by Latino power groups who bristled at being called "Mexican-American." Quinn was born in Mexico, but lived much of his youth in the barrio of East Los Angeles. He roared like a wounded grizzly bear when one of the critics referred to him as "chicano."
"When I was growing up, if anybody called me "chicano," I would have killed him," he said. "It was the same as calling you dago, wop or kike!"
Once he calmed down, Quinn explained the use of the term was "an act of defiance against their fathers" by the young Latinos of the movement. He said it was alienating older people like himself, who might otherwise have sympathized with the movement.
Years later, Quinn still was unafraid to take the unpolitical stance. In what would be my last chance to talk with him, Quinn was doing a press conference for HBO's movie "Gotti," in which he played an older Mafia figure involved in the life of real-life mobster John Gotti. Quinn rather proudly told the story of how he'd gone to a restaurant in New York and someone sent a bottle of wine to his table. The "fan" turned out to be Gotti himself. Reporters jumped on Quinn for associating with the murderous gangster at all. He blew us all off, making it clear he didn't take instructions on his social life from the press. And he also made the point that drinking a mobster's wine didn't make you one yourself.
Over the years, I've seen Quinn spew volcano-style on a number of occasions. He didn't suffer fools gladly. However, he didn't make his way to the top of the Hollywood heap by giving everybody the big finger. He was always a man of enormous charm and it was impossible to resist that big, bear-like personality. One example: At that 1972 press luncheon, Quinn got so vociferous at one point, waving his arms around like a wildman, that he knocked over a glass of wine, which spilled on the woman next to him. A minute later, though, he had her calm and smiling broadly after showing her how to rub a little spilled wine behind her ear for "good luck." I don't recommend trying that yourself unless you have a real overabundance of personal charm.
Looking back over Quinn's incredibly rich and diverse career, it's easy to understand why so many people blank out everything else and just see him as Zorba the Greek. If ever a man took over a role and made it his own forever, it would be Quinn's Zorba. This remains one of the all-time great screen acting performances, even though he didn't win the 1964 Oscar for it. (He was nominated, but Rex Harrison won for "My Fair Lady") In a way, Quinn never got over being Zorba, the lusty, bellowing peasant. His performances generally were "bigger" after Zorba--and he returned to the part in the 1980s as the star of the hit Broadway musical based on the film.
Quinn already was a major international star in 1961 when he played the thief 'Barabbas' in search of his faith in the time of Christ. When I saw Quinn play Zorba on the stage in Los Angeles in the mid-1980s, he still could fill an enormous room with his mammoth persona. If anything, I thought the Music Center stage wasn't big enough to take in all the Zorba Quinn was able to give us.
Yet Quinn's career was loaded with other great performances that stand beside Zorba, including his two Oscar winners from "Viva, Zapata!" (1952) and "Lust for Life" (1956). Here are some of my favorites:
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