R.I.P. Mel Ferrer

Yet another R.I.P., I’m afraid. Mel Ferrer died on June 2nd, aged 91. There’s a lengthy obituary in the Guardian, quote:

There was much about Mel Ferrer, who has died in Los Angeles aged 90, that resembled Robert Cohn, the elusive Hemingway character he played in The Sun Also Rises (1957). Like Cohn, he was a cosmopolitan linguist and lover of all things Spanish. The lanky, sombre-looking Ferrer seemed a melancholy wanderer, moving from country to country, film to film, producing, directing and acting.

Ferrer was born in Elberon, New Jersey, the son of a Cuban-born surgeon and a Manhattan socialite. After dropping out of Princeton, he edited a small newspaper in Vermont, wrote a children’s book called Tito’s Hat and acted in summer theatre. In 1938, he headed for New York, where he danced in the chorus of a number of Broadway musicals and was a disc jockey. In 1940, he was struck down with polio, which left him with a shrivelled arm, but by force of will, he exercised it back to strength. He drew on this experience for his role as the bitter, lame puppeteer in Lili (1953), secretly in love with Leslie Caron. [obituary continues]

What the Guardian rather glides over, inevitably, was his contribution to the world of European Cinema. He was a longtime performer in Italian films, dating way back to Mario Monicelli’s Sardinia based meldorama Proibito (54). As well as some extremely high profile films, such as Dino De Laurentiis’s production of War and Peace (56), he also turned up in a number of smaller genre items: swashbucklers (Charge of the Black Lancers (61), El Greco (66)), horror films (The Tempter (74), Island of the Fishmen (79), Nightmare City (80)), giallos (The Girl in the Yellow Pyjamas (76)) and crime films (Silent Action (75))

He was almost as prolific in French and Spanish cinema, with better known productions including Fassbinder’s Lilli Marleen (81), The Hands of Orlac (60) and Vadim’s Blood and Roses (60).

As one of that generation of adventurer / actors, who travelled the world in search of a paycheck and something new, he’ll be sadly missed