Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 31, 1992 TAG: 9201310444
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAXTON DAVIS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
`THE VOICE' IS STILLED
JOSE FERRER was an actor in a style nowadays often deemed "old-fashioned," flamboyant, oracular, and when he died last weekend in Florida he was not forgotten but had slipped into an obscurity his excellence did not deserve.It was a style that especially fitted Ferrer for colorful or tantalizing roles, and he made the most of his obvious gifts in the earlier years of his stage and screen career.
He came to widespread attention in the early 1940s when he stormed Broadway with a revival of "Charley's Aunt," and he consolidated his renown with a famous Iago, opposite Paul Robeson's Othello and his first wife Uta Hagen's Desdemona, in a New York production that many with long memories still savor.
Virginians with long memories may remember that even earlier he was a member of the original cast of "Brother Rat," the Monks-Finkelhoff comedy about cadet life at VMI, taking the role played in the subsequent movie version by Ronald Reagan. He appeared in a touring version of "Brother Rat" in Roanoke, as a matter of fact.
He was a native of Puerto Rico, a graduate of Princeton, and originally intended to pursue a career in architecture. But work in summer stock lured him into the theater, first as stage manager, then as actor, and from the mid-1930s he was firmly committed to the stage.
His principal asset was his voice, which was both low and rich, and to it he added an unusual mastery of facial expression that made him a telling movie actor. He was scarcely the stuff of leading men, on the other hand, for his face was not pretty and he boasted no particular bodily distinction; and though Hollywood sought now and then to make a leading man of him audiences seem to have been reluctant to accept him that way.
His first movie role was as the Dauphin to Ingrid Bergman's "Joan of Arc," but the part that made him famous - and won him an Academy Award - was the title role in "Cyrano de Bergerao," which he had earlier played successfully on Broadway. Both his voice and his flamboyance were beautifully suited to the ugly but poetic Cyrano, and he made both an exciting role and movie of it.
But his entry into movies coincided, more or less, with the rise of the Method mumblers - Brando, Clift, Newman, Dean - and his clearly theatrical performances were less appropriate to the sort of roles their movies demanded.
He remained a major performer, however, tackling the difficult part of Toulouse-Leutrec in John Huston's "Moulin Rouge" and adding luster to "character" roles in such pictures as "The Caine Mutiny." As an actor-director he created a film of great distinction, his examination of the Dreyfus case, "I Accuse," a picture of immense conviction and integrity that has never won the high reputation it deserved.
Throughout the '60s and '70s Ferrer continued to work onstage and onscreen, appearing often in major supporting parts on television, and worked meanwhile with regional theaters, in one instance serving as artistic director for a company that paid him a dollar a year. He was highly regarded as a teacher and manager.
Among his later roles many will remember his Turkish Bey in "Lawrence of Arabia," the loud anti-Semite in "Ship of Fools," and a long line of eccentric lawyers in various television mini-series. He even made a famous comedy for Woody Allen, tackling the part of the lascivious, Bertrand Russell-like philosopher in "A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy."
He never disappointed, and his extraordinary voice, if one listens closely, can still be heard as the voice-over in certain television commercials. It is a fading voice, as at the end he was a faded star, but the stardom is there all the same.
Paxton Davis is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.