Anthony Quinn Interview - The Guardian (1995)
Join us on an exclusive journey back to 1995, where Anthony Quinn opens up and talks about:
The iconic film "Zorba the Greek" and why didn't Simone Signoret play the role of Madame Hortense.
How and why was the famous Zorba dance created.
His childhood, moving to the USA, getting reunited with his father and quitting school to work and support his family.
His connection to Frank Lloyd Wright, how he started acting while working as a janitor, and memories about Aimee Semple McPherson.
Being the son-in-law of one of the great studio heads, Cecil B. DeMille, travelling to Italy to record La Strada, and several anecdotes about Federico Fellini.
Read on and don't miss out on this rare glimpse into cinematic history!
Anthony Quinn at The Guardian Interview in London, 1995
Interviewer: Anthony Quinn, welcome to London. You can hear from that very warm welcome how delighted we are to have you here at the National Film Theatre.
Anthony Quinn: I think they're just clapping because they're amazed that I can still stand up.
Interviewer: We should perhaps explain at this point that we are not only celebrating Anthony's ability to stand up and move and talk at the same time, but also this (pointing to book) which is a splendid new autobiography. It will of course be on sale afterwards with Anthony's signature inside if you buy it. We already have the applause of his enchanting three-year-old daughter there in the aisle. It is a splendid book, and I say that not likely
I had the pleasure of last meeting him about 20 years ago, when he had a book called ‘Original Sin’ which was very much a fragment of autobiography, which dealt really with just the earliest years. This (new autobiography) tells you the whole story and it is of course an amazing story. I usually like to start these at the very beginning and kind of work through from childhood, but so many people here tonight have seen Zorba just now, I heard the applause as it ended…
Let's sort of break the chronology and start with Zorba, because what emerges from the book are a number of things I never knew. Firstly, I guess that Lila Kedrova was not the first choice..
Anthony Quinn and Lila Kedrova in a scene of ‘‘Zorba the Greek’, 1964
Anthony Quinn: No, Simone Signoret was, and we had an amazing experience with Simone because the picture was very difficult to do.
So Kakayanis and I went to Paris, to meet her and to offer her the part, which she readily accepted, and I said to her: “You know Simone, would you mind if we rehearse a couple of weeks because I like to speak with a Greek accent and no doubt you want some rehearsal”
And she said: “No, I never rehearse” she said,“It just comes out of me spontaneously”, and well, I was turned down very graciously.
Then we went down to Crete, to make the picture, and we started with the most difficult scene in the picture, which was the story where she tells about the Admirals and so forth. And Cacoyannis gave the queue to start the scene, we all started the scene, then she got up and she started to dance and illustrating her charms to the Admirals and suddenly she stopped right in the middle of a shooting and said "Can we try again?" and we did the scene about 10 times. And the tenth time she really broke down and cried.
And it was amazing, starting with the comedic scene and she broke down and cried. And she said "I just can't do this part". And there we were stuck with no leading lady and we sent it to everybody. We sent the script to Barbara Stanley. We sent it to everybody in America and everybody said: “Well, it will take us a month to read the script”, and we only had a few thousand dollars to make the picture. We made the picture for a very small sum.
And I finally went to Simone. I said: "Simone, you're perfect for the part. Why can't you?"
She said: "Because I don't want my husband to think I'm an old lady"
Interviewer: One of the other great stories about Zorba you tell, is that that dance which has gone down to history quite rightly as Zolba's dance, was the result of a broken foot.
Anthony Quinn: Yes, about three days before the picture ended, I was on the platform to receive this log coming down from the top of the mountain, and suddenly the log went crazy and didn't know who to kill and Bates was terrified.
So it came and it hit the edge of the platform, and cracked it in two and I fell down about 20 feet and fell on my left foot, and immediately I was picked up and so forth, and the doctor said “He has a broken foot”, so they conveyed me over to Athens to the mainland and they said "Do you have a broken foot?", I said: “I can't have a broken foot. I have to dance the final of the picture in three days”, and they said "You can't" and they put a piece of plastic around my leg.
So three days later Cacoyannis was going crazy because he said: "I have to finish this picture. I have no money to shoot one more day". And I said: "Well, but I can't do that hopping step the Greeks do. I'll do my own step” and he said fine, and I said: “I will just have to drag the foot a little”, so we dragged the foot around and we made a special dance out of it.
Anthony Quinn teaching Alan Bates how to dance sirtaki in the movie ‘Zorba the Greek’. 1964
Interviewer: A dance you went on to do, not only in the movie but of course on stage across America years later.
Anthony Quinn: For 4 years.
Interviewer: As a huge musical.
Anthony Quinn: That's right. Yes. And thank goodness it was a huge success, but you know, people keep identifying me with Zorba and I love the picture of Zorba and I love the part, but they forget that I've done 300 other pictures.
Interviewer: Absolutely. I promise I will get off but you're quite right to make that point. I talked to some people and they all say the same thing. There is this problem that you get one role which somehow both immortalizes you and entraps you in, as you say people thinking that's all he does.
Anthony Quinn: That's right.
Interviewer: Well, let's go right back to the beginning. Born in Mexico 1916 (correction, 1915), a difficult childhood in more ways than one, at the time of your birth, it's still the revolution. It's still Pancho Villa.
Anthony Quinn: The revolution was going on, yes, and I was born under the hail of bullets and the sound of the bullets, and the country you can't imagine. I mean, I often think of what's happening now in Yugoslavia, and I am reminded of the...
Attendant from the public: Chiapas.
Anthony Quinn: What?
Attendant from the public: Chiapas. What happened in Chiapas?
Anthony Quinn: Yes, I know what you're talking about Chiapas. Chiapas is not my terrain. I was born about 4,000 miles away from Chiapas, I had no knowledge of Chiapas when I was born, and this is in Chihuahua.
Attendant from the public: Chihuahua!
Anthony Quinn: Chihuahua! That's right!
Interviewer: And then quite early, you moved to America. To Los Angeles?
Anthony Quinn: No, we moved to America looking for my father, because by then the war was coming to an end, it was 1917, 1918. The war was coming to an end and everybody knew that Villa and Zapata, neither one had agreed to become the president of Mexico, and they were voting for Juárez and people were running away, because they knew Juárez would not make a great president.
Interviewer: So for your father, for your family, why Los Angeles?
Anthony Quinn: Because my father and my mother had been separated during the war. Mister V had taken my father off to somewhere else, to fight a skirmish and never came back, I mean just went on going towards the South. And my mother, and a lot of the women were taken by train back to El Paso, which is right across the border from Juárez. And the town, the city of El Paso, was crowded with hundreds of thousands of immigrants there, because there was no food and no way of living in Mexico, and the only place you could live was in El Paso.
Interviewer: But quite early in your life, you find yourself in Los Angeles. Making a living doing what?
Anthony Quinn: Picking fruit. The only living anybody could make in those days who was from Mexico was doing manual labor and it was wonderful. I mean, you know when you tell it, it sounds sad and it sounds poverty, and it sounds terrible but it was the most adventurous trip I ever made in my life.
Going from El Paso to Napa Valley, to pick grapes and pick walnuts, it was a wonderful thing, and we even were sent in an air conditioned train and we had all the free air we wanted and we traveled...
Interviewer: But still not an easy childhood, you hadn't been reunited with your father after the revolution.
Anthony Quinn: Well, he found me. It was very dramatic because he was looking for us, we were looking for him, and he came walking down the street one day.
I was playing with a little train, on a little lake that had been formed by the rain, and I suddenly saw this man coming down, walking along this canal, and he looked rather strange. He was very tall, and big, and he captured something in my mind, and as he walked up, he walked right up to me and I've never seen my father. I mean I hadn't seen him since...
And he looked at me for a couple of seconds and he said "Hello elephant" and I said "Hello papa" and he said "Where's your mother?", I said "Come on..." and I took him to my mother. And from then on, it was one of the greatest love affairs in the world, because I adored the man.
Interviewer: But a very brief one...
Anthony Quinn: The wonderful thing about it, while rather brief but one of the most memorable... He lived with us for eight years, and made my life the most wonderful happy childhood I ever had, and I wish every kid could have such a wonderful life as I had with my father.
But he was the one that started this whole thing, because he got a job at a studio called Seligs and that was in about 1921 or 1922. You know studios in those days, they had all sorts of gadgets that made them studios. I mean, Chaplin worked in a garage you know, and sort of Disney by the way, and all these people made their own places to shoot pictures, and he worked at Seligs studio which became famous because they had a lot of animals there. They had panthers, lions, camels, and everything.
So every time somebody needed to use an animal picture, they'd come and work at Seligs, and my father was a cameraman, and so I became interested in motion pictures at a very early age, including my grandmother who's a fantastic movie goer. She'd go to every movie that ever came to El Paso, and that was in 1919 or 1920.
Interviewer: But then still at this very early age, you lost your father very abruptly.
Anthony Quinn: He's still alive for me, and he never died, and I just don't believe in death. I mean, he taught me that lesson and I still believe it.
Interviewer: So, what I was working towards was the idea that you were kind of, at this point, then very young, left with the need to make a living to support the family.
Anthony Quinn: I was 12 years old. I supported my grandmother, mother and sister and I became the man in the family. I actually quit school, went out to work and had about 12 years of making a livelihood for my family. Yes.
Interviewer: And interestingly where you got back towards the acting was not actually in a studio, but in a theater school where you were working as a janitor.
Anthony Quinn: Well, I was working as a janitor because at the time had won a scholarship, with a man named Frank Lloyd Wright, and he was one of the greatest architects that ever lived, but one day he called me in and he said:
"Tony, your drawings are absolutely marvelous and I love you, and I think you're going to be a great architect, but I have a little something to say to you. You have terrible speech. I don't know, there must be something wrong with your mouth"
And I said: “I talk like that. My speech is all lined up. People understand what I say. I sound alright".
He said: "No, I don't think you do. I want to send you to the doctor"
So he sent me to a doctor, and the doctor said: “Let me look at your mouth". I open my mouth and he said: "Lift up your tongue". I lift up my tongue and he says "Oh my gosh". I said "What is it? I must have something terrible in there” and he said: "Your frenulum. It's too big and I've gotta cut it”, and with that he gave me a shot, and cut it, and then I had a very funny experience, because I couldn't control my tongue. I've been able to control it since. (laughs)
So, then he said: "Well, now you have to go and learn to speak". And there was a school, near the art school where I was studying with him, that had a teacher, a wonderful teacher named Catherine Hamil, on Cahuenga and Hollywood Boulevard. So, I went and applied as a student, and I told her frankly:
"I can't pay you, but I will do any work in exchange for some voice lessons".
I became the janitor, and she liked me very much, and apparently she saw something in me beyond just being a student. Anyway, she said "I will teach you to speak".
They were doing Noël Coward's Hay Fever at that moment. A part I was totally unqualified to do, but I managed to do the part and so then suddenly the papers all started talking about this boy, and so on and they wrote wonderful glowing criticisms of me, and the studios started offering me contracts. Universal offered me $300 a week, and Paramount offered me the $350 and so on, and I was absolutely going crazy.
Interviewer: But it was an amazing early life, because not only was Frank Lloyd Wright a part of it, but so too was Aimee Semple McPherson. The evangelist. That's interesting. How did you get in with them?
Anthony Quinn: Well, that was a miracle. Aimee Semple McPherson was one of the greatest preachers in Los Angeles, and she was Pentecostalist, and I was a devout Catholic.
I was studying on the side with a priest to be a preacher, and one day I came home, and they're all standing around my grandmother's bed singing and I was horrified that my grandmother had allowed protestants inside the house. I started pushing people away and miss McPherson said:
"Tony, we're praying for your mother to get well. I don't know if you know it but your grandmother has cancer, cancer of the stomach and our prayers will make her well"
And I said: "Oh come on, you're just lying to her"
She said "If we make her well, will you join our church?"
And I thought that was so far-fetched. I said: "Of course I will. Besides, I play the saxophone by the way" and she said: "You'll join the band", and that was kind of thrilling.
So my grandmother got well. My grandmother got well by their prayers, and I went and I preached with my tongue-tied mouth to the young kids and I was very devoted to her, and by the way, I learned more about acting from McPherson than... She would come up on the stout, on the stage, and could actually hold a pause for 10 minutes, and would actually look at the audience and they'd be quiet for 10 minutes. But she was wonderful, and I learned a great deal about acting from her. Aside from religious and religion and so forth. And how did we get into this?
Interviewer: Well, we're talking about Aimee Semple McPherson. The truth is indeed that a lot of actors, Olivier, Sybil Thorndike, Channing, all children of preachers of one kind. There's clearly a great link from the church to the stage.
Interviewer: Talking about the very beginning, you got into studio work very early, but nothing, it has to be said, very distinguished. The early years were not easy for major roles.
Anthony Quinn: Well, no they weren't, as a matter of fact there was a problem then because, it was
a time of not only the depression was upon us, but it was a time of the war. I mean, you people here (in the UK) were at war already, and we in America were dodging it, and saying: "No, we won't commit ourselves to go" and so on, and finally, we were attacked by the Japanese and had to go to war.
Interviewer: But you also describe at this time marrying Cecil B. DeMille's daughter and really finding that more of a problem than an advantage. The career was not helped by being the son-in-law of one of the great studio heads.
Anthony Quinn: Well, that's a sensitive subject to talk about, because I loved Katherine DeMille very much and we had grown up differently. She grew up under the influence of mister DeMille who was a fine, wonderful director and a great producer, a great businessman, and she grew up with all the advantages, and I grew up with none of them, and our lives were so different and getting used to each other was very difficult.
Anthony Quinn and Katherine DeMille
Although I know she loved me, the difference in our cultural backgrounds did make a difference and finally, I with my ego and so forth, I couldn't take the difference of being under DeMille. I mean, I just couldn't take it. And I went to him and I said "I'm leaving because of you". And we had a wonderful talk, and he understood.
The interesting thing was that I had won an Academy Award before he (Cecil B. DeMille) did, so that impressed him a little. And then when I won the second Academy Award, he won the award that same night, so we had to shake hands and hug each other as if we were great friends, and it was rather interesting. I enjoyed it very much.
Interviewer: But what really got you in a way kick started as a star, was just getting away for a while from Hollywood, from the DeMille family, that feeling that you were the the son-in-law and you went back to the theater to Broadway to New York, and there you seem to find a whole another life really started.
Anthony Quinn: Well, I became aware that I wasn't really an actor about 10 years after having started, I played an Indian for DeMille and during the war in America, it was very ethnically constructed, that only boys with blonde hair and blue eyes could play the leading man. Van Johnson for instance, Robert Taylor and so forth.
Anthony Quinn’s first speaking role in the movie “The Plainsman” in 1936, portraying a Cheyenne Indian
And I saw the handwriting on the wall, that I would never be a leading man in Hollywood, and so the moment the war was over, I got a call from Italy, if I would come over and do a picture called ‘La Strada’ which I did gladly and...
Interviewer: For Fellini, tell me about Fellini. What kind of director?
Anthony Quinn: He was really one of the most amazing directors in the world. He never let you see more than three or four pages of the script, and would always promise you: "I will get it to you. Yes, they're being translated now. But I'll get them to you" and you'd say: "Well, Federico, what do I do Wednesday?" and he says: "Oh yes. Hasn't anybody translated it yet?" And he kept me off balance that way.
Anthony Quinn and Federico Fellini on set of ‘La strada’, 1954
But he was a director that created such a feeling on the stage, of the atmosphere, of the picture, that the moment you walked in, you were in a Fellini picture, you knew.There were only two men like that, David Lean and Fellini. And Kazan to a certain extent. Men that created an atmosphere, that the moment you walked in, you felt part of the picture, and you couldn't fail with him.
And the funny part was that I didn't speak Italian, he didn't speak English, and he said to me through an interpreter: "Ask Tony what he thinks of me" and I said: "Tell him I think he's a very strange fellow" and he laughed. He thought that was the funniest remark, and I loved it. And we became great friends, and I'm sorry to say that nowadays, since his death, I go to all his places where they're honoring him, and I accept honors for him, because both my friends Juliet and he died.
Once I asked (Fellini) him: "Why don't you make some more pictures with me? I mean, I love working with you"
He said: "Because you'll always be Zampanò for me and I can't think of you."
Anthony Quinn as Zampanò and Giulietta Masina as Gelsomina, in a scene of the film ‘La strada’, 1954
Want to watch the full interview?
The conversation with The Guardian was captured on video and is available in four parts on the Anthony Quinn Estate Facebook Page.
Watch it below or click on the links: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
Part 1 - The Guardian Interview - Anthony Quinn
Part 2 - The Guardian Interview - Anthony Quinn
Part 3 - The Guardian Interview - Anthony Quinn
Part 4 - The Guardian Interview - Anthony Quinn