Anthony Quinn, Filmdom and Broadway's Zorba, Is Dead at 86
03 Jun 2001
The bull-like film actor, Anthony Quinn, who scored a Broadway stage smash in a 1983 revival of the musical, Zorba, died June 3 of respiratory failure in a Boston hospital, according to wire services.
The bull-like film actor, Anthony Quinn, who scored a Broadway stage smash in a 1983 revival of the musical, Zorba, died June 3 of respiratory failure in a Boston hospital, according to wire services. Mr. Quinn was 86 and had more than 100 film roles behind him, including choice parts in "Lust for Life" and "Viva Zapata!" (he won Best Supporting Actor Academy Awards for his work in both films). His signature role might have been the life-loving Mediterranean hedonist named Zorba on film (in 1965's "Zorba the Greek") and on the Broadway stage (in the 1983-84 Broadway revival of the Kander and Ebb musical, Zorba, which he toured before and after New York). He was nominated for a Tony Award in 1961 for playing King Henry II in Beckett. Mr. Quinn's most famous dramatic stage role may have been Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. He played the role in the first touring production of the play in the late '40s. Later, he followed Marlon Brando in the part, in a staging at City Center in 1950. Other plays included The Gentleman from Athens (his Broadway debut in 1947) and Tchin-Tchin (1962), and he toured as Harry Brock in Born Yesterday 1947-49. The Mexican-born, Los Angeles-reared Mr. Quinn earned Oscars for the 1952 film, "Viva Zapata!," playing brother of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata. He played the artist Gaugin in "Lust for Life" in 1956. The peasant, Zorba, first appeared in the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis. Mr. Quinn's performance was preserved on a cast recording of the stage show in 1983. Some of the lyrics of the musical were slightly altered for Mr. Quinn's turn in the revival of the 1969 tuner. — By Kenneth Jones
and Robert Simonson
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