Celebrity Biographies
Mel ferrer
The famous actor Mel Ferrer died on June 2 in his sleep, at his ranch in Santa Barbara (California), at the age of 90. Although known primarily as an actor, he was a versatile artist who also found success as a dancer, producer, and director. He always considered himself more suitable to get behind the cameras.
Born in Elberon, a small town in New Jersey, on August 25, 1917, Melchior Gaston Ferrer was the son of a renowned Cuban surgeon and an upper-class woman. Since childhood he was already passionate about various artistic disciplines. He began studying at the prestigious Princeton University, but dropped out, wrote a children’s book, ‘Tito’s Hat’, and worked for a while as an editor for a small newspaper. He then made his Broadway debut as a dancer, in 1938, in two well-received musicals. He liked being on stage so much that, two years later, he became a stage actor.
His first contact with the cinema was as a director, because Columbia hired him to direct The Girl of the Limberlost , a low-budget drama. His work impressed John Ford himself, who chose him to serve as an assistant director in The Fugitive (1947) , where he appears making a cameo. His real debut as a film actor took place in 1949, when he co-starred in the drama Lost Boundaries , in which he played a doctor. Following his breakout performance as an outlaw in Concealer , he was King Arthur in Richard Thorpe ‘s adventure film King Arthur’s Knights ., and became a celebrity for his work as a puppeteer in Lili , the famous musical starring Leslie Caron .
He had already been divorced three times, and had five children, when he fell in love with Audrey Hepburn , with whom he starred in the 1954 play ‘Ondine’ in New York. Months later they got married and established their residence for many years in Switzerland. Both were so in love that they practically did not part. When Audrey was filming A Face with an Angel , she demanded that her Parisian sequences be delayed to coincide with Ferrer, who was also going to shoot Elena y los hombres in the French capital . Both coincided on the screen in War and Peace , a luxurious film adaptation of Tolstoy’s famous novel directed by King Vidor. She was Natasha Rostov, and he was Prince Andrei Bolkonsky. The couple had a son, Sean H. Ferrer, associate producer of such titles as Kiss of a Stranger or Iron Shaft . Ferrer directed his wife in Green Mansions and also produced Alone in the Dark , one of Audrey Hepburn’s greatest hits, who played a blind woman. They finally divorced in 1968, and Ferrer was married to Elizabeth Soukutine until her death.
As a director his most prominent title was The Secret Fury , with Claudette Colbert and Robert Ryan . As an actor, he played numerous titles, such as The Hands of Orlac , Fighting Bulls , The Longest Day , The Fall of the Roman Empire , The Maiden Rogue , Brannigan , or A Song. Lili Marleen , from German RW Fassbinder . In El Greco he played the famous painter. From the 70s he was lavished on television, in various telefilms, and in series like Falcon Crest .