Bio
Someone once said, “If I was left on an island, I’d reconstruct the rocks. I have a need to say I was here.” And that’s how Anthony Quinn spent his life – leaving his mark on the world. His creative mind and spirit continue to move us and enrich our lives through his art and acting.
He was born under the gunfire of the revolution in Chihuahua, Mexico in1915 to a half-Irish father, Frank Quinn, and a Mexican-Indian mother, Manuela Oaxaca, who both marched under the banner of Pancho Villa. Manuela and Frank were separated when she became pregnant with Anthony and was forced to leave the battlefield. When Quinn was only 8 months old, his mother hid him in a coal wagon and escaped to El Paso, Texas. They would not find Frank again until Quinn was almost 3 years old. A second child was born less than a year later, his sister, Stella.
Poverty led them to search for work as fruit pickers in California and they eventually settled in East Los Angeles where Frank worked at Zelig’s Studio, taking care of the animals and training as a cameraman.
Quinn’s interest in art developed early and recognition was quick to follow. At age 9 he began sculpting, and within three years entered a statewide California competition and won it with his plaster bust of Abraham Lincoln. He began drawing sketches of movie stars he would see when his father took him along to the studio. He mailed one sketch to Douglas Fairbanks, and much to his surprise he received a check for $25 in return.
When Quinn was 11, tragedy struck. Frank was killed outside their home in East LA by a passing automobile. Quinn vowed to support his mother, sister and grandmother. He started skipping school and working at odd jobs to help support the family. Before the age of 18, he had worked as a migrant farm worker, newsboy, preacher and taxi driver. He also made $5 to $10 a fight as a welterweight boxer.
Quinn entered another contest during his junior year in high school, with an architectural plan for a marketplace, and again he was named a winner. The prize this time was to study and work with the famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, an encounter which was to change Quinn’s life forever. Wright taught him that the average man does not know how to live, and that it is the job of the architect to build – not to the physical size of the man, but to the size of man’s spirit.
Finally, someone had put into words the hunger that Quinn had felt all his life – to live and create to the size of the spirit of man – which became the motto by which he would live. Wright also taught Quinn that a good architect must be able to convince people of how they ought to live, and sent him to acting school to improve his speech. Quinn worked as a janitor to pay for his lessons.
When one actor fell ill, the teacher asked Quinn to take his part in the play. He received wonderful reviews and thus began his career as an actor. When he began to get small parts in plays and films and earn as much as $75 a day, he asked Wright whether he should continue to act or to pursue his career as an architect. Wright told him there was always time to become an architect later.
After more than 60 years of performing on stage, in television and film, with a career that included the creation of truly classic characters in “La Strada,” “Viva Zapata,” “Lust for Life,” “Requiem for a Heavyweight,” and “Zorba the Greek,” and as recipient of two Academy Awards and six nominations, Quinn will always be remembered as the consummate actor who received international acclaim and the respect of his peers and the public.
Although he had painted and sculpted since the age of 6, it was not until the 1980’s that Quinn discovered he could have another career as an artist. He had always sculpted small pieces of stone and wood he found while he was working on location in the deserts of North Africa and the Middle East. In that decade he began to enlarge these “maquettes” into full-sized sculptures with the intention of decorating his home. To his surprise, people started asking him where they could buy the artwork. He was given a one-man exhibition at a gallery in Honolulu, Hawaii and sold every piece in the show.
He continued making movies and in his free time on set would forage among the dunes. Between scenes, he would transform the objects, which most people would consider just rocks, stones, and scraps of wood into works of art. He found beauty in everything he saw.
Besides his achievements in acting, sculpting and painting, Quinn also wrote two autobiographies, “The Original Sin,” published in 1974, and “One Man Tango,” published in 1994. Quinn finished his last film, “Avenging Angelo,” with Sylvester Stallone, in May of 2001. In June of the same year, he died of respiratory failure at the age of 86. He was survived by his sister Estella, his wife Katherine and 12 children.
