Cast & creator
Fortunio Bonanova
Best known for I Love Lucy, 77 Sunset Strip, December Bride
Fortunio Bonanova, pseudonym of Josep Lluís Moll, (13 January 1895 – 2 April 1969) was a Spanish baritone singer and a film, theater, and television actor. He occasionally worked as a producer and director. According to Lluis Fàbregas Cuixart, the pseudonym Fortunio Bonanova referred to his desire to seek fortune, and his love of the Bonanova neighborhood in his native Palma. As a young man, living under his birthname, he was a professional telegraph operator. He studied music with the Italian Giovachini. In 1921, he debuted as a singer in Tannhäuser, at the Teatre Principal in Palma. That year, along with a group of Majorcan intellectuals and Jorge Luis Borges (who was briefly living in Majorca with his parents and sister), he signed the Ultraist Manifesto, using the name Fortunio Bonanova. Also in 1921, he appeared in a silent film of Don Juan Tenorio by the brothers Baños, which was shown the following year in New York City and Hollywood. He later directed his own Don Juan in 1924. In 1927, he acted in Love of Sunya, directed by Albert Parker and starring Gloria Swanson. In 1932 he had small parts in Hollywood productions featuring Joan Bennett and Mary Astor. In the same period, he appeared in New York in several operas as well as the zarzuelas La Canción del Olvido ("The song of forgetting"), La Duquesa del Tabarín ("The Duchess of Tabarín"), Los Gavilanes, and La Montería. In 1934, he returned to Spain, where he had a major role in the film El Desaparecido ("The disappeared one") written and directed by Antonio Graciani. In 1935 he acted and sang in the film Poderoso Caballero ("A Big Guy"), directed by Màximo Nossik. In 1936, with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, he returned to the United States, where he played the role of Captain Bill in a film called Capitán Tormenta, directed by Jules Bernhardt. A sequence of increasingly larger acting and singing roles mostly in English-language films followed, especially after 1940. Among his roles were Signor Matiste, Susan Alexander Kane's opera coach in Citizen Kane (1941); General Sebastiano in Five Graves to Cairo (1943); Don Miguel in The Black Swan (1942); Fernando in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943); Sam Garlopis in Double Indemnity (1944); and a singing Christopher Columbus in Where Do We Go From Here?. He continued for the next several decades in a miscellany of character roles.
Also known as: Josep Lluís Moll
78
film credits
8
television credits
82
1922–1964 · acting roles
6.4
average across scored titles
Signature credits
Known for
Across film & television
Filmography (86)
Showing 86 of 86 credits
I Love Lucy
Professor
1951
77 Sunset Strip
Santos
1958
December Bride
1954
The Abbott and Costello Show
Uncle Bozzo
1952The Abbott and Costello Show
Prof. Roberto
1952
Citizen Kane
Signor Matiste
1941
Racket Squad
1951
The Count of Monte Cristo
1956
General Electric Theater
1953
Double Indemnity
Sam Garlopis
1944
An Affair to Remember
Courbet
1957
Angel on the Amazon
Sebastian Ortega
1948
Kiss Me Deadly
Carmen Trivago
1955
The Black Swan
Don Miguel (uncredited)
1942
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Fernando
1943
The Mark of Zorro
Sentry (uncredited)
1940
Adventures of Don Juan
Don Serafino Lopez
1948
The Fugitive
The Governor's Cousin
1947
Five Graves to Cairo
Gen. Sebastiano
1943
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
Old Baba
1944
The Running Man
Spanish Bank Manager
1963
Romance on the High Seas
Plinio
1948
The Moon Is Blue
Television Performer
1953
A Bell for Adano
Gargano
1945
Going My Way
Tomaso Bozanni
1944
Blood and Sand
Pedro Espinosa
1941
Fiesta
Antonio Morales
1947
Whirlpool
Feruccio di Ravallo
1950
Careless Lady
Rodriguez
1932
The Saga of Hemp Brown
Serge Bolanos
1958
That Night in Rio
Pereira, the Headwaiter
1941
Mrs. Parkington
Signor Cellini
1944
Thunder in the Sun
Fernando Christophe
1959
Death Whistles the Blues
Comisario Fenton
1964
September Affair
Grazzi
1950
So This Is Love
Dr. Marafioti
1953
I Was an Adventuress
Orchestra Leader
1940
A Yank in the R.A.F.
Louie - Headwaiter
1941
The Girl on The Roof
TV host
1953
Dixie
Waiter
1943
Moon Over Miami
Mr. Pretto, the Hotel Manager
1941
They Met in Argentina
Pedro, Ranch Blacksmith (uncredited)
1941
Havana Rose
Ambassador DeMarco
1951
Thunder Bay
Sheriff Antoine Chighizola
1953
Girl Trouble
Simon Cordoba
1942
Bad Men of Tombstone
John Mingo
1949
The Ballad of Hector the Stowaway Dog
Inspector
1964
El desaparecido
1934
Obliging Young Lady
Chef
1942
Down Argentine Way
Hotel Manager
1940
Nancy Goes to Rio
Ricardo Domingos
1950
Second Chance
Mandy, hotel owner
1953
Four Jacks and a Jill
Mike - Nightclub Owner (uncredited)
1942
Bulldog Drummond in Africa
African Police Corporal
1938
New York Confidential
Senor
1955
Mr. and Mrs. North
Buano
1942
Where Do We Go from Here?
Christopher Columbus
1945
Larceny, Inc.
Anton Copoulos
1942
Rose of Santa Rosa
Don Manuel Ortega
1947
Monsieur Beaucaire
Don Carlos
1946
Tropic Holiday
Barrera
1938
Jaguar
Francisco Servente
1956
With This Ring
Senor Corelli, Opera Singer
1954
Two Latins from Manhattan
Armando Rivero
1941
Romance in the Dark
Tenor
1938
The Sultan's Daughter
Kuda
1943
Conquest of Cochise
Mexican Minister
1953
Man Alive
Prof. Zorado
1945
El carnaval del diablo
1936
The Red Dragon
Insp. Luis Carvero
1945
Brazil
Senor Renaldo Da Silva
1944
Don Juan Tenorio
Don Juan Tenorio
1922
Unfinished Business
Impresario
1941
The Kneeling Goddess
1947
Pacto con el Diablo (o el socio, Mr. Davis)
1929Pacto con el Diablo (o el socio, Mr. Davis)
Director
1929
My Best Gal
Charlie
1944
Pepita Jiménez
Don Pedro Vargas
1946
A Successful Calamity
Pietro Rafaelo
1932Hit the Hay
Mario Alvini
1945
La pícara Susana
Conde Mauricio Tonescu
1945
Poderoso caballero
1935Las cuatro plumas
1928Las cuatro plumas
Director
1928Las cuatro plumas
Adaptation
1928Las cuatro plumas
Editor
1928