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Mel Ferrer
Ferrer in 1960
Born	Melchor Gastón Ferrer (1917-08-25)August 25, 1917 Elberon, New Jersey, U.S.
Died	June 2, 2008(2008-06-02) (aged 90) Santa Barbara, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actor, director, producer
Years active	1937–1998
Spouse(s)	Frances Pilchard (m. 1937; div. 1939) Barbara C. Tripp (m. 1940; div. 1944) Frances Pilchard (m. 1944; div. 1954) Audrey Hepburn (m. 1954; div. 1968) Elizabeth Soukhotine (m. 1971)
Children	6
Relatives	Emma Ferrer (granddaughter)
Awards	Walk of Fame 6240 Hollywood Blvd

Melchor Gastón Ferrer^[1] (August 25, 1917 – June 2, 2008) was an American actor and director of stage and screen, film producer and the first husband of Audrey Hepburn.

Early life

Ferrer was born in the Elberon section of Long Branch, New Jersey, of Cuban and Irish descent. His father, Dr. José María Ferrer (1857–1920), was born in Cuba, of Spanish ancestry, and was an authority on pneumonia and served as chief of staff of St. Vincent's Hospital in New York City.^[2] His American mother, Mary Matilda Irene (née O'Donohue; 1878–1967),^[3] was a daughter of coffee broker Joseph J. O'Donohue, New York's City Commissioner of Parks, a founder of the Coffee Exchange, and a founder of the Brooklyn-New York Ferry. An ardent opponent of Prohibition, Irene Ferrer was named, in 1934, the New York State chairman of the Citizens Committee for Sane Liquor Laws.^[4]

Ferrer had three siblings. His elder sister was Dr. M. Irené Ferrer, a cardiologist and educator, who helped refine the cardiac catheter and electrocardiogram.^[5] She died in 2004 in Manhattan, New York at age 89 of pneumonia and congestive heart failure.

His brother, Dr. Jose M. Ferrer, born 1912, was a surgeon; he died in 1982 at age 70 after an abdominal surgery complication. His other sister, Teresa (Terry) Ferrer, was the religion editor of The New York Herald Tribune and education editor of Newsweek.^[4][6] The family is not related to actors José and Miguel Ferrer.

His mother's family, the O'Donohues, were prominent Roman Catholics. Mel Ferrer's aunt, Marie Louise O'Donohue (Mrs. Joseph J. O'Donohue, Jr.) was named a papal countess,^[7] and his mother's sister, Teresa Riley O'Donohue, a leading figure in American Catholic charities and welfare organizations, was granted permission by Pope Pius XI to install a private chapel in her New York City apartment.^[8]

Ferrer was privately educated at the Bovée School in New York (one of his classmates was the future author Louis Auchincloss) and Canterbury Prep School in Connecticut before attending Princeton University until his sophomore year, at which time he dropped out to devote more time to acting. He also worked as an editor of a small Vermont newspaper and wrote a children's book, Tito's Hats (Garden City Publishing, 1940).^[9]

Career

Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer on the set of War and Peace in 1955

Early theatre work

Ferrer began acting in summer stock as a teenager and in 1937 won the Theatre Intime award for best new play by a Princeton undergraduate; the play was called Awhile to Work and co-starred another college student, Frances Pilchard, who would become Ferrer's first wife that same year.^[10]

At age twenty-one, he was appearing on the Broadway stage as a chorus dancer, making his debut there as an actor two years later. He appeared as a chorus dancer in two unsuccessful musicals, Cole Porter's You Never Know and Everywhere I Roam.

His first acting roles were in a revival of Kind Lady (1940) and Cue for Passion (1940), directed by Otto Preminger.^[11][12]

After a bout with polio, Ferrer worked as a disc jockey in Texas and Arkansas and moved to Mexico to work on a novel, Tito's Hat, which was published in 1940.

Columbia Pictures

Ferrer was contracted to Columbia Pictures as a director, along with several other "potentials" who began as dialogue directors: Fred Sears, William Castle, Henry Levin and Robert Gordon.^[13]

Among the films he worked on were Louisiana Hayride (1944), They Live in Fear (1944), Sergeant Mike (1944), Together Again (1944), Meet Miss Bobby Socks (1944), Let's Go Steady (1944), Ten Cents a Dance (1945), and A Thousand and One Nights (1945). Some of these were Bs but others – such as Thousand and One Nights – were more prestigious.

Ferrer directed The Girl of the Limberlost (1945), a B movie starring Ruth Nelson.

Broadway

Eventually, he returned to Broadway, where he starred in Strange Fruit (1945–46), a play based on the novel by Lillian Smith. It was directed by Jose Ferrer (no relation).

Ferrer then directed José Ferrer in the 1946 stage production of Cyrano de Bergerac.^[14]

He worked as an assistant on The Fugitive (1947), directed by John Ford in Mexico. Along with Gregory Peck, Dorothy McGuire and Joseph Cotten, he founded the La Jolla Playhouse in the San Diego suburb of La Jolla.

Screen actor

Ferrer made his screen acting debut with a starring role in Lost Boundaries (1949), playing a black person who passes for white. The film was controversial but much acclaimed.^[15]

Howard Hughes

Ferrer had a supporting role in Born to Be Bad (1950) at RKO, directed by Nicholas Ray. At that studio, he directed Claudette Colbert in The Secret Fury (1950) and did some directing on Vendetta (1950), The Racket (1951) and Macao (1952). Ferrer then starred as a bullfighter in The Brave Bulls (1951) for Robert Rossen at Columbia. Ferrer fought with Arthur Kennedy over Marlene Dietrich in Rancho Notorious (1952) directed by Fritz Lang at RKO.

MGM

Ferrer went to MGM, replacing Fernando Lamas as the villain in Scaramouche (1952). The film, particularly notable for a long, climactic swordfight between Ferrer and Stewart Granger, was a huge hit.

MGM kept him on for Lili (1953), playing the puppeteer loved by Leslie Caron's title character. It was another big success; Ferrer and Caron also got a hit single out of it, "Hi-Lili-Hi-Lo". Saadia (1953), which Ferrer made with Cornel Wilde, was a flop, but Knights of the Round Table (1954), in which Ferrer played King Arthur, was another big hit.

Ferrer met Audrey Hepburn at a party; she wanted to do a play together. They appeared in Ondine (1954) on Broadway and later got married.

Europe

Ferrer went to Italy to make Proibito (1954) and to England for Oh... Rosalinda!! (1955), directed by Powell and Pressburger. Neither film was widely seen, but War and Peace (1956) was a big success; Ferrer played Prince Andrei, co-starring with then-wife Audrey Hepburn. In France, he co-starred with Ingrid Bergman in Elena and Her Men (1956), directed by Jean Renoir.

United States

Ferrer and Hepburn made Mayerling (1957) for American television; it was released theatrically in some countries.

Ferrer returned to MGM to make The Vintage (1957) with Pier Angeli, which was a big flop. He made two films for 20th Century Fox: an all-star adaptation of The Sun Also Rises (1957) and Fräulein (1958), a war story with Dana Wynter. At MGM, he played one of the last three people on Earth in The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959), another flop.

Ferrer went to Italy to star in Roger Vadim's vampire movie Blood and Roses (1960). After an English horror film, The Hands of Orlac (1960), he starred in the Italian adventure film Charge of the Black Lancers (1962).

Ferrer was one of several stars in The Devil and the Ten Commandments (1962) and The Longest Day (1962). He had a cameo in his wife's Paris When It Sizzles (1964) and was Marcus Aurelius Cleander in The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964).

Ferrer turned to television, doing some directing for the series The Farmer's Daughter (1963–1966) starring Inger Stevens.

Ferrer had a supporting role in Sex and the Single Girl (1964).

Producer

Ferrer produced and starred in the biopic El Greco (1966), playing the famous painter. He also produced Wait Until Dark (1967), starring his wife, another big hit. He and Hepburn divorced in 1968.

1970s

Ferrer was mostly a jobbing actor in the 1970s, working much in Italy. Among his credits were A Time for Loving (1972); The Antichrist (1974) in Italy; Brannigan (1974), a crime drama set in London that starred John Wayne; Silent Action (1975) and The Suspicious Death of a Minor (1975), both for Sergio Martino; The Net (1975), shot in Germany; The Black Corsair (1976), an Italian swashbuckler; Gangbuster (1977) in Italy; The Pyjama Girl Case (1977); Seagulls Fly Low (1977).

He also played a blackmailing reporter in the Columbo episode "Requiem for a Fallen Star", starring Anne Baxter.

In America, he was in Hi-Riders (1978), The Norseman (1978), Guyana: Crime of the Century (1979), and The Fifth Floor (1979). In 1979, he portrayed Dr. Brogli in an episode of Return of the Saint.

In Europe, he was in The Visitor (1979), Island of the Fishmen (1980), Nightmare City (1980), The Great Alligator River (1980) and Eaten Alive! (1980). He went to Germany for Lili Marleen (1981)

He also appeared in two films with Marisol, the Spanish star: Cabriola (as director) and La chica del molino rojo (as actor).

Later career

From 1981 to 1984, he had a role opposite Jane Wyman as Angela Channing's attorney and briefly her husband Phillip Erikson in the soap opera Falcon Crest, as well as directing a few of the episodes. He also appeared in the miniseries Peter the Great (1986) and Dream West (1986). Later credits include Eye of the Widow (1991) and Catherine the Great (1995).

For his contributions to the motion picture industry, Mel Ferrer has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6268 Hollywood Blvd.

Personal life

Ferrer was married five times, to four women, with whom he had six children. His wives were:

1. Frances Gunby Pilchard, his first and third wife, an actress who became a sculptor.^[16] They married in 1937, and divorced in 1939 after having one child together.^[17]
   


2. Barbara C. Tripp, they married in 1940 and later divorced. They had two children: daughter Mela Ferrer (born 1943) and son Christopher Ferrer (born 1944).


3. Frances Gunby Pilchard, for the 2nd time; they remarried in 1944, and divorced in 1953, after having two more children together: Pepa Philippa Ferrer and Mark Young Ferrer (born 1944).


4. 
   Audrey Hepburn, to whom he was married from 1954 until 1968. They had one son, Sean Hepburn Ferrer (born 1960).


5. Elizabeth Soukhotine, from Belgium, to whom he was married from 1971 to his death in 2008.^[17]
   

Before his marriage to Elizabeth Soukhotine in 1971, Ferrer also had a relationship with 29-year-old interior designer Tessa Kennedy.^[18][19]

Death

A resident of Carpinteria, California, Ferrer died of heart failure at a convalescent home in Santa Barbara on June 2, 2008.^[14] He was 90 years old.

Filmography

As actor

As director

• 
  The Girl of the Limberlost (1945)


• 
  The Fugitive (1947) (directorial assistant)


• 
  The Secret Fury (1950)


• 
  Vendetta (1950) (uncredited)


• 
  The Racket (1951) (uncredited)


• 
  Macao (1952) (uncredited)


• 
  Green Mansions (1959)


• 
  Cabriola (1965)

As dialogue coach

• 
  Louisiana Hayride (1944)


• 
  They Live in Fear (1944)


• 
  Sergeant Mike (1944)


• 
  Together Again (1944)


• 
  Meet Miss Bobby Socks (1944)


• 
  Let's Go Steady (1945)


• 
  Ten Cents a Dance (1945)


• 
  Boston Blackie's Rendezvous (1945)


• 
  A Thousand and One Nights (1945)

TV episodes and miniseries

For TV movies, see filmography.

• 
  Columbo: Requiem for a falling star (1973) as Jerry Parks


• 
  Alle origini della mafia [it] (1976 TV miniseries) as Armando Della Morra


• 
  Hawaii Five-O (1977), episodes "The Bells Toll at Noon" as Father Neill and "To Kill a Mind" as Emil Radick


• 
  Falcon Crest (1981–1984) as Phillip Erikson
  


• 
  Peter the Great (1986 TV miniseries) as Frederick


• 
  Dream West (1986 TV miniseries) as Judge Elkins


• 
  Catherine the Great (1995 TV miniseries) as Patriarch

Radio

Notes

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mel Ferrer.

• Mel Ferrer, a Reluctant Movie Star, Dies at 90


• 
  Mel Ferrer on IMDb


• 
  Mel Ferrer at the TCM Movie Database
  


• 
  Profile, ibdb.com; accessed June 22, 2017.