“Life is what you do, till the moment you die.”
Known for exotic starring roles, Anthony Quinn was born in Chihuahua during the Mexican Revolution (his father rode with Pancho Villa). He moved with his family to El Paso, then to Los Angeles, where his father found work as a cameraman. Initially, he went into acting as a way of overcoming a speech impediment. By his early twenties, he had befriended both John Barrymore and W. C. Fields, becoming the youngest member of the Bundy Drive Boys and making his big-screen debut in Parole! (1936). He appeared in more than fifty films over the next decade—primarily in “ethnic” roles—before Elia Kazan cast him as Stanley Kowalski in a lengthy touring stage production of A Streetcar Named Desire (1948). Quinn returned to movies in the early 1950s and won his first Oscar for Best Supporting Actor opposite Marlon Brando in Kazan’s Viva Zapata! (1952). He won a second such Oscar with his brief performance in the Van Gogh biopic Lust for Life (1956) and was nominated as Best Actor the following year for Wild Is the Wind. Quinn reached the pinnacle of his career in 1964 with what became his trademark role, Zorba the Greek, for which he received yet another Oscar nomination as Best Actor. He continued to work until his death, with parts in Jungle Fever (1991) and Last Action Hero (1993). Quinn was also an accomplished painter, with numerous international exhibitions, and the author of two memoirs.
ANTHONY QUINN WAS DOING HIS BEST to keep it together, but it wasn’t easy. Quinn, Errol Flynn, and Gene Tierney were doing a live radio broadcast promoting war bonds and blood drives in St. Louis. Quinn hated this kind of crap, hated selling himself to the public, especially when it involved travel. So the night before, he and Flynn (a fellow Bundy Drive Boy) had gone out and gotten all tore up, finally climbing into bed just before dawn. At around seven in the morning, Flynn—chipper as a jaybird, somehow—wandered into Quinn’s room and told him the radio spot, originally scheduled for 11 a.m., had been moved up, and they had to get to the studio immediately.
So now here Quinn was in the broadcast booth, head pounding, trying to get through this whole business as quickly as possible. “You go to a place, you give a pint of blood, it’s very simple,” he said into the microphone. “They give you a very nice big glass of milk afterward—”
“Is there brandy in it?” Flynn suddenly chimed in.
“I beg your pardon?” Quinn replied. What the hell was Flynn doing?
“Is brandy in the milk? They call that a Velvet Cow in Australia.”
Quinn tried to steer the conversation back to the blood drive, but Flynn was just getting started. “As a matter of fact,” Flynn went on, “you know this program” (meaning the radio show they were appearing on), “you know damn well it’s a lot of crap.” He was on a roll now. He referred to Quinn as “this fucking Indian” and “the son-in-law of that son-of-a-bitch Cecil B. DeMille.” (Quinn was married to DeMille’s daughter Katherine.) Of Tierney, Flynn said into the mic, she was a “real fucking sweetheart” and that he had no intention of sleeping with her, “but if she would like to try to change my plans, I would be open to suggestions.” Quinn couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Neither could the studio director, who stormed into the control room, demanding they be taken off the air. Flynn responded by wrestling the man to the ground.
By the time Quinn returned to his hotel, word of the radio fiasco had apparently already reached Hollywood. Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper had both left messages. DeMille—to whom Quinn rarely spoke to apart from work and family functions—called to tell him how badly this reflected on the family, and how he worried Quinn wasn’t serious enough to have a real career. Then his wife Katherine called, then Quinn’s agent. And then, lastly, Flynn called—apparently, he had one thing he needed to say.
“Gotcha, Tony.”
The whole thing—the early start time, the lack of script, the profanity, the fight, the phone calls—had been one big ruse orchestrated by Flynn. They were never on the air. Quinn was relieved. Because not only was his career not in peril, but if all these important people were willing to go to this much trouble to prank him, his career must be going pretty damn well.
IT’S NOT HARD TO GUESS how the modest Italian joint Villa Capri became one of Hollywood’s favorite haunts when it launched in 1950: the owner, Patsy D’Amore, was generally thought to cook the best pizza west of the Hudson after he opened his Farmers Market booth in 1949. Frank Sinatra liked it so much he became a partner in the restaurant. With him came the usual suspects, the Bogarts and Bacalls, the Garlands and the Lufts, the Joey Bishops and the Bobby Darins. But it was a relatively unknown actor who became the restaurant’s most famous patron.
During the short time between his arrival in Los Angeles (1954) and his death (1955), James Dean became such a fixture at Villa Capri that he had a booth permanently reserved for him. Once he got famous, he entered through the back door, and if he didn’t find any of the Rat Pack at the restaurant, he’d sit alone, smoking and drinking scotch and water. At the time of his death, Dean was even living in a house he’d rented from the restaurant’s maître d’. Dean’s passing drew legions of fans to the place.
Villa Capri moved to Yucca Street in 1957, and Sinatra hosted his radio show there for a couple of years. The restaurant closed in 1982, but D’Amore’s daughter Filomena still serves her father’s recipe at the Farmer’s Market, using the same red-brick oven they’ve had since 1949.
