José Vicente Ferrer de Otero y Cintrón
(January 8, 1912 – January 26, 1992)
José Ferrer, was a Puerto Rican actor, theatre and film director. He was the first Puerto Rican actor, as well as the first Hispanic actor, to win an Academy Award (in 1950 for Cyrano de Bergerac). The first Hispanic Actress to win the award is Rita Moreno.
He was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, to María Providencia Cintrón, who was from the small coastal town of Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, and Rafael Ferrer, an attorney and writer from San Juan. He was the grandson of Gabriel Ferrer Hernandez, a doctor and advocate of Puerto Rican independence from Spain.
José studied at the Swiss boarding school Institut Le Rosey. In 1933, Ferrer completed his bachelor’s degree at Princeton University, where he wrote his senior thesis on “French Naturalism and Pardo Bazán”. He was also a member of the Princeton Triangle Club.
Ferrer made his film debut in the Technicolor epic Joan of Arc (1948) as the weak-willed Dauphin opposite Ingrid Bergman as Joan. Leading roles in the films Whirlpool 1949 and Crisis in 1950 followed, and culminated in the 1950 film Cyrano de Bergerac. He next played the role of Toulouse-Lautrec in John Huston’s fictional 1952 biopic, Moulin Rouge.
His many main acting roles led up to more awards and in 1947, Ferrer won the Tony Award for his theatrical performance of Cyrano de Bergerac, and in 1952, he won the Distinguished Dramatic Actor Award for The Shrike, and also the Outstanding Director Award for directing the plays The Shrike, The Fourposter, and Stalag 17.
His lifetime contributions to American theatre were recognized in 1981, when he was chosen to be inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. In 1985 he received the National Medal of Arts from Ronald Reagan, becoming the first actor to receive that honor. On April 26, 2012, the United States Postal Service issued a stamp in Ferrer’s honor in its Distinguished Americans series.