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Anthony Quinn was born Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca (or was it Antonio Rudolfo Oaxaca Quinn?) in Chihuahua, Mexico in 1915. His father was a mix of Irish and Mexican ancestry, and his mother descended from Aztec Indians.

When he was a boy, his family moved first to El Paso and then to Los Angeles. He left high school before graduating, and did some professional boxing, and managed to get a job with famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright, but soon found acting, first on the stage.

He was signed to a contract by Paramount, but they were only interested in putting him in "ethnic" roles, usually as villains, and often as Native Americans. One of his few non-ethnic early roles was as "Murray Burns", the guy who steals Ann Sheridan from James Cagney in City For Conquest (and also in the cast was then-actor Elia Kazan).

By 1947, he had made 50 movie appearances, but none were very memorable, and he grew discouraged, and moved to New York, where he did some TV, and Broadway plays (including playing Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire for Elia Kazan, replacing Marlon Brando, who left the part to go to Hollywood).

In 1952, when Elia Kazan prepared to direct Marlon Brando (now a major star) in Viva Zapata, he cast Quinn as Zapata's brother, likely partly to give more Mexican authenticity to the movie. Quinn won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, which led to some somewhat better roles, but Quinn felt his career would soon be back where it was, and he moved to Italy, where he had a major hit starring in Fellini's La Strada.

Over the next decade, he alternated between Italian and Hollywood movies, winning a second Oscar playing painter Paul Gauguin in Lust For Life (although he only appeared in the movie for 8 minutes!), and being nominated for Best Actor Academy Award role in Wild Is The Wind. He continued to take more supporting roles as well as starring ones, and he had important roles in The Guns of Navarone and Lawrence of Arabia.

In 1964, when it looked like his career was winding down, he got the title role in Alexis Zorbas (a U.S./English/Greek movie better known as Zorba the Greek), and he (and the movie) were huge international hits, but Quinn lost the Best Actor Oscar to Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady.

Quinn aged well, and continued acting regularly throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, including playing several Mafia characters during the slew of movies spawned by the success of The Godfather. In 1983, he played Zorba in a Broadway revival.

He continued some acting all the way until he passed away in 2001 at the age of 86. Quinn certainly had a "lust for life"! He was married three times (the first to Katherine DeMille, daughter of Cecil B. DeMille, who did not like Quinn, possibly because he was Mexican), and he fathered a total of 12 children (10 by his three wives, including five by DeMille). His last child was born in 1996, when Quinn was 81!

Important Added Info: Note that this REPRODUCTION still has been personally autographed (signed) by Anthony Quinn!

Note that this autographed item is part of a remarkable collection. In each of our last several all-signed auctions, we auctioned hundreds of items from this collection and now we are auctioning many more signed photos and miscellaneous other signed items (plus many signed index cards that have a different note on those)!
     In the 1970s, our consignor was a teacher who taught a film class, and he also part-time ran the local movie theater (and he saved all the presskits from the movies the theater showed).
     Starting in the late 1970s through the late 1980s, he wrote to famous celebrities, and enclosed an 8x10 still or repro (or sometimes another item) from his collection, and he wrote a literate personalized letter, talking about his work as a film teacher, and discussing his favorite movie by that star.
     He received signed photos back from a good percentage of the people he wrote to, and if the people simply sent him a stock photo back, he did not save it, but if he felt the autograph was genuine, and if they added a personalized note, then he did save them.
     In the late 1980s, he pretty much stopped sending letters and photos, simply because he was just too busy. So this item (and the vast majority of the other photos and other items we are auctioning for this consignor) were obtained in the late 1970s or 1980s, through personal correspondence with this star. This is of course excellent, because back at that time celebrities were not selling their signatures nearly as much, and many of the stars were pretty forgotten and were happy to get letters from people like our consignor!
     He of course does not have any "Certificates of Authenticity", but he only kept ones he felt were surely authentic, and those are the ones we are auctioning. However, bidders can certainly compare the signatures to known examples on the internet to judge for themselves.

As is true of all the signed items we are currently auctioning, we give every buyer 30 days in which to review what they purchased and they can return any item as long as it is within 30 days of the end of the auction. On non-signed items, we give a "lifetime guarantee" on everything we auction, but on signed items, we give the above modified guarantee of 30 days after the auction closes.

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Bruce Hershenson,
306 Washington Avenue, West Plains, MO 65775