One Man Tango [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

I really enjoyed this book by Anthony Quinn. At first, I was put off by the way his thoughts jumped around, but in retrospect, I realize that this was just his way of getting his point across, and I became mesmerized by his thoughts and the disparity of his early years. Mr. Quinn did not flower his book with how great he was, or even sound like a celebrity, in the description of his life. In his early years he was very poor, and really let the reader feel his thoughts on his poverty, and how he fought to stay alive. It is a great example of coming from a life of nothing, with seldom having food to eat, to become a great actor, artist, lover, and family man.

Although he would never receive accolades as a husband, he truly loved his family. He mentioned several times, his grief at the death of his son and the loss of father.

He made many friends along the way, and treasured every one. Not caring whether they were paupers or kings.

In 1983, we had the pleasure of seeing and meeting Mr. Quinn on Broadway, in Zorba the Greek. We had invested in several of his paintings and sculptures, and was invited to a party for him at the Helmsley Palace in New York City. We were really impressed with his ability to encompass a room with his presence, while giving every person a piece of his persona.

This book is excellent reading, which keeps the reader waiting for his next thought. The world will truly miss this great man.

This is Anthony Quinn's second autobiography. Since he lived to be 86, he apparently felt that he couldn't tell his life story in only one autobiography. He was probably correct in that assumption. As of this moment, I've not read his 1972 "The Original Sin" but it will probably be my next read. Quinn was an excellent writer as well as a visual artist and famous stage and film actor. He was also a very randy fellow he couldn't keep his hands off the beautiful women he attracted like bees to honey. He had thirteen children from his three wives and three known,long-time mistresses. Like most motion pictures stars he had affairs with most of the beautiful actresses he met in his 100 plus motion pictures and plays. One of his affairs involved actress Ruth Warrick in 1945. "Years later, she offered the following comment to a reporter: `Anthony Quinn, in the middle of a love affair with me, once said he wanted to f**k all the women in the world, and impregnate all of them. I never knew he'd get this far.'"
Despite his inability to resist the ladies for whom his addiction and appeal was legendary, Quinn lived a life that could not have been fictionalized to be more interesting. He was born in a Mexican hut to a mother who had only recently been sent home from the front lines of the Mexican Revolution. She had wanted to remain and continue fighting, but her obvious pregnancy resulted in her being sent home. Her husband stayed and continued fighting with Poncho Villa. Years later his father moved to Los Angeles and eventually became an assistant cameraman at Zelig's Movie Studio. Anthony showed a talent for art early in life. Quinn studied briefly with Frank Lloyd Wright through the Taliesin Fellowship he won in a high school architectural design contest. Quinn was sent to have his speech impediment surgically corrected on Wright's recommendation. To further correct his speech he was sent to an acting school. That, combined with his father's friendships at Zelig's, led to Quinn being hired as an extra in the movies.
This second autobiography was published in 1997 when the actor was eighty-two years old. His last two children were born in 1993 and 1996 to Quinn and his third wife Kathy Benvin. Both his first wife Katherine DeMille and his third wife were named Katherine, which is one of those odd coincidences that make his life a bit confusing for the reader.
This memoir is 419 pages long and is written in such a way that the reader never gets bored. The reader may, however, get exhausted because the vehicle Quinn uses to tie his life experiences together is one of his day-long bicycle rides around the steep hills of his Italian Villa. He is constantly climbing another hill or avoiding a swerving truck coming around the next mountain bend. During this physically tiring day of bike riding he reminisces about his long life, his many crazy experiences, the people he has met and many of the women he has loved or bedded. He is old enough to be trying to make sense of his rich life experiences and to understand his purpose in life. As an artist he feels that he must constantly be creating or he will die.
Quinn turns out to be a deep thinker in addition to a talented actor, painter, sculptor and writer. It's useless for me to even attempt to convey some of the wise sage advice and observations that Anthony expresses so eloquently. So I won't try. His book is peppered with fascinating characters he has met. Frederico Fellini who directed him to an academy award nomination in "La Strada" gave him some memorable advice about giving interviews to journalists. "Why do you tell these people the truth?"
"Me, I never tell the truth to a journalist. I always lie. It is like an exercise to me, because when I lie I have to use my imagination...you will read it in the papers the next day."
After reading that summary of Fellini's advice to Quinn I wondered if Anthony might not have taken it too much to heart. I especially wondered when I read the last few lines of the book when Quinn wrote: "I wish to go out in style. There will be no pine box sunk six feet under ground, no urn to be placed on a mantle and forgotten. No...There will be my dozen children, carrying me up a hill in Chihuahua and leaving me to rot in the hot sun. I can picture the scene, transposed over the fertile ground of my youth. (I have the specific hill mapped for my executors.) I will be laid to rest at the top of the rise, a feast for the vultures. My children will go back to the rest of their lives and the birds will pick at what is left of me. They will lift me up, piecemeal, and defecate me out all over the countryside, returning me to the earth from which I had sprung, leaving me forever a part of all Mexico.
"And the dance goes on."
Now the book doesn't tell you if that is what Quinn's executors really did concerning his funeral arrangements. If you are like me, you will head straight to the Internet to find out where and how Quinn's funeral was actually carried out. The reader may be surprised.
The reader definitely won't be bored with this book. Anthony Quinn was a man peddling madly on his bicycle to find the truth of life. He was always in search of the answers to the age-old questions: "Who Are We, Why Are We Here, Where Are We Going?" Remember than Quinn won an Oscar for his role as Gauguin in "Lust for Life." During the filming of that motion picture he felt that Gauguin's ghost had actually taken over his body and soul in order to properly portray his life for the silver screen.
Quinn always leaves the reader of his autobiography wanting to know more. This is one of the most enjoyable autobiographies this reviewer has ever had the multiple pleasures of reading.

Here is a biography worth reading, about a man whose life was worth living and worth hearing about: a man who lived every inch of his life on the edge and to its fullest. Even with its foibles and demented aspects, one cannot read this well-crafted biography without being envious of Quinn's life.

Quinn, a Mexican from Chihauhua, possessed an inner drive and an ego destined to make him larger than life in one arena or another. Although with multiple hidden talents, most of which only to be discovered later in life, Quinn became an actor in order to learn English better. But during a bumpy life course he became much, much more than just an actor, he sculpted, painted, cycled and kept a string of younger ladies and a host of wives and families happy until his death as an octogenarian. All of which required considerable talent.

Had it not been told so well and with such passion and verve, and from Quinn's own deeply passionate and artistic mind, this could have been a very tragic story indeed, but the way the events of his life actually unfolded lent itself to the pure poetry that is exhibited here; and the way they have been collated arranged and sorted out by Daniel Paisner, makes them a "song" to all of those like myself who only knew Quinn vicariously through that "rough but exciting" screen persona, as "Zorba the Greek" and his many other characters.

Unlike the biography of one of Quinn's (and my) heroes, Marlon Brando, which was lifeless to the point of being depressing, this one is alive and sparkles throughout. Both Quinn and Dan Paisner are to be commended for, at the same time raising the level of biographic writing, while also raising the human spirits in a story exquisitely well told.

One of the few books on any subject that is so full of life's dramas and metaphors, that you will love reading it so much that you will want to read it over and over. Fifty Stars.