Anthony Quinn died last week at a Boston hospital from respiratory failure. He was 86. and lived in Bristol, R.I., near Providence.

In his 60-year career Quinn had appeared in perhaps 130 films. But Michael Cacoyannis’s 1964 classic, Zorba The Greek is probably his most memorable role. Zorba was an earthy peasant who protects a young widow, makes a friend of a dying former prostitute and teaches a dry, scholarly Englisman how to live life.

Zorba The Greek not only immortalized him but also typecast him. But there’s no doubt that only Zorba could and would be accepted as Zorba in all his incarnations. When a musical version of Zorba opened on Broadway in 1968 with Herschel Bernardi in lead, it got the thumbs down. But in 1982 when Quinn at the ripe old age of 67, revived the musical, it enjoyed a successful, four-year run throughout the country including Broadway. That was the magic of Quinn’s grizzled charm. Only he could make a hit of a musical without knowing how to either sing or dance.

Quinn entered films way back in the ’30s and twice won the Academy Award for best supporting actor. In 1952 he accepted the Oscar for Elia Kazan’s Viva Zapata!, and an unforgettable performance as the dissolute brother of the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata. Four years later he picked up the award again for the intense Paul Gauguin in Vincente Minnelli’s Lust for Life. Quinn was also nominated for Zorba, but lost the best actor award to Rex Harrison who won it for My Fair Lady.

In 1954 he also picked up a best actor award at the Venice Film Festival for his sterling performance as a sideshow strongman in Federico Fellini’s La Strada. The film won an Academy Award for best foreign film.

Anthony Rudolph Oaxaca Quinn was born on April 21, 1915, in Chihuahua, Mexico. His mother, Manuela, crossed the border to El Paso, Tex. when Quinn was just a baby. They were soon joined by his father, Francisco, who had fought with Pancho Villa’s forces. From there the family moved to California and after a few years setlled down in Los Angeles, where Francisc found work as a grip, camera operator and animal handler. He died in a car accident when Anthony was a boy.

Quinn eventually folowed in his father’s footsteps and joined show business but befire that he was a musician and a street preacher, a boxer, studied to be a priest nad was also an aspiring architect. Eventually, at the age of 21 he joined a small theater troupe and was cast in Mae West’s play Clean Beds. His character was inspired by actor John Barrymore, and Barrymore was so impressed with the way Quinn played him that he took him under his wing.

His first film was Parole in 1936. He didn;t get to say even a word. He spoke his first lines in Cecil B. DeMille’s Plainsman that was released later that year.

During the ’30s and ’40s, Quinn appeared in dozens of films, usually in bit roles as an ethnic lout or outlaw. He played a Filipino soldier in Back To Bataan, a Libyan guerrilla in Lion Of The Desert, a Spanish matador in Blood And Sand an American Indian in The Black Swan, a Chinese warrior in China Sky, an Algerian peasant in Lost Command, a Basque guide in The Passage and a Colombian bandit in High Risk, an Eskimo in The Savage Innocents and a Russian pope in The Shoes Of The Fisherman.

Quinn was also frequently called on to play historical charaters. He was Sheik Auda abu Tayi in Lawrence Of Arabia, Aristotle Onassis in The Greek Tycoon and Attila The Hun in Attila.

In 1958 he directed a remake of The Buccaneer. He had first appeared as the pirate hero Jean Lafitte in his father-in-law, DeMille’s film twenty years earlier. The film, despite his rising popularity, couldn’t woo the box-office.

After the second World War went to New York and made his Broadway debut in 1947 in The Gentleman From Athens He was then cast as Stanley Kowalski in the first touring company of A Streetcar Named Desire. Later in ’60 he returned to Broadway as Henry II in Becket, opposite Laurence Olivier. In ’62-’63 he appeared with Margaret Leighton in Tchin-Tchin, a romantic fantasy.
In New York he also appeared on early live television shows like the anthology series Danger and Philco TV Playhouse. In the early ’70s he starred in a series called The Man And The City. In ’94 he appeared with Katharine Hepburn in the television film This Can’t Be Love.

Quinn was also a saleable artist and had many exhibitions of his paintings and sculpture. He married three times, divorced twice, and fathered 13 children by five women. In 1937 he married Katherine DeMille, the adopted daughter of the Hollywood director, Cecil DeMille. The marriage almost ended on the wedding night when Quinn learned that his 26-year-old bride was not a virgin. The marriage weathered another storm when the Quinns’ firstborn, Christopher at age 3 wandered onto the property of their neighbor, W C Fields, fell into a swimming pool and drowned. This was in ’41. The Quinns had four other children and seemed almost an item when in ’61, on location in Italy for Barabbas Quinn met Iolanda Addolari, the costumer designer of the film. Folowed a steamy romance. She gave birth to two sons. In 1966, when she was pregnant with their third child, they married.

In 1993, after having lived in Italy with his second family for almost 30 years, Qunn admitted to having a daughter, Antonia with former secretary, Kathy Benvin. Benvin bore him a second child, a son, Ryan, in July 1996. At the age of 78, after finally getting a divorce from his second wife, Quinn married Benvin.

Besides Antonia and Ryan, Quinn had seven other sons, Duncan, Francesco, Daniele, Lorenzo, Sean, Alex and one whose first name he did not make public. He also had three other daughters, Christina, Catalina and Valentina.

Quinn continued to play a Zorba like peasant or an outlaw till the end of his career. In A Walk In The Clouds in ’95, Quinn played the Mexican patriarch of a family vineyard in California. In ’96 he played a mobster in Gotti. His last film was a Sylvester Stallone-Madeline Stowe starrer, Avenging Angelo that is still in production, True to type Quinn plays a Mafia chief in this film. He was a man who ruled to the end.