One man tango

de Anthony Quinn

Anthony Quinn's One Man Tango is about a day of reckoning unlike any other in the rich life of the legendary actor, a day that leaves him to confront a lifetime of memories, wrestle the lingering demons of his youth, and defy the passage of his time on this earth. Here Quinn rediscovers himself - a child of the Mexican Revolution, smuggled into El Paso on a coal wagon; sculpting his father's tombstone as a young boy; studying architecture under Frank Lloyd Wright; preaching for Aimee Semple McPherson; learning his craft at the hands of Michael Chekhov, Akim Tamiroff, and the great John Barrymore. Along the way there are intimate reminiscences of some of Hollywood's brightest stars (such as Marlon Brando, Gary Cooper, Marilyn Monroe, Laurence Olivier, and Orson Welles), and reflections on the author's short- and long-term affairs with several of Hollywood's leading ladies (including Carole Lombard, Rita Hayworth, and Ingrid Bergman). And there are deliberations on the making of nearly three hundred motion pictures, spanning almost sixty years, including Quinn's defining turns in La Strada, Lawrence of Arabia, The Guns of Navarone; the performances in Viva Zapata! and Lust for Life that earned him Academy Awards; and his visionary role, immortalized on stage and screen, in Zorba the Greek.