Trivia of Mel Ferrer

Trivia of Mel Ferrer (25 August 1917 - 2 June 2008)

*His full name was Melchior Gaston Ferrer, and he was the son of a Cuban-born surgeon. Ferrer’s passion for acting emerged early in his life, and he went on to study drama at Princeton University and the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre.

*He became a chorus dancer on Broadway in 1938 in two unsuccessful musicals, Cole Porter's You Never Know and Everywhere I Roam.

*Starting directing debut in Hollywood before acting.He made a modest debut as a director at Columbia with the low-budget The Girl of the Limberlost (1945).In years later, he directed Claudette Colbert in The Secret Fury (1950) and directed or co-directed Vendetta (1950), The Racket (1951), and Macao (1952).

*Ferrer made his screen acting debut with a starring role in Lost Boundaries (1949), playing a black person who passes for white. The film was controversial but much acclaimed.

*Replacing Fernando Lamas as the villain in Scaramouche (1952), his climactic sword fight as Marquis against Andre Moreau who played by Stewart Granger, was a huge hit.Reported to be the longest fencing duel ever caught on film, a sequence lasting 6.08 minutes from first sword touch to final thrust. The climactic fight ranges throughout the theater, from the balcony boxes, to the lobby, through the main seats, backstage, and finally on the stage itself. The actors spent eight weeks preparing for this sequence, having to memorize 87 different individual sword passes and 28 stunts.

*At a cocktail party hosted by mutual friend Gregory Peck, Ferrer met young Audrey Hepburn, and suggested that they star together in a play.The meeting led them to collaborate in Ondine (1954), during which they began a relationship. Months later, on 25 September 1954, they were married in Bürgenstock, Switzerland.They had a son, Sean Hepburn Ferrer.Despite the insistence from gossip columns that their marriage would not last, Hepburn claimed that she and Ferrer were inseparable and happy together, though she admitted that he had a bad temper.

*War and Peace (1956) was the only movie that Ferrer and his wife Audrey Hepburn credited together.He got uncredited role and directed in another Hepburn's movie : Green Mansion (1959), Charade (1963), Paris It When Sizzles (1964), Wait Until Dark (1967).