Mel Ferrer's mother was the dominant force throughout
his formative years, and her strong-willed personality remained an
influence throughout his entire life. Widowed when Mel was 2 years old,
she was solely responsible for his upbringing, and her resolute
opinions, driving ambition and inherent belief in her family's
superiority formulated the essential need to succeed found in all four
of her brilliant and talented
children. Although often criticized as a mother, she was a major
political force and a generous philanthropist for all of her long life.
Always active in the Democratic Party, she campaigned ardently for the
repeal of prohibition in the 1930s, and she received the papal "pro
ecclesia et pontifice" citation form Pope Pius XII for her charitable
work. Her children remained devoted to her until her death, and even Melchor -
the one renegade child - always curried her favor and respected her
wisdom. She formulated most of Mel Ferrer's early opinions, some of
which he adopted or - as was too often the case - some of which he
arbitrarily
rejected.
Mary Matilda Irené O'Donohue was born in New York
City, the daughter of Joseph J. O'Donohue and Teresa M. J. Riley. Her
father was born January 8 1834 into the family that had developed
Williamsburg, but his career took him to New York City, where he was a
successful coffee broker and major political power. He was the City
Commissioner of Parks, founded the Coffee Exchange and arbitrated the
consolidation of the Brooklyn and New York Ferry companies. To put his long successful career in
perspective, though a life-long Democrat, he had supported the election
of Abraham Lincoln in 1859 and campaigned ardently for his Presidency. By 1989,
he was the oldest member of Tammany Hall and was sure enough of his
power and position to openly oppose Boss Tweed. He remained influential in politics and
active in philanthropy throughout his extraordinary life.
He married Teresa M. J. Riley of New York in 1858 and
they had four children. Two sons and one daughter were born during the
earlier years of the marriage. Both sons became successful businessmen,
married and had several children, while their daughter Teresa - born in
1865 - became a leading figure in American Catholic charities. Her
death in 1937 was widely mourned, and all her nieces and nephews -
including a 19-year-old Melchor - were present at her bedside as she
passed away in her New York home. Irené O' Donohue was the couple's last
child, born in 1878, 20 years after her parents' marriage. She was still unwed at the time of her father's
death on June 26 1897, and as the new century dawned, Irené O'Donohue
found herself not only immensely wealthy but the reigning beauty of her
era. She dominated her social crowd and one of Mel's cousins described her as "a
Gibson-girl type, spoilt, arrogant, opinionated and tactless."
Irené was part of a family that believed women could
succeed independent of men, however, and she didn't marry until 1910
when she was 32 years old, and her unorthodox choice probably would have
pleased her liberal minded father. She set her sites on Dr. José Maria Ferrer, a Cuban-born surgeon of Spanish descent, who was exotically
handsome and 22 years older than herself. Because her older brother
Thomas passed away the week they wed, the couple opted for a small
wedding in the bride's home. Her eldest brother - Joseph J O'Donohue,
Jr., gave her away and her only attendent was his 9-year-old daughter
Ethel. Over the next nine years, Irené would produce four Ferrer offspring
of whom Melchor Gastón was the third child and second son. Her marital
bliss was short-lived, however, when Dr. Ferrer died suddenly of a heart
attack in February of 1920, before the couple had even reached their
tenth anniversary. The responsibility of rearing the children and
instilling the much needed qualities of life fell to Irené, and she
undertook these new responsibilities with inspired vigilance.
Irené continued to live with her children in New
York City in the couple's home on East 66th St and Park Ave., but shortly after her
husband's death she moved the Summer home from Elberon, New Jersey
(where two of her children had been born) to Southhampton,
Massachusetts. All four children attended private schools in New
York City - the boys going to Bovée Academy and the girls to Convent
of the Sacred Heart in Manhattan. Middle
school for the boys was Canterbury Preparatory School in New Milford, Connecticut,
and their only option for college was Princeton, the university from
which her husband had received his medical degree. The girls were expected to attend Bryn Mawr. All went according to
plan, except for the occasional outburst from Melchor, who argued with
his mother's choices, insisted on writing romantic poetry, and frequently ran away from home to live with O'Donohue relatives in Newport until brought contritely home. Because
Irené was so much younger than her brothers and sister and because she
waited so long to marry, her children were the same age as Irené's
nephew's children, and Melchor's close ally during his troubled upbringing
was his second cousin - Joseph J. O'Donohue IV, son of Joseph J.
O'Donohue III. Openly homosexual, this cousin would later become a
renowned New York City socialite and an ardent supporter of the arts
with especially close ties to The New York City Ballet. Dearly beloved
by all who knew him, he would eventually squander the family's fortunes
and by never marrying he also ended the direct line of his family's famous name.
He remained close to Mel over the years, however, and ended his days in
San Francisco, California where he moved penniless in 1958. Because he was so active in artistic circles,
it was he who introduced Melchor to actor Clifton Webb, and that
connection would benefit Mel significantly as he tried to break onto the
Broadway stage in 1938.
Although the family was heavily
into the arts, Melchor's interest in the theater was never encouraged.
His summers at the Cape Theater in Dennis, Massachusetts were
"tolerated," but when he became a major force at Princeton's Intime Theatre and
Irené was informed
of her son's burgeoning talent, she dismissed the unwelcome
information by stating "writing and the
theater are out of the question for one of Mel's breeding." Still,
Melchor seemed to follow his mother's desired path until the Fall of 1937,
when in direct violation to his mother's pronouncements, he left Princeton to become a
bohemian writer in Mexico, taking his girlfriend Frances with him. They
married in Lake Tahoe, California on October 23, 1937, and Melchor was immediately cut off from
the family by Irené. It was a rift that would never completely
mend.
Cut off from his family's fortunes, Mel
Ferrer lived in Juarez, Mexico until his limited resources forced him back to the
States in 1938, where he found work with a publisher in Brattleboro, Vermont.
Later that year, after his and Frances' first child died, he made the decision to return to the
theater, which had always been his greatest love. His first theatrical job was as a
chorus boy in the musical "You Never Know" starring his cousin's
famous friend, actor
Clifton Webb. In early 1939, one critic laughingly called Melchor Ferrer "the only Social Registerite chorus
boy," and a horrified Irené promptly removed her second son's listing from the esteemed publication.
It was
an act for which Mel Ferrer "didn't give a hoot," and with
that, the prickly
tone between mother and son became firmly established.
Over the years Melchor was eventually invited back to family gatherings, but the
split between mother and son was absolute in the late 1930s and indeed,
their relationship remained uneasy throughout her long life.
Although estranged from his mother for much of his adulthood, Mel Ferrer did not
escape her influence, however. It was Irené who helped to form his
faultless taste and exquisite sense of style, his driving need to excel, his inherent skills at
organization, his fluency in European languages (especially French), his
basic strength of character along with his keen intelligence, vast
knowledge, and worldly graciousness. More tolerant than his
snobbish mother, it was still she who instilled in him the necessity for
political reform and the need to speak out in the areas of racial
bigotry, gender preferences and women's rights. Never actively political
(except when he joined civil rights marches in the 1960s), Mel Ferrer
was a life-long libertarian, and showed courage not only in the roles he
chose ("Lost Boundaries" and "Strange Fruit" in particular) but in his
refusal to succumb to pressures during the McCarthy Era. Although Irené
was no doubt responsible for Mel Ferrer's deep-rooted insecurities,
which made it difficult for him to deal with inward problems and
sometimes resulted in sharply impatient responses, she was also
responsible for Mel's inherent belief in himself, an attribute occasionally
mislabeled arrogant, but it was, in fact, a trait that helped him reinvent himself
over the years and withstand the vicissitudes of a life filled with too
many unjust criticisms.
Irené apparently favored Audrey Hepburn as a daughter-in-law, and it was
while still married to her that Mel Ferrer's mother died on February 19,
1967. Irené Ferrer left behind all four of her successful children along
with 10 grandchildren, of whom five were Mel's (by three different
wives) and five were his older brother José's. Neither daughter had ever
married. Because her other three children had fulfilled her most ardent
wishes and highest ideals, Irené probably would have been appalled at
the headlines on her obituaries, one of which typically read: "Mother of Actor Mel Ferrer
Dies."
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