The Old Man and the Movie

About a year ago, Anthony Quinn deliberately and painstakingly chiseled a large sculpture of a depleted man dying in the desert, his arm still strong and defiant, holding a sword high above his head. The 74-year-old actor, sculptor and painter got his inspiration to create the marble figure--which he called “Destroyed But Not Defeated”--from the theme of Ernest Hemingway’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novella, “The Old Man and the Sea.”

The marble statue was an impressionistic omen.

Several months later, Quinn suffered severe chest pains. They came during an exhaustive ocean shoot in the Virgin Islands while filming Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” as an NBC TV movie (Sunday at 9 p.m. on Channels 4, 36 and 39). After the shoot, tests revealed that two of Quinn’s arteries were almost completely blocked and the others were as crusty as the muddy boots on one of his swarthy screen villains.

“The doctors said, ‘We can avoid an operation. We can give you medicine, and you can go on the way you are,’ ” Quinn said gruffly. “And I said, ‘To hell with it, I don’t have the energy. I’ll either die or be cured.’ ”

Last month, Quinn underwent three hours of corrective heart bypass surgery.

“The consequences are that I’m much stronger,” Quinn said the other day from his office in New York, just a week after he was released from Mt. Sinai Hospital. “I’m walking about three miles a day now. I’m in good shape. A bull.”

Destroyed but not defeated.

In “The Old Man and the Sea,” Quinn plays Santiago, Hemingway’s old Cuban fisherman, once considered the best in his village, who sets out to catch a “great fish” after 84 days without a bite. In the story, Santiago hooks his record-size marlin, but the magnificent catch is devoured by sharks before he can bring it back to shore. Quinn calls the role the biggest statement he’s ever attempted.

“I just read a book about the life of (late film director) John Huston,” Quinn said. “You can see in Huston’s life that the sharks were all eating him at the end, surrounding his boat, taking a whack at the great pictures he made. That happens to every man. I expect it to happen to me any day now.”

It hasn’t yet. So far in his life, Quinn has been praised for his work--both on canvas and on screen. Quinn the artist has exclusive showings at a gallery in Honolulu, where he commands a generous price for his works. Quinn the actor has been honored with two Academy Awards, for roles in “Viva Zapata!” (1952) and “Lust for Life” (1956).

Because of his Mexican heritage, the Chihuahua-born actor has played roguish characters of mostly foreign descent--an Italian strong man in “La Strada,” a Greek peasant in “Zorba the Greek” and Arab leaders in “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Lion of the Desert.” But eventually Quinn faced typecasting problems in the United States and, about 10 years ago, moved to Italy.

“In America, they always wanted me to play Italians, Indians or Mexican bandits,” said Quinn, who made about 25 European films after moving there. “I was doing all right in Italy. And then suddenly, I said, ‘I’m an American . . . I’m not going to be forced to work in Europe.’ ”

Director Tony Scott took a chance on Quinn last year in the steamy film “Revenge,” co-starring Kevin Costner. It was Quinn’s first American movie in more than a decade. Shortly after he began work on “The Old Man and the Sea.” The actor said the heart condition that plagued him during the shoot actually brought him closer to Santiago.

“He’s a weak old man. He’s not terribly strong. Without the angina, I was too strong for the part,” Quinn said.

Quinn is a Hemingway fanatic, and said he has lived with the role of Santiago most of his life. He once had the chance to meet Hemingway at a bar, but the usually bold actor got cold feet. Quinn explains that the writer was drunk at the time, and “I was afraid that he might insult me. I never saw him after that.”

As long as Quinn is able--or perhaps even longer--he will keep working. “I was born to work,” proclaimed the actor, whose first job came shortly after the Mexican Revolution when, at 2, he collected sticks in the desert with his mother to sell for firewood.

In his storied career--which has seen him as ditch digger, fruit picker, boxer and taxi driver--Quinn said he has made at least 265 motion pictures and more than 1,000 drawings, 500 paintings and 250 sculptures. He even sang on three record albums.

“I’ve learned to read between the lines of what Hemingway wrote,” Quinn said. “In ‘The Old Man and the Sea,’ it’s the unwritten expression that we all have to go out for the big fish. I think it’s a parable. It’s like every man’s life. We all know the dry periods, the 84 days without a fish. Every man experiences that. He says, ‘Give me one last chance, even though I might fail, before I die.’ ”