The actor who played the character of Joaquín in the film For Whom the Bell Tolls, starring Ingrid Bergman and Gary Cooper, based on the plot of Hemingway’s novel of the same name, was Cuban. In the credits of that film and those of Pirates of Monterrey (1947), Adventure Island (1947) and Arch of Triomphe (1948), he appears as Lilo Yarson, but it was only his stage name. This Havana native was actually called Ángel Luis Oyarzun González.
From the beginning of the research I knew that it was not going to be easy to follow his itinerary in the pages of history. The writer Zoé Valdés had already said in her blog, in August 2011, that little was known about him, only that “He lived for a long time in Mexico, where after an accident he lost an arm. He returned to Cuba and Guillermo Cabrera Infante gave him work on television, they were good friends, and the writer felt true admiration for the actor.”
After fruitless searches in books, encyclopedias, and going to veteran actors and theater directors, I understood that if I wanted to know who Lilo Yarson was, I had to “browse” the “newspaper archives.” The trip would be longer and more cumbersome, but there was no other way.
At Hemingway’s estate
In November 1943 Yarson was 27 years old. His decision to enlist in the Army, to confront the fascist hordes, surprised some. Not only because of the danger he would face, but because he was abandoning his recently started career in movies. It is unknown if he participated in combat actions, I have only been able to know that he was assigned to the Columbia camp, in Cuba.
Being in Havana allowed him to fraternize with Hemingway, who lived on the outskirts of the city, in Finca Vigía, with his third wife, the journalist Martha Gellhorn. He had lived there since mid-1939. Sometimes the novelist left the peaceful estate to sail on his yacht Pilar with the intention of fishing or he sailed the waters in search of German submarines, although he never had any luck in the latter.
One night in March 1944 he received Lilo Yarson, Cuban actress Ana Sainz, set designer John Stacholy and Germinal Barral López, the legendary chronicler Galaor, from Bohemia magazine. “Hemingway has a bandaged hand, half-combed gray hair, his shaggy beard hiding cheeks the same color as blood. He has to laugh frankly so that his mustache reveals his teeth. Under this sea lion aspect, the young, sanguine, healthy, robust man can be seen. His hand when he shakes mine tightens to the point of pain. Everything about him emanates health, vitality, agility, dynamism,” Galaor said of this meeting.
The interview focused on the movie For Whom the Bell Tolls, on the writer’s habits. After drinking whiskey, a more communicative Hemingway spoke to them about his children and his wife who was in Italy as a war correspondent. He proudly showed off his nine cats. And in the end he offered to help Lilo Yarson: “I hope that Lilo and Ana together realize their dream of starring in a movie with Lilliam Gish. I’ve managed to get Griffin, the most illustrious, the most complete of the directors of other times, to abandon his years of retirement to direct them. You tell… the readers of Bohemia that I am very interested in giving these kids the decisive opportunity that puts them on the path to success.” This project, unfortunately, did not come to fruition.
I ran away to Hollywood
Lilo was a child who dreamed of being an actor. One of the actresses he admired was precisely Lilliam Gish. Her performance in The White Sister impressed him deeply. One day it occurred to him to send her a letter and although he did not receive a response he continued writing to her. He was six years old. Until, when he least expected it, the postman brought him a letter from her. Thus was born the unusual friendship, at a distance, a relationship that would later be consolidated in Hollywood. But that happened much later. Before, Lilo travelled a very long road.
Upon finishing high school, his parents thought that he would study a university degree that would guarantee him a life without financial hardship. However, he continued with his obsession with cinema. From a young age he showed a passion for theater and acquired his first knowledge in the Sociedad Pro Arte Musical, founded on December 2, 1918 by María Teresa García Montes de Giberga.
Once the parents were convinced of the young man’s true vocation, they accepted that he travel to the United States. He studied at the University of Miami and later at Columbia, in New York, where he graduated in Liberal Arts, with a specialty in English Literature.
“One day I ran away to Hollywood.… I’m also a writer, you know? I write for theater. I premiered my first comedy in Miami; it is titled ‘Cambio de horizonte.’ Later, another comedy of mine was played for three months at the National Theater in New York: ‘i Hate You, Darling.’ But as I was telling you, I ran away to Hollywood. An idea had gotten into my head,” he confessed to journalist Antonio Ortega for an interview published by Bohemia, on November 21, 1943.
When he arrived in Hollywood he told Lilliam Gish of his intention to play Joaquín in For Whom the Bell Tolls. She put him in contact with her agent, but he did nothing to help him. Then he went to Hilda Moreno, a Havana native like him who was also trying to make her way in the film Mecca, who introduced him to Lonnie D Órsa, assistant to Sam Wood, director of For Whom the Bell Tolls. After going through some difficulties in casting, they finally gave him the part and offered a contract of two hundred dollars a week. Although he could have lost it. He told Antonio Ortega this nice anecdote.
“Can I consult the case with a friend of mine?” I asked.
“What friend?”
“Miss Pickford,” I said. They thought I was bluffing.
“Call her on the phone,” they advised me smiling.
And I called Mary to consult with her. She was shocked as soon as she heard me.
“You’re crazy, boy! Sign immediately even if they don’t give you a cent,” she advised me. I turned to my interlocutor and said:
“She says let’s reach an agreement. Neither what you give me, nor what I ask for. Is it $500 a week? and that’s it.”
That’s how he managed to work on the movie. The filming process lasted 18 months and began in November 1941. Once his military service ended, Lilo participated in three more movies, mentioned at the beginning of this article. Afterwards his name becomes more and more elusive. Perhaps the home accident where he lost an arm influenced that silence. His horror of publicity, as he confessed, could also have affected him, or possibly…, everything remains in the field of speculation.
Clues to follow
According to a note published in Bohemia, in April 1954, provided to me by the diligent researcher Derubín Jácome Rodríguez, on that date Lilo Yarson had been in Cuba for a long time.
Film critic and historian Luciano Castillo tells us that Lilo Yarson, in the early 1950s, presented the Sierra Maestra project to the Cuban Film Production Company (Proficuba), but director Ramón Peón opted for the filming of Está amaneciendo.
At the end of 1959, theater critic Rine Leal Pérez published an article in the newspaper Revolución, recovered by the Cuban narrator and theater critic Rosa Ileana Boudet, that reveals Lilo’s work.
“The theme of play writing is very frequent in the chronicles of that year. And he announces that Lilo Yarson — whose performances in many Hollywood movies, most of them uncredited (For Whom the Bell Tolls, Arch of Triomphe), have created a legend, will soon premiere a piece titled “Los que alcanzan las estrellas” with a cast made up of Carmita Ignarra, Normita Suárez, Paul Díaz and Florencio Escudero and that would describe the attitude of a reactionary family towards the laws enacted that year. Francisco Morín chose Lilo to join the cast of La reina y los insurgentes, by Ugo Betti, with Roberto Blanco and Lilian Llerena and its director remembers him as an ‘actor with an intense personality and tragic destiny.’”
Lilo returned to movies as a scriptwriter for the documentary Playas del pueblo, an ICAIC production, filmed in 1960 under the direction of Juan José Grado. He later emigrated to Mexico.
Cuban filmmaker Alberto Roldán in his book La mirada viva recalled the last days of the actor: “Years later I met Yarson again, on the eve of returning to Mexico, where he would die five years later, the victim of a new home accident, when he fell through a staircase, the result of the vertigo produced by another drunkenness, already surrendered to the inevitable. His last years would be aggravated by the dramatic sense of knowing that he had ended definitively, far from his country of origin, along with the resignation of someone who only awaits the arrival of the final moment.”
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Sources:
https://www.cine.com/actores/lilo-yarson
https://zoevaldes.net/2011/08/12/lilo-yarson-gran-actor-cubano/
Antonio Ortega: “Lilo Oyarzun o la naturalidad. El cuento de hadas de Lilo Yarson,” Bohemia, November 21, 1943.
Don Galaor: “Ernest Hemingway,” Bohemia, March 26, 1944.
http://www.rosaile.blogspot.com
https://endac.org/encyclopedia
Juan Cueto-Roig: “Lilo Yarson: La trágica historia de un actor cubano,” Cubaencuentro, July 7, 2023.
