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|  Telly Savalas mini-bio: Aristotelis “Telly” Savalas (January 21, 1922 – January 22, 1994) was an American film and television actor and singer, whose career spanned four decades. Best known for playing the title role in the 1970s crime drama Kojak, Savalas was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Birdman of Alcatraz (1962). His other movie credits include The Young Savages (1961), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), Battle of the Bulge (1965), The Dirty Dozen (1967), The Scalphunters (1968), supervillain Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Pretty Maids All in a Row (1971) and Escape to Athena (1979). He was easily recognizable with his shaved head and strong features.
Savalas, the second oldest of five children, was born as Aristotelis Savalas in Garden City, Long Island, New York to Greek American parents Christina (née Kapsalis), a New York City artist who was a native of Sparta, and Nick Savalas, a Greek restaurant owner. When he entered Sewanhaka High School in Floral Park, New York, he initially only spoke Greek, yet he learned English and graduated in 1940. After graduation from high school, he worked as a lifeguard, but on one occasion, was unsuccessful at rescuing a man from drowning; this would haunt Savalas for the remainder of his life. When he entered Columbia University School of General Studies, Savalas took a variety of courses such as English, radio and psychology. At that time, he fell in love with radio and television, which led to his interest in acting. He graduated in 1948. Savalas also gained life experience with a three-year stint (1943-1946) in the Army during WWII, working for the U.S. State Department hosting the "Your Voice of America" series and then at ABC News before beginning an acting career in his late 30s. Before he would get to any of that, starting at age 28, Savalas hosted a popular radio show called the coffeehouse in New York City.
Savalas started out as an executive director and then senior director of the news special events at ABC. He then became an executive producer for the Gillette Cavalcade of Sports where he gave Howard Cosell his first job.
Prior to his movie career, Savalas was a character actor on TV shows during the late 1950s and the 1960s. His first acting role was on And Bring Home a Baby, an episode of Armstrong Circle Theater in January 1959. He appeared on two more episodes of this series, in 1959 and 1960. Between 1959 and 1967, he made more than fifty guest appearances in various television programs, including Naked City, The Eleventh Hour, King of Diamonds, The Aquanauts, The Untouchables, Burke's Law, Channing, Combat!, The Fugitive, Breaking Point, Bonanza, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The F.B.I. and the classic The Twilight Zone episode Living Doll. He also had a recurring role as Brother Hendricksen on the popular crime drama series, 77 Sunset Strip.
While playing Lucky Luciano on the TV series The Witness, actor Burt Lancaster "discovered" him. He appeared with Lancaster in three movies — the first of these was the crime drama The Young Savages (1961). After playing a police officer in this movie, he moved on to play a string of heavies. Once again opposite Lancaster, he won acclaim and an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as the sadistic Feto Gomez in Birdman of Alcatraz (1962).
Savalas shaved his head for his role as Pontius Pilate in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), thus becoming the first modern day actor to play the Roman Governor of Judea bald. After completing work on the movie, he chose to remain bald.
Savalas was memorable as the weirdly religious and very sadistic convict Archer Maggott in The Dirty Dozen (1967), the seminal ensemble action film by director Robert Aldrich. He later returned to play a different character in two of the movie's TV sequels - The Dirty Dozen: The Deadly Mission (1987) and The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission (1988). He co-starred with Burt Lancaster for the third time in The Scalphunters (1968), a comedy western that revealed the absurdity of racism during the Civil Rights movement. Two more appearances in comedies for Savalas were as Herbie Haseler in Crooks and Coronets (1969) and opposite Clint Eastwood in Kelly's Heroes (1970).
His career was transformed with the lead role in the celebrated TV-movie The Marcus Nelson Murders (CBS, 1973), which was based on the real-life Career Girls Murder case, and pop culture icon Theo Kojak was born.
As a singer, Savalas had some chart success. His spoken (i.e. not sung) version of Bread's If produced by Snuff Garrett was #1 in Europe for 10 weeks in 1975 and his version of Don Williams' Some Broken Hearts Never Mend topped the charts in 1980. He worked with composer and producer John Cacavas on many albums, including Telly (1974) and Who Loves Ya, Baby (1976).
In the late 1970s, Savalas narrated three UK travelogues titled Telly Savalas Looks at Portsmouth, Telly Savalas Looks at Aberdeen and Telly Savalas Looks at Birmingham. These were produced by Harold Baim and were examples of quota quickies which were then part of a requirement that cinemas in the United Kingdom showed a set percentage of British produced films. He also hosted the 1989 video UFOs and Channeling.
Savalas wrote, directed and starred in the film Beyond Reason (1977).
In the 1980s and early 1990s, Savalas appeared in commercials for the Players' Club Gold Card. These commercials were parodied by Phil Hartman on Saturday Night Live as "The Player With Yourself Club". The line from the parody was "If you're a player, you need to be where the action is, and when there's no action you have to create it yourself. That's why I'm telling you about the Player With Yourself Club." Savalas' commercials also inspired a skit on In Living Color, where Jim Carrey played Savalas, who wields a literal "player's club" and knocks successful gamblers unconscious, taking their winnings, though tossing them a chip or two out of generosity.
Savalas died on January 22, 1994 of complications of cancer of the bladder and prostate at the Sheraton-Universal Hotel in Universal City, California, at age 72. He was interred at the George Washington section of Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery. The funeral, held in a Greek Orthodox Church, was attended by his third wife Julie and his brother Gus. His first two wives, Katherine and Marilyn, also attended with their own children. Some of the many other mourners present included Angie Dickinson, Nicollette Sheridan, Jennifer Aniston, Sally Adams, Frank Sinatra, Don Rickles, and several of Telly's Kojak co-stars - Kevin Dobson, Dan Frazer and Vince Conti | VITAL STATS | Telly Savalas Information:
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mathaiakakis2001posted 864 days ago
