Savalas, Aristoteles

▪ 1995

      ("TELLY"), U.S. actor (b. Jan. 21, 1924, Garden City, N.Y.—d. Jan. 22, 1994, Universal City, Calif.), specialized in portraying film villains before gaining international stardom as Lieut. Theo Kojak, television's bald-headed, lollipop-licking New York City detective who shielded a heart of gold under a gruff, wise-cracking exterior. As the Emmy award-winning star of the dramatic police series "Kojak" (1973-78), the hawk-nosed detective was renowned for sporting three-piece suits and for uttering his signature catchphrase, "Who loves ya, baby?" Savalas was an award-winning documentary producer at ABC News before he broke into acting (1959) as a stand-in. He was discovered by Burt Lancaster (q.v.), who featured him as a police detective in The Young Savages (1961) and then as a sadistic convict in Birdman of Alcatraz (1962). The latter role earned him an Academy Award nomination as best supporting actor. After first shaving his head for the role of Pontius Pilate in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), Savalas made his bald pate his trademark. Some of his other menacing roles were as a black marketeer in Battle of the Bulge (1965), a vicious Southern racist and rapist in The Dirty Dozen (1967), a renegade murderer in The Scalphunters (1968), the nemesis of James Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), and a sadistic bandit in A Town Called Bastard (1971). It was his portrayal as Kojak in the 1973 television movie The Marcus-Nelson Murders that served as the springboard for the series. After "Kojak" was dropped in 1978, Savalas appeared in films, notably Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979), before reviving Kojak in 1989 for a few television episodes on "The ABC Saturday Mystery."

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