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Artist
Telly Savalas
12+ albums
actoreasy listening70s80spop
about
Best known as the bald-headed, elegantly dressed, hard-as-nails yet lollipop-wielding NYC police Lieutenant "Kojak" (CBS, 1973-77), this talented veteran actor gained life experience with a three-year stint 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. As first executive director and then senior director of news special events at ABC, Savalas became an executive producer for the "Gillette calvalcade of Sports", where he gave Howard Cosell his first job. Savalas first acted on the TV show "Armstrong Circle Theater" (1959) and then on the series "The Witness" as Lucky Luciano, where actor Burt Lancaster "discovered" him. Savalas was cast opposite Lancaster's idealistic D.A. in the melodrama "The Young Savages" (1961). He moved on to play a string of heavies, winning acclaim and an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as the sadistic Feto Gomez in "Birdman of Alcatraz" (1962). After portraying Pontius Pilate in "The Greatest Story Ever Told" (1965), he chose to remain completely bald and this signature look, somewhere between the comic and the ominous, stood him in good stead in the years that followed. Savalas was memorable in "The Dirty Dozen" (1967), the seminal ensemble action film by director Robert Aldrich, and reappeared as a different character in two TV movie reprisals. He also appeared as star in two classics, "K
