Akim Tamiroff

Akim Mikhailovich Tamiroff, born Hovakim Tamiryants on October 29, 1899, was an Armenian-American actor whose work spanned stage, film, and television across several decades. His birthplace is cited variously as Tiflis or Baku, both then part of the Russian Empire, where his father worked in the oil industry and his mother was a seamstress. Beginning at age 19, Tamiroff studied for nine years at the Moscow Art Theatre drama school under Konstantin Stanislavski, during which time he adopted the russified name by which he would become known professionally.

While training at the Moscow Art Theatre, Tamiroff became acquainted with fellow Armenian Nikita Balieff. After the Russian Revolution, he joined Balieff and other émigrés in Paris to form the La Chauve-Souris touring revue. The company brought Tamiroff to the United States for the first time in January 1923 on a three-month engagement, during which he also performed in a repertory of Russian plays directed by Stanislavski. He returned to the country in November of that year and remained through 1924, then made a final trip with the revue in October 1927, at which point he chose to settle permanently in the United States. His Broadway appearances with Chauve-Souris in 1929 were among the credits he accumulated during a stage career that stretched from 1923 to 1959. Additional Broadway productions in which he appeared include Tsar Fyodor Ivanovitch, The Life Line, Miracle at Verdun, and Rashomon. After joining the Theatre Guild in New York City, he met actress Tamara Shayne, whom he married in February 1933 in Los Angeles. Both were later naturalized as United States citizens. Tamiroff was fluent in five languages: Armenian, Russian, English, French, and Italian.

Tamiroff made his film debut in 1932 in an uncredited role in Okay, America!, and continued in uncredited parts until 1935, when he appeared in The Lives of a Bengal Lancer and the Clark Gable epic China Seas. The following year he took the title role in The General Died at Dawn, earning his first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. His 1938 performance in the proto-noir Dangerous to Know opposite Anna May Wong has frequently been identified as among his finest screen work. That same year he appeared in The Buccaneer with Fredric March. The early 1940s brought a succession of notable roles: The Great McGinty (1940), The Corsican Brothers (1941), Tortilla Flat (1942) with Spencer Tracy, Hedy Lamarr, and John Garfield, Five Graves to Cairo (1943) with Erich von Stroheim, and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) with Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman, which earned him a second Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Both films for which he received Oscar nominations starred Gary Cooper. For his work in For Whom the Bell Tolls, Tamiroff won the first ever Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1944. He also appeared in Preston Sturges' The Miracle of Morgan's Creek that same year. Throughout his career, his character roles encompassed ethnicities including Russian, Mexican, Chinese, Italian, French, German, Greek, Egyptian, Polish, Turkish, Malayan, Tartar, Romani, and Jewish.

In the later phase of his career, Tamiroff appeared in Ocean's 11 (1960) alongside Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, Topkapi (1964) with Peter Ustinov and Melina Mercouri, Lord Jim and Alphaville (both 1965) with Peter O'Toole, and Marquis de Sade: Justine (1969), directed by Jesús Franco. He maintained a sustained collaborative relationship with Orson Welles, appearing in Mr. Arkadin (1955), Touch of Evil (1958) with Charlton Heston, The Trial (1962), and Welles's unfinished adaptation of Don Quixote, in which Tamiroff played Sancho Panza. Welles described him as the greatest of all screen actors. Over the course of his film career, Tamiroff appeared in at least 80 motion pictures across 37 years. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for motion pictures at 1634 Vine Street. Tamiroff died on September 17, 1972, from cancer.