Buck Kartalian

Vahe "Buck" Kartalian was born on August 13, 1922, in Detroit, Michigan, to Armenian immigrant parents. When he was two years old, his family relocated to New York City. He grew up with four sisters and one brother, and lost his father, a baker, at the age of eleven. During World War II, Kartalian served in the United States Navy aboard a destroyer in the Pacific theatre. After the war, he pursued bodybuilding and professional wrestling, competing at both regional and national levels under the nickname "Hell's Kitchen Roughneck." He entered acting after being noticed by Broadway producers and never received formal acting training.

Kartalian's Broadway career spanned from 1951 to 1960 and included four productions. His earliest credit was Romeo and Juliet in 1951, in which he played Sampson opposite Olivia de Havilland in the role of Juliet. He subsequently appeared in Threepenny Opera, followed by the comedy Golden Fleecing in 1959, and One More River in 1960. During his Broadway years, he also appeared in the touring production of Mister Roberts, and it was on that production's set, at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco, that he married Mary Evonne Bannister on January 9, 1952. The couple later divorced. In 1959, Kartalian married Margaret Poloshjian, with whom he had three children: Aram, Julie, and Jason. Jason Kartalian went on to become a film producer and director.

Over a screen career spanning from 1953 to his retirement in 2006, Kartalian appeared in more than 70 films and television productions. He became widely recognized for his role as Julius, a gorilla guarding captive humans at the Research Complex, in Planet of the Apes (1968), and later returned to the franchise as the gorilla Frank in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972). Among his other film appearances were a sailor in Mister Roberts (1955), a prisoner in Cool Hand Luke (1967), a shopkeeper in The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), and a reverend in The Rock (1996).

On television, Kartalian appeared on numerous series, including Naked City, The Untouchables, Get Smart, The Munsters, Batman, Lou Grant, Cagney and Lacey, and Friends. He also held a recurring role as Bruce W. Wolf in the television series Monster Squad in 1976. In 1971, he made a public appearance at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire portraying "Hercules Magnificus, The Strongest Man in the Known World." Kartalian died on May 24, 2016, in a hospital in Mission Hills, California, at the age of 93.