Charles Korvin

Charles Korvin, born Géza Kárpáthi on November 21, 1907, in Pöstyén, Austro-Hungary (now Piešťany, Slovakia), was a Hungarian-American actor who worked across stage, film, and television. He died on June 18, 1998. In addition to his acting career, Korvin was a professional still and motion picture photographer and a master chef.

Before pursuing acting, Korvin spent a decade in France, where he studied at the Sorbonne and worked as a photographer for Yvon, a prominent French postcard company, shooting on location throughout the country. In 1937, he was engaged by CBC to photograph a documentary about the Canadian physician Norman Bethune. That same period saw him co-direct Heart of Spain, an anti-Franco film photographed on the front lines of the Spanish Civil War. He relocated to the United States in 1940 and trained in acting and stagecraft at the Barter Theater in Abingdon, Virginia.

Korvin made his Broadway debut in 1943 under the name Géza Korvin, portraying a Russian nobleman in the comedy Dark Eyes. He subsequently signed a contract with Universal Pictures and adopted the stage name Charles Korvin. His film work in the 1940s included three pictures alongside actress Merle Oberon. Around 1952, his film career came to a halt after he declined to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, making him a target of the Hollywood blacklist.

Korvin redirected his career toward television, appearing in early productions for Playhouse 90, Studio One, and US Steel Hour. He played the character known as The Eagle across six consecutive episodes of Disney's Zorro and portrayed Latin dance instructor Carlos in the Honeymooners episode "Mama Loves Mambo." In 1960, he starred as Inspector Duval in the UK/US television series Interpol Calling, produced by J. Arthur Rank. During this period he also returned to the stage in off-Broadway productions, playing the king in Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I at the Westbury Music Fair and the St. Louis Municipal Opera Theatre, the latter production co-starring Betty White.

Korvin returned to Broadway in the mid-1960s, taking on the role of the upstairs neighbor in Neil Simon's Tony Award-winning play Barefoot in the Park. His Broadway career spanned from 1943 to 1963. In 1964, he appeared in Stanley Kramer's Academy Award-winning film Ship of Fools, playing the ship's captain. In later years he served as the voice of the Red Baron in television and radio advertisements for Lufthansa Airlines for eight years.

For more than twenty-five years, Korvin and his wife Anne lived part of each year in Klosters, Switzerland, where their circle of friends included Irwin and Marion Shaw, Greta Garbo, Salka Viertel, Deborah Kerr, and Gaetan de Rosnay. Korvin maintained that he was Garbo's last dance partner. His reputation as an amateur chef was such that when Julia Child was asked by Dick Cavett on his PBS television show in 1978 to name her favorite amateur chef, she named Charles Korvin.