George Chakiris

George Chakiris is an American actor and dancer born on September 16, 1932, in Norwood, Ohio, to Greek immigrants Stelianos and Zoe Chakiris, who had come to the United States from Turkey. One of eight siblings, he grew up after his family relocated to Long Beach, California, in 1944. He completed his secondary education at Woodrow Wilson Classical High School in 1950 and briefly attended Long Beach City College before leaving to pursue dance. To support himself, he worked in the advertising department of the May Company California department store while studying dance in the evenings.

Chakiris made his film debut at age fifteen in the 1947 production Song of Love, appearing in the chorus. Throughout the early 1950s he accumulated credits in musical films including The Great Caruso (1951), Stars and Stripes Forever (1952), Call Me Madam (1953), Second Chance (1953), The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (1953), Give a Girl a Break (1953), and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), in which he danced in Marilyn Monroe's "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" number. He also appeared in the wedding dance sequence in Brigadoon (1954), in There's No Business Like Show Business (1954), and in White Christmas (1954), the latter of which proved consequential. In White Christmas, a close-up shot of Chakiris alongside Rosemary Clooney during her performance of "Love, You Didn't Do Right by Me" generated substantial fan mail, prompting Paramount Pictures to sign him to a contract. Under that contract he appeared in The Country Girl (1954) and The Girl Rush (1955), dancing opposite Rosalind Russell in the latter and earning a favorable notice from columnist Hedda Hopper. MGM borrowed him for Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956), and he took a small non-dancing role in Under Fire (1957).

Dissatisfied with the pace of his Hollywood career, Chakiris left for New York around 1958. The Broadway production of West Side Story had been running for approximately a year, and he auditioned for director and choreographer Jerome Robbins. He was cast not in the Broadway company but in the London production, playing Riff, leader of the Jets. The show opened in the West End in late 1958, and Chakiris remained with it for nearly twenty-two months to strong reviews. When the Mirisch Brothers acquired the film rights to West Side Story, they screen-tested Chakiris and determined that his darker complexion suited him better for the role of Bernardo, leader of the Sharks, casting Russ Tamblyn as Riff instead. Filming lasted seven months. The 1961 film adaptation was a major success, and Chakiris won both the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture for his performance. The role secured him a long-term contract with the Mirisch Company.

His subsequent films for the Mirisches included Flight from Ashiya (1964), shot in Japan alongside Yul Brynner and Richard Widmark, and Kings of the Sun (1963), an epic about the Mayans that also featured Brynner and performed poorly at the box office. He starred opposite Charlton Heston and Yvette Mimieux in Diamond Head (1963), played the lead in Two and Two Make Six (1962), appeared in the war film 633 Squadron (1964) with Cliff Robertson, and traveled to Italy to make Bebo's Girl (1964) with Claudia Cardinale. In May 1962 his per-film fee was reported at $100,000. During the early 1960s he also pursued a recording career, releasing a single with producer Joe Meek in 1960 and charting two albums, George Chakiris and Memories Are Made of This, which peaked at numbers 28 and 45 in the United States respectively before his manager terminated his contract with Capitol Records.

Chakiris spent a significant portion of the mid-to-late 1960s working in Europe. He played a Greek terrorist in the British film The High Bright Sun (1965) with Dirk Bogarde, appeared in The Mona Lisa Has Been Stolen (1965) in Italy, and worked in France on Is Paris Burning? (1966) and The Day the Hot Line Got Hot (1968). He appeared alongside Catherine Deneuve and Gene Kelly in Jacques Demy's French musical film The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967). During this period he also performed a nightclub act at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, his first stage work since West Side Story, which led to an offer to appear with Jose Ferrer in a television production of Kismet (1967). He returned to the United States for The Big Cube (1969) with Lana Turner and subsequently filmed Sharon Vestida de Rojo (1970) in Spain.

In 1969, a stage production of The Corn Is Green in Chicago with Eileen Herlie renewed his enthusiasm for performing. He accepted a dramatic television role on Medical Center and then starred in the first national tour of Stephen Sondheim's musical Company, playing the role of Bobby, from 1971 to 1972. That production constitutes his Broadway credit. In 1995 he starred in a Long Beach Civic Light Opera production of The King and I.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s Chakiris worked extensively in television in both the United States and Britain, guest-starring on programs including Hawaii Five-O, Wonder Woman, Fantasy Island, CHiPs, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, Murder She Wrote, and Matt Houston, among others. He appeared in the final episode of The Partridge Family, broadcast on March 22, 1974, as an old high school boyfriend to Shirley Partridge, and his farewell scene with Shirley Jones was the last scene of the series. He also had recurring roles on Dallas and Santa Barbara, and starred in the Terry Marcel film Why Not Stay for Breakfast? (1979).

In later years Chakiris received top billing in the vampire film Pale Blood (1990) and held a recurring role as Professor Peterson on the television series Superboy from 1988 to 1990. On March 23, 1998, he participated in the "Oscar's Family Album" segment of the 70th Academy Awards telecast, a gathering of seventy past recipients of competitive and honorary awards. In 2012 he presented a musical about veganism titled Loving the Silent Tears, and in 2021 he appeared in the film Not to Forget, directed by Valerio Zanoli, intended to raise awareness and funds for Alzheimer's disease research. He has also established George Chakiris Collections, a line of handmade original sterling silver jewelry of his own design.