Aristotelis “TELLY” SAVALAS gave us a long series of interesting characters — and one great one: police lieutenant Theo Kojak.

Savalas was born into a big, volatile, loving Greek-American family, in Garden City, New York.  He had four brothers and a sister.  Their father owned a Greek restaurant.  The one trauma Telly had as a young man was as a lifeguard.  Someone drowned when he was on duty, he tried to revive them, but couldn’t, and that death stayed on his conscience.

Telly graduated from Columbia University, served in the U.S. Army, got a degree in psychology, worked on a master’s degree, thought of medical school, and worked for the U.S. Information Service in the State Department, doing propaganda, psychological warfare.

But he wasn’t settled; he hadn’t found the right woman or the right career.  He was impulsive and often nearly broke.  One night, he took a good-looking woman out to a Manhattan restaurant, spent all the money in his wallet on dinner, dropped his date off, started driving home to Long Island — and ran out of gas.  

By now, it was rather late at night.  Telly walked to a White Castle restaurant, told them he was out of gas. Was there a gas station nearby? They directed him to a station — but warned him it would be a long walk through a wooded area.  Grimly, he set out, feeling awful about himself, about everything.

Suddenly, Savalas was aware of a beautiful car slowing down.  A man with an oddly high-pitched voice asked if he could help.  The guy looked genuinely caring, so Savalas told him he could use a ride to the gas station.  The guy drove him there, and they chatted.  The man was dressed in a gorgeous white suit.  Though they weren’t talking baseball, apropos of nothing, the man mentioned abruptly that he’d just met a certain young infielder on the Boston Red Sox. 

Savalas knew there was something odd about this guy, and about the whole set-up, but the man was very nice and Savalas tried to put it out of his mind.  At the gas station, Savalas realized he was still screwed; he had no money to pay for the gas — but the stranger in the white suit insisted on paying. 

Telly Savalas said ‘Please! Write down your name and address.  I’m very embarrassed by all this.  I’d like to mail you the gas money in a few days.’ 

The man wrote down his name — James Cullen– and his address on a piece of paper, and gave it to Savalas.  Savalas thanked him again, got back in the  car and made it home.  There he picked up the Journal-American and there was an article about that Red Sox infielder — dead.  Savalas suddenly realized that James Cullen was dead, too. 

He looked quickly at the piece of paper the stranger had written on.  The handwriting was distinctive and he noticed there was not only “James Cullen” and an address but also a phone number on it.  Savalas dialed the number. 

A woman answered, and Savalas asked to speak to James Cullen.  The woman said Cullen wasn’t there.  Savalas asked her when she expected him back.  The woman told him sharply that James Cullen was her husband, he’d been dead for two years, and what was this all about?

Savalas told her that he’d just met her husband, and described what had happened. The woman seemed wary but said helping a stranger who was out of gas was exactly the kind of thing her husband would have done.   She invited Telly over to her home, because she wanted to see the note ‘James Cullen’ had written.  When Mrs. Cullen saw the handwriting, she gasped, and got out love letters that Jimmy Cullen had written her.  The handwriting was identical.

She started pumping Telly for information.  What was Jimmy wearing?  A beautiful white suit, he told her.  That’s the suit he was buried in, she said, and started to cry.  What else can you tell me about him, she begged.  ‘Anything.’  He seemed happy, Savalas said.   He had a beautiful car.   He had a strange voice, very high-pitched. 

No, no, no said Cullen’s wife.  ‘Jimmy had a deep voice.’

Then she startled. 

“What?”  said Savalas.

Mrs. Cullen said ‘Jimmy killed himself, with a shot that went through his throat.  It must have hit his voice box.’

Telly Savalas kept going over and over that experience, and finally decided that the line between life and death is not as clear as we think it is.

Then Savalas left and began doing TV journalism for ABC-TV in New York City.  He was, for a time, the executive producer of the Gilette Cavalcade of Sports.  Telly gave Howard Cosell his first job in television.   Telly did News & Special Events, and guided coverage of foreign dignitaries like Andre Gromyko.   He interviewed Eleanor Roosevelt.   When Winston Churchill was in New York visiting Dwight Eisenhower, Savalas interviewed Churchill. 

He got used to playing back his interviews afterward.  He’d  always find some flaw in the person’s argument or in their English.  Churchill was the only exception to this; when Telly Savalas played back the interview, every word was used precisely, and the arguments so forceful that, even on close examination, Savalas could find no flaws.

One day, a talent agent called Savalas and asked him for the name of a foreigner who could play a bit part in a play or TV movie.  Savalas gave the agent a name, called the foreigner, and got it all set up.  But the talent agent called back the next day, indignant: ‘Your foreign guy stood us up.  Never showed.  Made me look like an idiot.’  Savalas heard himself say: “He’ll be there today!” 

When he hung up the phone, he knew he might have to go play the part himself.  He did, stayed in character the whole time, pretending to be a foreigner.  It went all right, and he got offered another part.

He began to see that acting could be a new career for him, and asked his parents what they thought.  His mother was an artist, a painter.  She admired actors and said “Telly, do it.”   He told his father he thought acting was kind of a racket.  His father said “Everything’s a racket,” and urged Telly just to be happy, to find something that made him happy.

And in 1961 when Telly got a part in the movie The Young Savages with Burt Lancaster, he realized he was more nervous working with Burt Lancaster than he’d been interviewing Eleanor Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.  He decided acting was what meant most to him.

In the early ‘60’s, Telly Savalas began getting better roles in movies.  He played a sadistic convict in The Dirty Dozen and a private investigator in Cape Fear.   He had a smile that stayed with you and a purring quality to his voice — but he was always a supporting actor, not the lead.

Then from 1973-1978, Telly Savalas became a star; he starred as the bald-headed Greek-American New York police lieutenant Theo Kojak in the CBS TV series Kojak.   Theo Kojak ran the detective squad.  You had the feeling he’d grown up in a tough neighborhood, he knew people who’d gone bad, and even sympathized with them to a degree.  But he was still going to do everything he could to nail them. 

Kojak was dapper, wore wire-rimmed glasses, walked and talked like a New Yorker.  He sucked on lollipops because he was trying to quit smoking and he made famous the line, “Who Loves Ya, Baby?”  The success of Kojak smoothed the way for later cops shows, like Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue.

Kojak’s car wasn’t flashy — a 1974 Buick — but he drove it fast, and it got the job done.  Lieutenant Kojak would rather handle something verbally than with his fists or a gun.  But he had that snub-nosed .38 in his overcoat pocket. We knew he had it, and waited for him to get annoyed enough to take it out and point it at someone.

Telly Savalas also made the shaved head popular for men.  In 1965, he’d shaved his head to play Pontius Pilate in The Greatest Story Ever Told.   He found he liked the way it looked, and kept shaving his head after the movie shoot was over.  Telly didn’t have much hair left anyway; being bald made him distinctive. 

In 1973, Telly moved into the Sheraton Universal Hotel, in Hollywood, because it was right next door to Universal Studios, where he was putting in long days.  He loved having a suite at the Sheraton Universal, and spent so much time at the hotel bar that they named it after him.

Telly had charisma, and was a master of New York street patter.  When fans came up to him with their own bald look, Savalas would smile and say with mock menace: “Stay out of my racket; you’re too good-looking.” 

If someone asked him if he’d ever taken out a criminal for real, Kojak would purr: ‘You try to avoid the rough stuff, but when you’re dealing with bad guys, you gotta do something.  Right?’ And he’d smile like a guy who’d seen it all.

When fans told him they wanted another “Kojak” TV movie, Savalas would beam and purr: “Talk it up, baby!”

In 1994, Telly Savalas died of prostate cancer in his suite at the Sheraton Universal.  He’d been very quiet about the cancer; it was only three weeks before the end that he told his publicist of 25 years anything about it.

“I don’t play that far away from myself,” he once commented.  Asked what he liked about the character of Theo Kojak, Telly Savalas said, “He’s a gentle man in a violent world.”

PENNY MARSHALL, the actress and film director, was from the Bronx. Her father Tony was a gifted draftsman who drew a delightful announcement card when Penny was born.  But he was unkind to Penny’s mother.  He changed his last name from Masciarelli to Marshall, and pretended he had never been Italian or Catholic.

Penny’s mother, Marjorie, was owner and sole proprietor of the Marjorie Marshall Dance School.  She was a little off her rocker but did give Penny certain things, including a sense of humor and an interest in show business.  Marjorie did not consider Broadway and Hollywood secure enough; she thought it was obvious that little girls would always need formal dance lessons, but it was not obvious that any of her children were talented or lucky enough to make it in show business. 

She was not one to praise her children.  Her own mother had praised Marjorie to the skies for every little thing she did as a girl, and Marjorie vowed she would never do that with her own children.  She over-corrected. She criticized Penny so often, and shot down so many of Penny’s ideas, that when Penny was chosen as “rag monitor” in the 11th grade, she wondered if she was up to the role.

Many girls that Penny knew enjoyed the lessons they took at the Marjorie Marshall Dance School, but Penny did not.  For the rest of her life, she would run into people who said: “I studied dance at your mother’s dance school,” and would fondly recall Penny’s mother.  Penny could never decide if this was poignant and heartwarming, or just annoying.

When Marjorie took her little dancers to an Episcopal church, she told them they were all Episcopalians.  At Catholic churches, she told them they were Catholics.  At temples, they were Jewish.  Prisons, shipyards, charity telethons, there was nowhere Marjorie wouldn’t take her dancers.  Then she’d proudly show off the newspaper articles that resulted:  “YOUNGSTERS AID POLIO FUND” or “STRUTTERS AID BLIND CHILDREN.”

Whenever Penny tried to quit dance lessons and dance performances, her Mom would say “Fine.  On Saturdays, you’ll go shopping and do the laundry and clean the house like everyone else.”  So Penny groaned and went back to dancing for the Marjorie Marshall Dance School.

She was a girl with a pony tail and an overbite who preferred to be outside in the streets with her friends.  ‘What do you do out there?’ her mother would ask.  ‘Why does it take so long?’  She thought her daughter should fill her life with scheduled activities.  Penny found it hard to explain why it was so much fun to be outside with friends. They played stickball.  They played a game called “I Declare War.” They teased each other, told jokes, and created stories that distracted each other from the stressful or humdrum parts of their family life.

One of the boys in the neighborhood was Rob Reiner, whose father Carl Reiner was a big shot in television, one of the stars of “Your Show of Shows.”

When it was time for college, Penny was a little surprised that her mother wasn’t more concerned about Penny going all the way out to the University of New Mexico.  The she realized that her mother thought all the “New” states were grouped together, so New Mexico must be adjacent to New York and New Jersey.

Out in New Mexico, Penny introduced herself as being from the Bronx.  “Do you live on campus?” people asked.  “No,” she was tempted to say. “I commute from the Bronx!” But she found some nice people on campus.  She gravitated to the football players.  One of them became her first lover; another one, Michael Henry, got her pregnant.

She and Michael Henry married, and they named their baby Tracy.  But Penny and Michael drifted apart and after two years they divorced.  Penny needed work.  Her mother suggested she become a dance instructor.  Penny acted in a little dinner theater and then moved out to Los Angeles to try show business instead.  She was a rare mixture of insecurity and fearlessness.  Her mother predicted that Penny would take acid and jump off a roof.

She caught up with Rob Reiner again, and each one loved the way the other one made them laugh.  In 1971, they married.  Rob adopted Tracy, and gave her his last name.  Penny became friends with Rob’s high school friends Richard Dreyfuss and Albert Brooks.

Many interviewers would say: ‘You grew up across the street from your husband?’

It was a very wide street, said Penny.

Both Penny and Rob auditioned for the parts of the young marrieds Gloria Stivic and Michael Stivic for the TV show “All in the Family.”  Rob got the part of Michael; Penny lost out to Sally Struthers as Gloria.  Penny started getting on TV shows, but just tiny parts, usually as a secretary.  She got a Head & Shoulders commercial, but had to play ‘the ugly, smart girl’ who convinced the pretty girl, played by Farrah Fawcett, to try Head & Shoulders.

“All in the Family” was a surprise hit and sometimes when they were in public together, people would rush at Rob, pushing Penny aside.  It was strange.  Rob said he didn’t enjoy celebrity much but Penny didn’t believe him; it looked great to her to have your work adored by fans.

Her brother Garry was a player in Hollywood and he was very helpful.  He himself had dreamed of being a stand-up comedian, but was not quite professional quality.  He’d decided to write comedy and create shows but not be in front of the camera.  He knew his sister was funny but thought she, too, might be better as a comedy writer than a performer. 

“Perky” was the fashionable thing to be as an actress at that time.  Sally Field was perky and all of the studios were looking for perky young women.  The idea was that they could be popular with men and women, young and old.  Penny was not perky.

When she told Garry she wanted to make it in front of the camera, he applauded her. He made clear that he wouldn’t risk his career going to bat for her but he had all kinds of useful advice: which people were talented, which acting classes were worthwhile, how to get a good agent, which guy was a good contact to make but don’t get caught alone with him in his office.  Garden variety nepotism didn’t bother Garry; he figured he’d open some doors for Penny, but it was up to her to walk through them, and if she lacked the talent, she’d soon find out.

By the early 1970’s, Garry’s children were getting old enough to watch the programs he was making, and he wanted to do a family show.  He hit upon the idea of a show called Happy Days, a funny, upbeat TV show about young people trying to find themselves in the 1950’s.  The film American Graffiti had been a surprise hit and ABC executives bought Happy Days, and it, too, was a hit. 

Two central characters in Happy Days were Richie Cunningham, the good-natured square, and Arthur Fonzarelli, (“The Fonz”) the street-smart chick magnet.

Garry was working on a script for a Happy Days episode in which Richie is having trouble finding a girlfriend so the Fonz turns up two party girls, Laverne DeFazio and Shirley Feeney.  Cindy Williams was playing Shirley.  Garry asked Penny if she wanted to play Laverne.  She did, the episode aired in November of 1975 and viewers loved it.

With Happy Days high in the ratings, ABC asked Garry Marshall if he had any ideas for spinoff shows.  What about the “loose women” get their own show? So it was that in 1976 Laverne & Shirley was launched.  They were wisecracking brewery workers in Milwaukee in the ’50’s..

After years of trying to make it big, and waiting and watching and slowly advancing, it was amazing to Penny how quickly stardom arrived.  ABC ordered 15 episodes of a show which had not even been cast, which did not have a single episode written, which had no writers, no director, no producer, crew — nothing — and ABC wanted to put the first episode on the air in eight weeks.

But somehow the show came together, was a hit, and suddenly Penny and Cindy Williams were celebrities. 

Why is the show a hit? the critics wondered.  The writing, the casting, the tie to Happy Days?  Penny had her own theory.  Laverne and Shirley were poor, and there were almost no poor people shown on TV but there were a lot of poor people at home watching TV, wanting to see someone like themselves.

Penny and Cindy cut a record album (“Laverne & Shirley Sing”).  They were mobbed at a Philadelphia record store.  New York invited them to join the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Fans pushed through a barricade to try to reach Laverne and Shirley. Even the cop who pushed the fans back asked Penny for an autograph.  Fame was nuts — exciting but scary and not so great.  Now she agreed with Rob Reiner about that.

Sometimes, her daughter Tracy would have a classmate from school over to the house and the classmate would leave suddenly, and when Penny asked why the girl had left so soon, Tracy would say ‘She didn’t really want to be my friend.  She just wanted to see you and Rob.’  It made Penny’s heart ache.

In 1981, she and Rob Reiner divorced.

She starred in Laverne & Shirley from 1976-1983, directed a couple of episodes of the show and then decided to try directing films. She directed Big (1988) and Awakenings (1990) and A League of Their Own (1992)– and each of them made at least $100 million.  No female director had ever made a $100 million-grossing film before.

On the set, she always felt comfortable and happy.  A crisis would arise and she’d deal with it.  In many ways, it was a grown-up version of playing outside in the street with her friends.  She was still teasing, joking, and still telling stories with people she liked.  People still asked her: ‘What are you doing and why does it take so long?’  And the movies she and her colleagues made distracted the audience for a few hours from the problems in their lives.  All of that was fun.

Doing press tours to promote a movie was much harder for her.  Then her insecurities came back.  She convinced Robin Williams to join her in speaking to the press about Awakenings.  She was so nervous that when she tried to say it was a movie set many years ago in a mental hospital, what she actually said was that it was a movie set many years ago in a menstrual hospital . (“It’s a period piece,” chirped Robin Williams.)

At some point, Penny was feeling shaky, having trouble walking and so she went to a hospital.  An examination revealed she had both lung cancer and a brain tumor.  She felt oddly relaxed at news that freaked out her siblings and her friends. She checked into a hospital so lavish that it had a private chef.  The chef told Penny: ‘My mother studied dance at your mother’s dance school.’

In 2018, her friends said that Penny’s cancer was in remission, but in December of that year she died, leaving behind her daughter Tracy, a devoted ex-husband, a lot of heartbroken friends and saddened fans. When Tracy left for college, Penny hugged her goodbye in front of a sound stage, while wearing a bunny suit.  She wasn’t the usual Mom, but she was a lot of fun.