George Maharis

Tall, dark and handsome, not to mention a charismatic rebel of 1960s Hollywood, actor George Maharis (surname originally Maharias) was born in 1928 in Astoria, New York, one of seven siblings. His immigrant father was a restaurateur. Maharis expressed an early interest in singing and initially pursued it as a career, but extensive overuse of his voice and improper vocal lessons stripped his vocal cords, and he subsequently veered towards an acting career.

Trained at the Neighborhood Playhouse with Sanford Meisner and the Actor's Studio with Lee Strasberg, the "Method" actor found roles on television, including several episodes of Naked City (1958), and secured an early name for himself on the late 1950s off-Broadway scene, especially with his performances in Jean Genet's "Deathwatch" and Edward Albee's "Zoo Story". Producer/director Otto Preminger "discovered" Maharis for film, offering him a choice of five small roles in the upcoming film Exodus (1960), in which the actor eventually played an underground freedom fighter.

One of the episodes Maharis did of the police drama Naked City (1958), entitled "Four Sweet Corners", wound up being a roundabout pilot for the buddy adventure series that would earn him household fame. With the arrival of the series Route 66 (1960), the actor earned intense TV stardom and a major cult following as a Brando-esque, streetwise drifter named Buzz Murdock. Partnered with the fair-skinned, clean-scrubbed, college-educated Tod Stiles (Martin Milner, later star of Adam-12 (1968)), the duo traveled throughout the U.S. in a hotshot convertible Corvette and had a huge female audience getting their kicks off with the show. At the show's peak, Maharis parlayed his TV fame into a recording career with Epic Records, producing six albums in the process and peaking with the single "Teach Me Tonight".

During the middle of the series' third season peak, Maharis abruptly left the series with a number of reasons cited. Often quoted is that the virile, seductive image of a fast-rising star apparently got to him, and that he proved increasingly troublesome as he grew in stature. Tabloids reported that the actor purposefully instigated ongoing clashes with both producers and co-star Milner in order to leave the series and seek film stardom while the irons were hot. Maharis denied this, insisting that his working relationships on the set were solid and that any complaints were vastly overblown. He cited health reasons as the reason for his leaving, claiming that a long-term bout (and relapse) of infectious hepatitis, caught during a 1962 shoot of the series, forced him to abandon the show under doctor's orders. For whatever reason, Maharis left. His replacement, ruggedly handsome Glenn Corbett, failed to click with audiences and the series was canceled after the next season.

Back to working on films, the brash and confident actor, with his health scare over, aggressively pursued stardom with a number of leads, but the duds he found himself in -- Quick, Before It Melts (1964), Sylvia (1965), A Covenant with Death (1967), The Happening (1967), and The Desperados (1969) prime among his list of disasters -- hampered his chances. The best of the lot was the suspense drama The Satan Bug (1965), but it lacked box-office appeal and disappeared quickly. Moreover, a 1967 sex scandal (and subsequent one in 1974) could not have helped. In the 1970s Maharis returned to series TV in the short-lived The Most Deadly Game (1970), co-starring fellow criminologists Ralph Bellamy and Yvette Mimieux (who replaced the late Inger Stevens who committed suicide shortly before shooting was about to start). The decade also included a spate of TV movies, including the more notable The Monk (1969) and Rich Man, Poor Man (1976). In between these he appeared in Las Vegas nightclubs and summer stock, and was one of the first celebrities to pose for a nude centerfold in Playgirl (July 1973).

His last working years brought about the occasional film, most notably as the resurrected warlock in The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982) and an appearance in the horror thriller Doppelganger (1993). With his "bad boy" glory days behind him, Maharis' TV career ended rather routinely with guest parts on such popular but unchallenging shows such as "Fantasy Island" and "Murder, She Wrote". Later years were spent focusing on impressionistic painting. He has been fully retired since the early 1990s.