Akim Tamiroff

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Akim Tamiroff during a stay in the Netherlands (1964)

Akim Tamiroff ( Russian Аким Тамиров / Akim Tamirow ; born October 29, 1899 in Tbilisi , Russian Empire , today Georgia ; † September 17, 1972 in Palm Springs , California , USA ) was a Russian-American actor of Armenian origin.

Life

After training at the Moscow Drama School, Akim Tamiroff decided to stay in America in 1932 while touring the USA. Together with his wife, the actress Tamara Shayne and sister of the actor Konstantin Shayne , he joined Nikita Balieff's “Théâtre de la Chauve-Souris”. He also appeared in various New York theaters, and brought there a school for makeup techniques .

He began acting as a film actor after the introduction of talkies in small roles in films by major Hollywood companies such as Universal Pictures , MGM and RKO Pictures . Tamiroff's hallmarks were his stocky build, dark hair, thick eyebrows, and penetrating eyes; he often wore a black mustache. As early as the 1930s he was often used as a foreigner, not least because of his heavy Russian accent. B. Gypsies (Storm at Day Break) , Spaniards (Queen Christina) , Turks (The Merry Widow) , Italians ( Sadie McKee , The Winning Ticket ), German (The Great Flirtation) , French ( New and Forever , Paris in Spring ), Indians ( Bengali ) , Mexicans ( Chained , Go Into Your Dance ) and of course as Russian (e.g. Whom the Gods Destroy , Black Fury , China Seas ). Tamiroff played his first major role in 1936 in a Paramount Pictures detective film - Woman Trap - in which he played a Mexican crook who tried to make a profit from his complicity with a New York gangster. Other important supporting roles followed in The General Died at Dawn , The Jungle Princess (1936, with Dorothy Lamour ), Her Husband Lies , the Michael Strogoff film The Soldier and the Lady and King of Gamblers (all three in 1937).

Akim Tamiroff played his first leading role in 1937 in Charles Vidor's crime film The Great Gambini , in which he played Marian Marsh, a famous magician who is involved in all kinds of crimes. 1938 followed another big role in Cecil B. DeMille's pirate film The Buccaneer . Immediately afterwards Tamiroff was in front of the camera for Robert Florey's masterpiece Dangerous to Know (1938). Alongside Anna May Wong and Gail Patrick , he appears in the role of a powerful gangster who uses criminal means to try to win the love of a rich but honest woman. In the western Ride a Crooked Mile , Tamiroff played a tough Russian immigrant who joins a gang of cattle thieves and loses his morally less unreliable adult son. In 1939 he appeared again in King of Chinatown alongside Anna May Wong, this time in the role of a powerful underworld boss who is overthrown by his own people. He played other leading roles in Florey's spy thriller The Magnificent Fraud (1939) and in Louis King's fateful film The Way of All Flesh (1940).

Akim Tamiroff won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor and an Oscar nomination in the same category in 1943 with the role of the guerrilla Pablo in Sam Woods Hemingway's adaptation For Whom the Hour Strikes In the same year he had another significant role as an Egyptian hotel owner in Billy Wilders Five graves to Cairo . After the end of the Second World War he appeared in numerous other films, including a major role in Richard Thorpe's film musical Mexican Nights ( Fiesta ) (1947).

In the 1950s, Tamiroff's success waned; Only Anatole Litvak's melodrama Anastasia (1956, with Ingrid Bergman ) was a box office success . From his participation in numerous television productions (since 1951) it can be seen that he needed money. He also appeared in cheap horror films (e.g. The Black Sleep ) during this period. From a film-historical point of view, however, the 1950s were also the most important for Tamiroff, because they were also the time when he worked with Orson Welles . The two men first came into contact while filming Gregory Ratoff's historical adventure Black Magic (1949), in which Welles played the role of the alchemist and impostor Cagliostro ; Tamiroff stood in front of the camera as his accomplice Gitano. In 1955 Tamiroff appeared personally as tailor Jakob Zouk in Welles' thriller Herr Satan, which was filmed in Europe . In the same year Welles also worked on an adaptation of the novel Don Quixote , in which Tamiroff appeared alongside Francisco Reiguera as Sancho Panza; however, the film project had to be abandoned and it was only in 1992 that a later edited version could be released. 1958 followed Welles' masterpiece Under the Signs of Evil , in which Tamiroff played the Mexican drug lord "Uncle Joe Grandi". In the Kafka film The Trial (1962) he only had a tiny role.

In the 1960s, Akim Tamiroff worked mostly in Europe, where he appeared in films such as The Black Tulip (1962, with Alain Delon ). He played small roles in the successful American adventure films Topkapi (1964) and Lord Jim (1965). He had his last appearance in 1970 in the Israeli-French spy film Moto Shel Yehudi .

Tamiroff died of cancer on September 17, 1972 at the age of 72.

Prices

His appearance in Lewis Milestone's adventure film The General Died at Dawn (1936) brought Akim Tamiroff a 1937 nomination for an Oscar (Best Supporting Actor); Walter Brennan (Come and Get It) won the award . In 1944 Tamiroff won a Golden Globe as a supporting actor in Whom the Hour Strikes ; He was also nominated for the Oscar, but lost to Charles Coburn (The More the Merrier) .

Filmography (selection)

Awards

Web links

Commons : Akim Tamiroff  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Akim Tamiroff in the Internet Movie Database (English)
personal data
SURNAME Tamiroff, Akim
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tamirow, Akim; Тамиров, Аким (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian-American actor of Armenian origin
DATE OF BIRTH October 29, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Tbilisi , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH 17th September 1972
Place of death Palm Springs , California , USA