George Hamilton called himself a first-rate con man and a third-rate actor
George Hamilton won a Golden Globe for his very first film, then became better known for a permanent suntan, Ritz Cracker commercials and a talent for surviving flops. He joked he would be remembered as a third-rate actor who was really a first-rate con man. Six decades of steady work suggest the joke undersold him.
Hamilton was born in Memphis in 1939, spent his early years with his mother in Arkansas, and passed through schools in Beverly Hills, New York and a military academy in Mississippi. After small television parts he landed a lead straight away in Crime and Punishment U.S.A. in 1959, directed by Denis Sanders, which brought the Golden Globe and a BAFTA nomination. MGM put him under contract and cast him in Home from the Hill and the beach comedy Where the Boys Are.
Burt Reynolds, who made his feature debut alongside him, observed that Hollywood was full of would-be Brandos and James Deans, but only Hamilton wanted to be David Niven. Director Louis Malle, who cast him in Viva Maria!, complained he cared more about the social columns than about becoming one of the best actors of his generation. By the late 1960s he was reportedly earning about 100,000 dollars a film, helped by headlines about dating Lyndon Johnson's daughter.
To gain control he turned producer, taking the title role in Evel Knievel in 1971 with a script rewritten by John Milius, who called him totally underrated. His biggest hit came in 1979 with Love at First Bite, a comedy in which his Count Dracula pursues a Manhattan model and dances to I Love the Nightlife at a disco. He was also executive producer, and its success revived his career, though his 1981 follow-up, Zorro, The Gay Blade, did less well.
Later highlights include playing the Corleone family lawyer in The Godfather Part III in 1990 and twice playing a murderer on Columbo, in 1975 and 1991. He took over as the lawyer Billy Flynn in Chicago on Broadway in 2001, and at 66 charmed Dancing with the Stars audiences despite knee injuries. His Hollywood Walk of Fame star was unveiled on 12 August 2009, his seventieth birthday.
Source: George Hamilton (actor)
