Acting
Nov 20, 1907
Piestany, Austria-Hungary [now Piestany, Slovakia]
Charles Korvin
Acting
Biography
Charles Korvin (born Géza Korvin Kárpáthy) was an American film, television and stage actor. He was also a professional still and motion picture photographer and master chef. The Hungarian actor moved to Paris around 1930. He studied at the Sorbonne and during his ten years living in France, he was hired by Yvon, the famous French postcard company, shooting on location all over the country. In 1937, he was hired for a CBC documentary film project about the renowned Canadian medical doctor, Norman Bethune. Entitled “Heart of Spain”, Korvin photographed and co-directed the anti-Franco film which was shot on the front lines during the Spanish Civil War. Moving to the United States in 1940, Korvin studied acting and stagecraft at the Barter Theater in Abingdon, Virginia. As Géza Korvin, he made his Broadway stage debut in 1943, playing a Russian nobleman in the play, Dark Eyes. After signing a movie contract with Universal Pictures, he changed his stage name to Charles Korvin. He worked steadily through the 1940s, including appearing in three films with actress Merle Oberon. He was blacklisted around 1952, refused to testify before the HUAC, and his film career was halted. Turning to the newly burgeoning, and much less political, field of broadcast television, Korvin starred in early productions for Playhouse 90, Studio One, and US Steel Hour. He played The Eagle for six contiguous episodes on Disney's Zorro and played Latin dance instructor Carlos on The Honeymooners episode "Mama Loves Mambo." In 1960, he starred as Inspector Duval in the UK/US television series Interpol Calling produced by J. Arthur Rank. During these years, Korvin returned to off-Broadway theater starring as the king in Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I with runs at the Westbury Music Fair and the St. Louis Municipal Opera. He was back on Broadway in the mid-1960s starring as the upstairs neighbor in Neil Simon’s Tony Award winning play, “Barefoot in the Park”. In 1964, he returned to Hollywood to play the ship’s captain in Stanley Kramer’s Academy Award winning film, Ship of Fools. Remaining active in later years, he was the voice of the Red Baron for eight years on television and radio ads for Lufthansa Airlines. For more than 25 years, Korvin, with his wife Anne, were part-of-the-year residents in Klosters, Switzerland, where he enjoyed skiing, cooking and entertaining with friends and fellow part time residents Irwin and Marion Shaw, Greta Garbo, Salka Viertel, Deborah Kerr, Robert Ricci, John Fairchild and Gaetan de Rosnay among others. Korvin claimed to have been Greta Garbo's last dance partner. Julia Child, another long time friend, was interviewed in 1978 by Dick Cavett on his PBS television show. When he asked her to name her favorite “amateur” chef, Child replied, “Charles Korvin”.
Feature Films (14)
A varied group of passengers aboard a ship bound for pre-WWII Germany represents a microcosm of early-1930s society.
Ship of Fools
In New York, Sheila Bennet and her spouse, Matt Krane, are trying to unload a trove of rare jewels they smuggled into America from Cuba, but the police are hot on the couple's trail. Meanwhile, government officials begin a desperate search for an unknown individual who is infecting the city with smallpox.
The Killer That Stalked New York
In post-war Europe, a diverse group of passengers aboard a U.S. Army train to bombed-out Frankfurt becomes involved in a Nazi assassination plot.
Berlin Express
After marrying an archaeologist, a Victorian-era woman with a sordid past realizes that she is not ready to settle down with one man.
Temptation
An American ex-WW II POW returns to Germany 30 years after the war. He teams up with the former commander of his prison camp. Together they spring a Nazi war criminal from jail. He's the only one left who knows where a secret wartime cache of gold is hidden.
Inside Out
Television & Series (22)
The F.B.I. is an American television series that was broadcast on ABC from 1965 to 1974. It was sponsored by the Ford Motor Company, and the characters almost always drove Ford vehicles in the series. Alcoa was co-sponsor of Season One only.
The F.B.I.
An American radio–television anthology series, created in 1947 by Canadian director Fletcher Markle, who came to CBS from the CBC. Studio One, presented by Westinghouse, was one of the first of the anthology TV programs. The episodes were often abridged remakes of movies from years gone by and many future well-known television and movie actors appeared in the productions.
Studio One
Diego de la Vega, the son of a wealthy landowner, returns from his studies in Spain and discovers that Los Angeles is under the command of Capitan Monastario, a cruel man who relishes in the misuse of his power for personal gain. Knowing that he cannot hope to single-handedly defeat Monastario and his troops, Diego resorts to subterfuge. He adopts the secret identity of Zorro, a sinister figure dressed in black, and rides to fight Monastario's injustice.
Zorro
A bus driver and his sewer worker friend struggle to strike it rich while their wives look on with weary patience. One of the most influential situation comedy television series in American history.
The Honeymooners
The adventures of Interpol policemen Duval and Mornay as they fought against international drug-running, homicide, robbery and forgery.
