From the S&S archives:
Tamiroff says accent helps him earn parts in films

VETERAN character actor Akim Tamiroff, sweat beading his face, pulled off his fez, tugged his damp shirt from his chest and said, "Let's get out of this Italian sun and sit down on that boat over there."

Tamiroff, a short, husky man with a thick, rugged face, hitched up his yellow trousers and walked to a rowboat on its side on the Sant' Angelo beach on Ischia off Naples. Tamiroff was on the resort island to make a film, "After the Fox," with Peter Sellers, Britt Eklund, Victor Mature and director Vittorio de Sica.

He plays an Egyptian gold thief who becomes involved with conman Sellers in an attempt to smuggle stolen bullion into Italy. De Sica was shooting a crowd scene at the moment, and Tamiroff could relax and chat.

"Yeah, I'm one of the old timers in the business now." His voice still has that low growl of menace and is roughened with a heavy Russian accent that 40 years in America hasn't rubbed off. "People think I'm 102 because 30 years ago I was painting lines on my face to play 60-year-old men. Now that I'm 59, nature is doing it for me so makeup takes less time."

Tamiroff came to America in 1923 with famed Russian theater-director Stanislavsky, under whom he studied in the Soviet Union. Akim decided he liked the New World and remained after the troupe returned to Europe.

"But I was a flop in New York. I taught, I founded a makeup school and I acted for the Theater Guild, but I was a flop. So I thought I'd try Hollywood for a change of luck.

"I did a bit in a film with Gary Cooper and Shirley Temple, and after it was over Cooper came over and asked me, `What's your name?' 'Tamiroff,' I said, and my accent was much more Russian then than now. `Write it down on a piece of paper because you're going to be in more pictures with me,' Cooper said.

"So I did, but I didn't expect anything. People were always doing things like that in Hollywood then. But, by golly, Cooper meant it and I was in `Bengal Lancers' with him and then got a seven-year contract with Paramount."

It was in a film with Cooper — Ernest Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" — that Tamiroff gave what many consider the finest performance of his career, that of the guerrilla leader. He won an Academy Award nomination for the part.

"That was a wonderful film," he said.

"Cooper was so good, (Ingrid) Bergman so fresh. Everybody asks me about that one, although my favorite was one you probably never heard of, `Disputed Passage.' I was a doctor in that one and I studied for months with a real doctor so I could get it down right.

"For months afterwards I got letters from doctors, complimenting me on the realistic job I did. One even swore that I must have been a 'medical student once."

Among his more recent films, "Topkapi" and "Oceans Eleven" are among the most successful. But the one he thinks will be the best is an epic he has been working on for four years with Orson Welles.

"Son-of-a-gun, four years at work on `Don Quixote' with Welles. He gets a little money, we shoot some more. He runs out, he stops and does something else. Now he's got money and we're going to finish it this fall. What a movie! What a man he is! "

Akim plays Sancho Panza to Welles' Quixote in the movie, and is confident the picture will either be the greatest film ever made or a complete zero.

"Ah, what a talent that man has. An unlimited imagination. With Welles I'm a better actor than I actually am; I become hypnotized by his admiration.

With him I always jump higher. Sancho is my greatest part ever.

"And you know one of the reasons Welles is so great? He's also one of the greatest photographers alive. He opens actors up, just like De Sica does. He concentrates on images; he doesn't talk too much, which is no good in films.

"I just hope he finishes it this fall before something goes wrong."

Following "Fox," Tamiroff "thinks" he will go to London for a small role in a new Alec Guinness.

"But I don't know; I keep getting mysterious phone calls from London, but it's all burble-burble-burble, like talking into a milk bottle," he said, breaking up a circle of onlookers with a Jonathan Winters-like reproduction of crossed international phone lines.

"That's one of my problems, you know? American producers think I live in Europe and European producers think I live in America. So when they come up with a part for me, they throw up their hands and say, `How do we find him?' If any producer is listening, I live in Beverly Hills, California.

"Actually, finding parts is pretty easy for me, thanks to my accent. Without it I'd be competing with 14,000 others in the Screen Actors Guild; with it the opposition is down to three or four. And those aren't bad odds."

A call boy came up and said Mr. De Sica was ready for Mr. Tamiroff now.

Akim pushed his fez back in place, snubbed out his cigarette and stood up.

"Wonderful life," he said, looking around him at the picture-book scenery. "Look at the surroundings, look at the director — it's like a vacation. Broadway? Bah, I'll take the films."

And with De Sica beaming like a proud-parent, Akim Tamiroff trundled over to the set to join Peter Sellers, Britt Eklund & Co. Seconds later peering into man-made fog, he was bellowing in rage, doing what he likes best — making a film.