Telly Savalas Telly Savalas Aristotelis "Telly" Savalas (January 21, 1924 – January 22, 1994) was an American actor and singer whose career spanned four decades of television, noted for his resonant voice and his bald head. He also released the one-hit wonder song, "If?," which he introduced in the UK in 1975. Savalas's career began in films in 1961. His movie credits include "The Young Savages" (1961), "The Greatest Story Ever Told" (1965), "Battle of the Bulge" (1965), "The Dirty Dozen" (1967), "The Scalphunters" (1968), supervillain Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the James Bond film "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" (1969), "Kelly's Heroes"
Motifs in the James Bond film series be a "wink at the audience", with the suggestion that the violence was all a joke. This was shown in "Live and Let Die" when he threw the villain, Tee Hee, out of a train, removing his prosthetic arm in the process, Moore commented that he was "Just being disarming, darling". When Timothy Dalton took the role, the humour was downplayed, bringing the character more in line with that of the novels. The humour returned for the Brosnan films, with Bond admitting between kisses that he "always enjoyed studying a new tongue". Similarly, Moneypenny called Bond a "cunning linguist" after