For Your Eyes Only (film) helicopter picks him up for an emergency. Control of the helicopter is taken over by remote control by a bald man in a grey Nehru jacket with a white cat. This character is unnamed in either the film or the credits, although he looks and sounds like Ernst Stavro Blofeld as played by Donald Pleasence or Telly Savalas. Director John Glen referred to the identity of the villain obliquely: "We just let people use their imaginations and draw their own conclusions ... It's a legal thing". The character is deliberately not named due to copyright restrictions with Kevin McClory, who
Telly Savalas sweet tooth, Savalas also smoked heavily onscreen—cigarettes, cigarillos and cigars—throughout the first season's episodes. The lollipops, which Savalas later admitted had given him three cavities, were also part of an (unsuccessful) effort by Kojak (and Savalas himself) to curb his smoking. The critic Clive James explained the lead actor's appeal as Kojak: "Telly Savalas can make bad slang sound like good slang and good slang sound like lyric poetry. It isn't what he is, so much as the way he talks, that gets you tuning in." David Shipman later wrote: "Kojak was sympathetic to outcasts and ruthless with social predators.