1. One of the premier character actors of Hollywood's Golden Age, Tamiroff developed a prolific career despite his thick accent, appearing in at least 80 motion pictures over a span of 37 years.
16 Facts About Akim Tamiroff
1. 2.
Akim Tamiroff was nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performances in The General Died at Dawn and For Whom the Bell Tolls, winning the first ever Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor for the latter.
3.
Akim Tamiroff's father was an oil worker, and his mother a seamstress.
4.
Akim Tamiroff trained at the Moscow Art Theatre drama school for nine years from the age of 19, where he was a pupil of Konstantin Stanislavski.
5.
Akim Tamiroff arrived in the US for the first time in January 1923 on a three-month tour with the revue and starred in a repertory of Russian plays directed by Stanislavski.
6.
Akim Tamiroff joined the Theatre Guild in New York City, where he met his wife Tamara Shayne.
7.
Akim Tamiroff performed in several more uncredited roles until 1935, when he appeared in The Lives of a Bengal Lancer.
8.
Akim Tamiroff appeared in the lavish epic China Seas in 1935 with Clark Gable, Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow, Rosalind Russell and Robert Benchley.
9.
Akim Tamiroff appeared in the 1937 musical High, Wide, and Handsome with Irene Dunne and Randolph Scott, and the 1938 proto-noir Dangerous to Know opposite Anna May Wong, frequently singled out as his best role.
10.
Akim Tamiroff had a long collaboration with Orson Welles including Mr Arkadin, Touch of Evil with Charlton Heston, The Trial, and as Sancho Panza in Welles's unfinished version of Don Quixote.
11.
In 1944, Akim Tamiroff was the first Golden Globe Award winner for Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture for his work in For Whom the Bell Tolls.
12.
Akim Tamiroff was twice nominated for Academy Awards, both times for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.
13.
Akim Tamiroff's accepted birth year was 1899, although in at least two instances this appeared to be different.
14.
Akim Tamiroff married fellow actress Tamara Shayne, with whom he performed nightclub acts, in February 1933 in Los Angeles.
15.
Pufnstuf entitled "The Stand-in" in which a frog named "Akim Tamiroff Toadanoff" directs a movie on Living Island.
16.
Akim Tamiroff is mentioned in JD Salinger's "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut", and Walker Percy's 1961 novel The Moviegoer.