George Maharis, the ruggedly handsome New York-born stage actor who became a television heartthrob in the 1960s as the star of the “Route 66” series, died Wednesday at his home in Beverly Hills, California. He was 94.
His friend Marc Bahan announced his death on Facebook.
Mr. Maharis’ greatest fame came from the role of Buz Murdock, one of two young men who traveled across the country in a Corvette convertible, finding a new adventure and drama (and usually a new young woman) every week on CBS’s “Route 66”.
In a 2012 reappraisal of the show, DailyExpertNews critic and reporter Neil Genzlinger praised the scripts’ literary quality, noting, “This fifty-year-old black-and-white television series tackled issues that seem very 21st-century.”
Several actors who later rose to prominence appeared on the show, including Martin Sheen, Robert Redford, Robert Duvall, and Barbara Eden.
“Route 66” began in 1960 and Mr. Maharis left the show in 1963. His co-star, Martin Milner, got a new partner, played by Glenn Corbett, and the series continued for one more season.
Mr. Maharis attributed his departure to health reasons (he suffered from hepatitis), but Karen Blocher, an author and blogger who interviewed Mr. Maharis and other key figures on the show, wrote in 2006 that the story was more complicated.
Herbert B. Leonard, the show’s executive producer, “thought he hired a young hunk for the show, a hip, sexy guy and a good actor all the girls would go for,” Ms. Blocher wrote. “All of this was true of Maharis, but not the whole story, as Leonard discovered to his anger and dismay. George was gay, it turned out.”
Ms Blocher attributes Mr Maharis’ departure to a number of factors. “The producers felt betrayed and cheated upon learning of Maharis’s sexual orientation, and never trusted him again,” she wrote, adding, “Maharis, for his part, began to feel like he carried the show and became not appreciated.”
Mr Maharis was arrested in 1967 on charges of “lewd conduct” and in 1974 on charges of “sex perversion” for snooping in men’s toilets.
He didn’t discuss his sexuality in interviews, but he proudly described being the July 1973 nude centerfold in Playgirl magazine for Esquire in 2017.
“A lot of guys came up to me,” he said, “and asked me to sign it for their ‘wives’.”
Mr. Maharis had done well-received theater work before becoming a television star. In 1958, he played a murderer in an Off Broadway production of Jean Genet’s ‘Deathwatch’. Writing in DailyExpertNews, Louis Calta described Mr. Maharis’ performance as “correctly fleeting, hard, soft and cunning”.
Two years later, Mr. Maharis in Edward Albee’s “Zoo Story” in the Off Broadway production at the Provincetown Playhouse. That year he was one of 12 young actors to receive the Theater World Award. The other winners were Warren Beatty, Jane Fonda, Patty Duke and Carol Burnett. In 1962, he received an Emmy Award nomination for his work on “Route 66.”
In 1963 Mr Maharis told a writer for The Times that he treated the TV serial as a summer theater job.
“The series has taught me how to keep my integrity and not get carried away by compromise,” he said.
George Maharis was born in the Astoria section of Queens on September 1, 1928, the son of a Greek restaurateur. He attended Flushing High School and later served in the Marines.
Before succeeding as an actor, he told interviewers, he had worked as a mechanic, dance instructor and brief cook. But he had first pursued a singing career, and after becoming a television star, he recorded albums including “George Maharis Sings!”, “Portrait in Music” and “Just Turn Me Loose!” At least one single, “Teach Me Tonight,” became a hit.
After leaving “Route 66”, Mr. Maharis appeared in feature films, including “Sylvia”, starring Carroll Baker, and “The Satan Bug”, a science fiction drama (both 1965). He tried television series again in 1970 as the star of an ABC whodunit “The Most Deadly Game”, starring Ralph Bellamy and Yvette Mimieux, but the show only lasted three months.
In the 1970s and early 1980s, he guest starred in other television series, including “Police Story,” “The Bionic Woman,” and “Fantasy Island.” He occasionally did television movies, including a poorly reviewed 1976 sequel to ‘Rosemary’s Baby’. Working infrequently in the 1980s, he made his last film appearance in a supporting role in ‘Doppelganger’, a 1993 horror film starring Drew Barrymore in the main role.
Information about his survivors was not immediately available.
Due to his filming schedule when the shows aired, Mr. Maharis didn’t have a chance to watch “Route 66” until it was re-released on DVD in 2007, he told the Route 66 News website that year.
“I was really surprised how strong they were,” he said. “For the first time I could see what other people had seen.”
In an interview the same year with The Chicago Sun-Times, he reflected on his “Route 66” days and how the country had changed since then. “You could go from one city to another, maybe 80 miles away, and it was a totally different world,” he said. “Now you can go 3,000 miles and one city is the same as the next.”