George Hamilton

Happy Birthday to George Hamilton! Noted these days for his dashing, sporting, jet-setting playboy image and perpetually bronzed skin tones in commercials, film spoofs and reality shows, Bo Derek wrote in her autobiography that "there was an ongoing contest between John [Derek] and George Hamilton as to who was tanner." George has also had a long and distinguished career. Born George Stevens Hamilton in Memphis, TN, the son of gregarious Southern belle beauty Ann (Stevens) Potter Hamilton Hunt Spaulding, and her husband (of four), George W. "Spike" Hamilton, a touring bandleader. Moving extensively as a youth due to his father's work (Arkansas, Massachusetts, New York, California), young George got a taste of acting in plays while attending Palm Beach High School. With his exceedingly handsome looks and attractive personality, he took a bold chance and moved to Los Angeles in the late 1950s. MGM (towards the end of the contract system) saw in George a budding talent with photogenic appeal. It wasted no time putting him in films following some guest appearances on TV. His first film, a lead in Crime & Punishment, USA (1959), was an offbeat, updated adaptation of the Fyodor Dostoevsky novel. While the film was not overwhelmingly successful, George's heartthrob appeal was obvious. He was awarded a Golden Globe for "Most Promising Newcomer" as well as being nominated for "Best Foreign Actor" by the British Film Academy (BAFTA). This in turn led to an enviable series of film showcases, including the memorable Southern drama Home from the Hill (1960), which starred Robert Mitchum and Eleanor Parker and featured another handsome, up-and-coming George (George Peppard), Angel Baby (1961), in which he played an impressionable lad who meets up with evangelist Mercedes McCambridge and Light in the Piazza (1962) (another BAFTA nomination), in which he portrays an Italian playboy who falls madly for American tourist Yvette Mimieux to the ever-growing concern of her mother Olivia de Havilland.

Next came the campy sudsers All the Fine Young Cannibals (1960) and By Love Possessed (1961) and the youthful spring-break romps, the box office hit Where the Boys Are (1960), which had Connie Francis warbling the title tune while slick-as-car-seat-leather George pursued coed Dolores Hart and the less successful Looking for Love (1964), which was more of the same. Not yet undone by this mixed message of serious actor and glossy pin-up, George went on to show some real acting muscle in the offbeat casting of a number of biopics -- as Moss Hart in Act One (1963), an overly fictionalized and sanitized account of the late playwright (the real Moss should have looked so good!), as ill-fated country star Hank Williams in Your Cheatin' Heart (1964), and as the famed daredevil Evel Knievel (1971). Hamilton went to Mexico to support Jeanne Moreau and Brigitte Bardot in Viva Maria! (1965). It was directed by Louis Malle who cast Hamilton on the strength of his performance in Two Weeks in Another Town. Below-average films such as Doctor, You've Got to Be Kidding! (1967), A Time for Killing (1967) and the horror film The Power (1968) effectively ended his initially strong ascent to film stardom. He had a supporting role as a wealthy rancher whose wife was trying to leave him in the western, The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing, starring Burt Reynolds (1973)


A wonderful comeback for him came in the form of the disco-era Dracula spoof Love at First Bite (1979), which he executive-produced. Nominated for a Golden Globe as the campy neck-biter displaced and having to fend off the harsh realities of New York living, he continued on the parody road successfully with Zorro: The Gay Blade (1981) in the very best Mel Brooks tradition. This renewed popularity led to a one-year stint on Dynasty (1981) during the 1985-1986 season and a string of fun, self-mocking commercials, particularly his Ritz Cracker and (Toasted!) Wheat Thins appearances that often spoofed his overly tanned appearance. A break for Hamilton came in 1990 when Francis Ford Coppola cast him as the Corleone family's lawyer in The Godfather Part III.

For the second time, he portrayed a murderer on the television series Columbo, starring as the host of a TV true-crime show in the 1991 episode "Caution: Murder Can Be Hazardous to Your Health." He had previously been in the 1975 episode "A Deadly State of Mind". Hamilton had small roles in Doc Hollywood (1991), Once Upon a Crime (1992) Amore! (1993), Meet Wally Sparks (1997), 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag (1997), and the miniseries Rough Riders (1997), where he portrayed William Randolph Hearst. With his matinee-idol looks it was sometimes noted that Hamilton physically resembled Warren Beatty. Beatty's political satire Bulworth (1998) contained a running gag about this with Hamilton appearing as himself in a brief cameo. Hamilton had a regular role on the short lived TV series Jenny (1997). and guest starred on Diagnosis: Murder, Bonnie, Hart to Hart and Dream On. Into the millennium, he has had featured roles in the "opera singer trio reunion" comedy Off Key (2001) also starring Joe Mantegna and Danny Aiello; Woody Allen's Hollywood Ending (2002); the offbeat underground film Reflections of Evil (2002); the comedy romps The L.A. Riot Spectacular (2005) and Melvin Smarty (2012); the political drama The Congressman (2016); the family dramedy Silver Skies (2016); and the romantic comedy Swiped (2018). On TV, he enhanced several programs including Nash Bridges, Pushing Daisies, Hot in Cleveland and Grace and Frankie. He also had a recurring role on the series American Housewife (2016).


Beginning in the summer of 2016, Hamilton appeared in TV commercials as the "Extra Crispy" sun-tanned version of KFC's Colonel Harland Sanders. He later played the Colonel on an episode of General Hospital. Starting in the fall of 2011, Hamilton starred as "Georges" for the national tour of the Tony-winning revival of La Cage aux Folles. Hamilton was married to actress Alana Stewart from 1972 to 1975. Their son, actor Ashley Hamilton, was born in 1974. According to Burt Reynolds' autobiography, Hamilton has a healthy sense of humor, even when the humor is directed at him: Reynolds once made up a birthday card for Hamilton with a composite photograph of Tony Curtis and Anthony Perkins, titled "To George, love from Mum and Dad". Hamilton found the card hilarious and showed it to everybody. My One and Only, a 2009 comedy film starring Renée Zellweger and Logan Lerman, was loosely based on a story about George Hamilton's early life on the road with his mother and brother, featuring anecdotes that Hamilton had told to Merv Griffin. He was once engaged to actress Susan Kohner, a former co-star.