Acting

Titos Vandis

Titos Vandis (7 November 1917 – 23 February 2003) was a Greek actor. Vandis began his career on the Greek stage in the late 1930s. In 1962, he won the Best Actor award for the film Poliorkia at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival. Vandis left Greece when a dictatorship took power and lived in the United States for 24 years. Vandis appeared in over 250 plays before making his Broadway debut in the Tony-nominated musical On A Clear Day You Can See Forever (1965). Vandis was in the original Broadway cast and led the title song in Illya Darling (1967), a musical based on his film Never on Sunday (1960). The title character Illya was a carefree Greek prostitute. Newsday critic George Oppenheimer wrote, "Major credit goes to Titos Vandis for his playing of Illya's oldest client, who sings and dances as rousingly as the youngsters ..." Vandis reprised his role in a Westbury Music Fair production in 1968. Newsday critic Murry Frymer wrote that Vandis "... is delightfully authentic. In fact, he's better than that. Vandis has been in both the film Never on Sunday and the Broadway production of Illya Darling and he's not tired of it at all. His portrayal was fresh and kept bringing the affair back to the colorful gayety that bubbled through the motion picture." In 1970 Vandis joined the cast of Man of La Mancha as Sancho Panza at the Martin Beck Theater. He also played the title role in the musical Zorba at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, NJ. Critic W. C. Flahault wrote, "His portrayal of the Greek vagabond with an eye for the girls has an earthiness which brings reality to the role."