Robert Drivas

Robert Drivas (November 21, 1938 – June 29, 1986) was an American actor and theatre director.

Life and early career

Drivas was born Robert Choromokos in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Hariklia (née Cunningham-Wright) and James Peter Choromokos. Drivas studied at the University of Chicago and the University of Miami with further training at the Greek Playhouse in Athens, Greece. He made his stage debut in Night Must Fall in Coral Gables, Florida, before going on to appear in Tea and Sympathy in the role of Tom Lee at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Miami, and in The Lady's Not for Burning, Death of a Salesman, Thieves' Ball, and A View from the Bridge at the Highland Park Playhouse in Chicago. According to Thomas W. Ennis writing in The New York Times, Tennessee Williams saw Drivas in Tea and Sympathy and asked him to take the lead in his play Sweet Bird of Youth, which had its premiere in Coconut Grove at George Keathley's Studio M Playhouse in 1956.

Broadway

He made his Broadway debut in the role of Rameses in 1958 in the play The Firstborn, directed by and starring Anthony Quayle as Moses. He continued to perform on stage, as Jacko in the Beverley Cross play One More River (1960), with George C. Scott in the Warsaw Ghetto play The Wall (1960), as Alfred Drake's son Giorgio in the Italian Renaissance set Lorenzo (1963), as the British beatnik son of Cyril Ritchard in The Irregular Verb to Love (1963), and in And Things That Go Bump in the Night (1965), which he also directed. In 1963 he won a Theatre World Award for his performance in Mrs. Dally Has a Lover (opposite Estelle Parsons).