Robert Drivas was an American actor and theatre director.

Drivas was born Robert Choromokos in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Hariklia (née

Married and maiden names

A married name is the family name adopted by a person upon marriage. When a person assumes the family name of her spouse, the new name replaces the maiden name....

 Cunningham-Wright) and James Peter Choromokos. Drivas studied at the University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

 and the University of Miami

University of Miami

The University of Miami is a private, non-sectarian university founded in 1925 with its main campus in Coral Gables, Florida, a medical campus in Miami city proper at Civic Center, and an oceanographic research facility on Virginia Key., the university currently enrolls 15,629 students in 12...

. After further training at the Greek Playhouse in Athens, Greece and with the Coconut Grove Playhouse

Coconut Grove Playhouse

The Coconut Grove Playhouse was a legitimate theater in the Coconut Grove neighborhood of Miami, Florida, United States.The building was originally constructed as a movie theater called the Player's State Theater. It first opened on January 3, 1927 as a part of the Paramount chain. The movie house...

 in Miami Beach, he made his New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 debut in the role of Rameses in 1958 in the play The Firstborn, starring Anthony Quayle

Anthony Quayle

Sir John Anthony Quayle, CBE was an English actor and director.-Early life:Quayle was born in Ainsdale, Southport, in Lancashire to a Manx family....

 as Moses

Moses

Moses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...

. He continued to perform on stage with One More River (1960), The Wall (1960), The Irregular Verb to Love (1963), and And Things That Go Bump in the Night (1965), which he also directed. In 1963 he won a Theatre World Award

Theatre World Award

The Theatre World Award, first awarded for the 1945-46 season, is an American honor presented annually to actors and actresses in recognition of an outstanding New York City stage debut performance, either on Broadway or off-Broadway.-History:...

 for his performance in Mrs. Dally Has a Lover (opposite Estelle Parsons

Estelle Parsons

Estelle Margaret Parsons is an American theatre, film and television actress and occasional theatrical director.After studying law, Parsons became a singer before deciding to pursue a career in acting. She worked for the television program Today and made her stage debut in 1961...

).

Drivas was associated with many well-known theatrical figures of his time. These included playwright

Playwright

A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...

s Terrence McNally

Terrence McNally

Terrence McNally is an American playwright who has received four Tony Awards, an Emmy, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, the Lucille Lortel Award, the Hull-Warriner Award, and a citation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has been a member of the Council of the...

, whose play The Ritz

The Ritz (play)

The Ritz is a play by Terrence McNally. Actress Rita Moreno won a Tony Award for her performance as Googie Gomez in the 1975 Broadway production, which she and many others of the original cast reprised in a 1976 film version directed by Richard Lester....

he directed in 1975, and Edward Albee

Edward Albee

Edward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story , The Sandbox , Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , and a rewrite of the screenplay for the unsuccessful musical version of Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's . His works are considered well-crafted, often...

, who directed Drivas in the 1983 premiere of Albee's harshly received play The Man Who Had Three Arms

The Man Who Had Three Arms

This is a two-act play for three actors by Edward Albee.The play takes place in a theatre where the main character HIMSELF is about to speak to the assembled group about his life of celebrity as The Man Who Had Three Arms...

. Other directing credits include Bad Habits

Bad Habits (play)

Bad Habits is play by Terrence McNally.The comedy is composed of what originally were written as two one-act plays set in sanatoriums. In Ravenswood, a doctor allows his patients to indulge in all their bad habits as means of finding happiness...

, for which he won an Obie Award

Obie Award

The Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards given by The Village Voice newspaper to theatre artists and groups in New York City...

, Legend, Cheaters, It Had to Be You, a revival of the musical Little Me

Little Me

Little Me was the parody "confessional" self-indulgent autobiography of "Belle Poitrine" , subtitled The Intimate Memoirs of the Great Star of Stage, Screen and Television, by Patrick Dennis, who had achieved a great success with Auntie Mame...

, and Peg, a musical biography of songstress Peggy Lee

Peggy Lee

Peggy Lee was an American jazz and popular music singer, songwriter, composer, and actress in a career spanning six decades. From her beginning as a vocalist on local radio to singing with Benny Goodman's big band, she forged a sophisticated persona, evolving into a multi-faceted artist and...

, with lyrics and book by the star herself.

Concurrent with his theater work, Drivas appeared in television, beginning in 1958, on such crime shows and dramas as Route 66

Route 66 (TV series)

Route 66 is an American TV series in which two young men traveled across America. The show ran weekly on CBS from 1960 to 1964. It starred Martin Milner as Tod Stiles and, for two and a half seasons, George Maharis as Buz Murdock. Maharis was ill for much of the third season, during which time Tod...

, N.Y.P.D., The Defenders, The Fugitive

The Fugitive (TV series)

The Fugitive is an American drama series produced by QM Productions and United Artists Television that aired on ABC from 1963 to 1967. David Janssen stars as Richard Kimble, a doctor from the fictional town of Stafford, Indiana, who is falsely convicted of his wife's murder and given the death...

, 12 O-Clock High (TV series)

Twelve O'Clock High

Twelve O'Clock High is a 1949 American war film about aircrews in the United States Army's Eighth Air Force who flew daylight bombing missions against Nazi Germany and occupied France during the early days of American involvement in World War II. The film was adapted by Sy Bartlett, Henry King ...

, and The F.B.I..

Drivas' first theatrical film appearance was in the role of "Loudmouth Steve" in the classic prison drama Cool Hand Luke

Cool Hand Luke

Cool Hand Luke is a 1967 American prison drama film directed by Stuart Rosenberg and starring Paul Newman. The screenplay was adapted by Donn Pearce and Frank Pierson from Pearce's 1965 novel of the same name. The film features George Kennedy, Strother Martin, J.D...

(1967). This debut led to more film work, in The Illustrated Man (1969) and Where It's At (1969).

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