Richard Bakalyan

Who is Richard Bakalyan?

Richard Bakalyan is an American character actor who started his career playing juvenile delinquents in his first several films. He had some fun experience having served a year's probation at age 15. During the filming of the The Cool and the Crazy, he and fellow actor Dick Jones were arrested for vagrancy in Kansas City. They were standing on the corner between takes in "JD" outfits and the police thought that they were actual gang members. It took several hours for the film crew to explain to the police what was going on, and had them released from jail.

Richard Bakalyan's mother was Canadian, from Nova Scotia, and his father was from Armenia, his name was William Nishan Bakalyan, and his mother's name was Elsie Florence.

As he grew out of these roles, he became something of a comic heavy, often in Disney films. He had an uncredited role in The Greatest Story Ever Told as the good thief on the cross. He appeared in several of Frank Sinatra's movies during the 1960s. He has also appeared on numerous television shows from the 1950s through the 2000s.

He became a good friend of Bobby Darin after appearing together in Pressure Point and was a regular on The Bobby Darin Show. He was one of the last people to see Darin alive prior to his death from heart disease.