10 Facts We’ve Sleuthed Out About ‘Kojak,’ Now 50 Years Old

Who loves ya, baby? A half century ago now — on October 24, 1973 — Kojak debuted on CBS, with the late Telly Savalas playing the tough-guy NYPD detective TV Guide Magazine once named the 18th greatest television character in the history of the medium.

To celebrate Kojak’s 50th anniversary, here are 10 fascinating facts about the cop drama.

1. It started with a TV movie based on real-life murders.

TV writer Abby Mann introduced Savalas’ Kojak — spelled “Kojack” at the time — in the 1973 CBS movie The Marcus-Nelson Murders. That movie was inspired by Justice in the Back Room, Sewyn Raab’s book about the Wylie-Hoffert murders.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rI8Ezon_h0

In both the real-life case and the TV movie, a Black teen was falsely accused of the murder of two white women. The real case — in which George Whitmore Jr. was convicted for killings he didn’t commit — ended up a factor in the Supreme Court ruling that established Miranda rights for criminal suspects, according to The New York Times.

2. The show was a family affair — though that wasn’t evident for two seasons.

Telly Savalas’ brother George Savalas starred as Detective Stavros on Kojak. For the first two seasons of the series, however, Kojak’s credits listed him under the mononym Demosthenes, George’s middle name.

3. Savalas used lollipops to curb his smoking habit.

Viewers often saw Telly Savalas’ detective character sucking on a lollipop while working a case — a quirk first seen in Kojak’s eighth episode, “Dark Sunday,” per MeTV.

For both Kojak and Savalas himself, the lollipop fixation was an effort to smoke fewer cigarettes. But the on-screen candy consumption also gave the actor three cavities, according to his official website.

4. The show won Emmys, Golden Globes, and even an Edgar.

Savalas won the Lead Actor in a Drama Series Emmy Award for his Kojak work in 1974. The following year, guest star Zohra Lampert won an Emmy for her performance in Season 2’s “Queen of the Gypsies.”

Savalas also won two Golden Globe Awards for playing Kojak, and the show itself won the Golden Globe for Best Television Series – Drama in 1976.

That same year, Kojak writer Joe Gores won an Edgar Allen Poe Award — bestowed by the Mystery Writers of America — for penning the Season 3 episode “No Immunity for Murder.”

5. Queen Elizabeth II was a fan.

Kojak was Queen Elizabeth II’s favorite TV program by the time the late British monarch met Savalas at a 1976 state dinner thrown by then-U.S. President Gerald Ford, per TIME. “Certainly, the royal family are keen television watchers,” a British Embassy spokesperson told The Washington Post in 1983.

6. The show inspired audio dramas released on vinyl.

In 1977, Peter Pan Records issued the vinyl record Kojak, featuring “four exciting, super-dynamic detective stories” starring the chrome-domed crime-solver. Those stories were “A Question of Honor,” “Five Star Final,” “Tourist Trap,” and “The Prodigal Son.”

7. Kojak nearly had a cameo in Superman.

In an early script for the 1978 film Superman, Christopher Reeve’s Man of Steel thinks he sees the bald pate of Lex Luthor but instead finds Savalas’ detective, who gives the superhero that familiar Kojak catchphrase: “Who loves ya, baby?”

8. A succession of TV movies contained the Kojak story.

CBS canceled Kojak in 1978 amid faltering ratings, Savalas’ website reports. But the actor reprised the role in two TV movies for CBS — 1985’s The Belarus File and 1987’s The Price of Justice — and five more for ABC — 1989’s Ariana and Fatal Flaw and 1990’s Flowers for Matty, It’s Always Something, and None So Blind. For the ABC movies, Kojak was bumped up to inspector status, and Andre Braugher joined the cast as Detective Winston Blake.

9. Ving Rhames starred in a Kojak remake in 2005.

Though it only lasted 10 episodes, USA Network trotted out a new Kojak TV series in 2005, with Ving Rhames taking over the detective part and Chazz Palminteri, Roselyn Sánchez, and Michael Kelly filling supporting roles.

Lollipops aside, the remake bore little resemblance to the original. “It’s almost like when an actor plays Hamlet,” Rhames told reporters at the time, per the New York Post. “The setting is similar — it’s a New York police station — but each actor brings their own unique qualities to the role.”

10. Vin Diesel was attached to a big-screen Kojak movie.

In 2012, Universal Pictures hired Skyfall scribes Neal Purvis and Robert Wade to write a Kojak movie, with Vin Diesel attached as star and executive producer, according to Deadline. Two and a half years later, Universal assigned the project to playwright Philip Gawthorne, as Variety reported, but there have been no updates about the possible film since then.