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This Hollywood Star Was Being Robbed at Knifepoint, Until the Man He Once Portrayed Onscreen Rescued Him from Certain Death
As the knife was being pushed against his back, the Hollywood actor Anthony Quinn was commanded by his attacker to turn around. Frozen in place, Quinn must have believed that he was in imminent danger of agonizing death, although he was, professionally, a master at disguising his emotions.
The success of the movie Zorba the Greek in 1964 secured for him an Oscar nomination for best actor (as Zorba), but none of that mattered now, with the cold steel inches away from penetrating vital organs and ending his career with one false move.
The scene is Central Park, and a desperate mugger had picked out Quinn — who knows why — as a suitable target for armed robbery. But to understand what happened next, we have to know more about Zorba the Greek himself, Nikos Kazantzakis’s voluble, life-loving creation who laughed at death, and inspired hundreds of thousands of readers with his philosophy of “living immediately and intensely.”
I found my way to Kazantzakis because of Colin Wilson’s discussions of Zorba the Greek in his book…
