Dimitris Papamichael ΔΗΜΗΤΡΗΣ ΠΑΠΑΜΙΧΑΗΛ
Born August 1934 Died August 2004
Section 4, Number 467
The name Dimitris Papamichael may not fire up the neurons in foreign lovers of cinema but it can still short circuit the synapses of any Greek fan, - even 50 years after his last appearance in a Finos Film blockbuster.
He was astoundingly handsome as a young man and as famous for his 10 year marriage to Greece’s favourite cinema heroine Aliki Vougiouklaki as for any role he played. In their films together he was the ‘teacher’, the ‘shepherd’ the ‘poor fisherman’, the ‘industrialist’, the ‘worker’, the ‘sailor’, the ‘soldier’ or whoever was required to be the foil and love interest of Aliki. Theirs was a winning combination that may have lasted even longer if their marriage had not self destructed.
The ‘Aliki years’ were a strange interlude for someone who would rather have been remembered for his serious roles in drama, whether ancient or modern. That was the career path he had been on before he became Greece’s cinema heartthrob and one he would continue to pursue in later life. In spite of that, much of his fame and popularity was based on the public’s affection for him as Aliki’s prince charming. Their relationship in films defined an entire era of Greek culture – for better or worse.
Who was he really? It is hard to know. People like Papamichael live in a cultural milieu where public and personal personas fuse, partly by their own design and partly because the public sees what it wants to see. He lived long enough to become an icon and for interviewers to treat him like a ‘grand old man’ and not probe too deeply. Fair enough. That he was complicated there is no doubt, and he was truly talented. It is impossible to say what trajectory his career might have taken had he not met Aliki Vougiouklaki.
His Life
Papamichael was the third child of Ioannis Papamichael and the first of his second wife Eleni. His parents had a coffee shop in the heart of the Piraeus peninsula in an area called Hatzikyriakeio (Χατζηκυριάκειο).(1) His childhood was marred by the Second World War and especially by the 1941 bombing of the city. His parents sent him to Kranidi on the Peloponnese for the last two years of the war to keep him safe. He never forgot those war years and, like many children traumatized by the German occupation, vowed to become a pilot and bomb Germans when he grew up. His family were not well off and, as a student, he helped out in the café. Their hopes for him were modest. The Greek textile firm Piraeus Patraiki was expanding after the Greek civil war and offering scholarships to students willing to study in England. Dimitris was one of these students, so his decision in 1952 to enrol in the Drama School of the National Theatre instead did not sit well with his parents. His determination to attend finally persuaded his father to relent. Apparently he and Aliki Vougiouklaki auditioned on the same day and were accepted but their relationship, other than the usual jostling of students to be noticed, did not develop at this point.
He graduated from the drama school with a grade of ‘excellent’ (‘aριστα’) and was almost immediately taken under the wing of actor Despo Diamantidou who was already a star in the National Theatre and, according to some articles, one of his teachers at the Drama School. It was a relationship that would last a decade in spite of the difference in their ages. He was 21; she was 39.
A Word About Despo
Despo Diamantidou is perhaps best known today as the closest friend of Melina Mercouri and a feisty prostitute in Never on Sunday. But she too had started out in serious theatre, playing in National Theatre productions as well as roles in the Art Theatre of Karolos Koun (Θέατρο Τέχνης «Κάρολος Κουν). Her first role in the National Theatre had been in Medea in 1942. She returned to the National Theatre between the years 1954 and 1963. Dynamic, well read, and independent, she was in a perfect position to mentor the young actor and help his career choices.
The Beginning
His first significant role was in Chekov’s The Seagull. He played the ghost of Polydoros in Euripedes’ Hecuba (Εκάβη) in 1955, in the first year of the now famous Epidauros Festival. With Despo, he worked in the Art Theatre of Karolos Koun and independently in other productions involving Greek stars such as Givelli, Katina Paxinou and Alexis Minotis. He was on the fast track to theatrical success and living in Kolonaki in the same building as Despo. By all accounts, it was an affectionate and happy relationship.
1957 saw him awarded the prestigious Kotopouli award (2) (Βραβείο Κοτοπούλη) and, in the same year he played the god Apollo in the Oresteia of Aeschylus while Despo played the prophetess Pythia:
Papamichael on the left and Despo dressed as Pythia
The Middle
Then, Dimitris got a part in the 1959 Finos Film Το ξύλο βγήκε από τον παράδεισο,(3) a title almost impossible to translate and a plot even harder to fit into the norms of 2024. He played Panos Floras, a serious minded teacher in a private girl’s school full of exceptionally nubile and spoiled young women more interested in humiliating him than learning. Aliki Vougiouklaki was the leader of the spoiled girls. There is quite a lot of cheek slapping and melodrama but, of course they fall in love and all ends well. It was voted the best film between the years 1955-60 at the Thessaloniki Film Festival. You can form your own opinion of that assessment either with excerpts on youtube or by waiting to catch it on one of its many reruns on Greek television. (4)
Their charisma and chemistry on screen took Greece by storm. They would make more than a dozen films together, mostly comedies, and mostly involving songs that are still popular today. (5) They did not fall in love immediately.
Note who gets top billing, an issue that irritated Papamichael from the get go.
Despo’s influence no doubt got him a role in Jules Dassin’s Never on Sunday (Ποτέ την Κυριακή) in 1960. (6)
And, in 1963 he appeared in the star studded film The Red Lanterns (Τα κόκκινα φανάρια) in which he plays Petros, the innocent love interest; Despo is the madam of a brothel. This film was billed as a serious film, but I will leave it to you to be the judge of that. It can be watched on youtube in its entirety.
Despo’s friends were already telling her to keep her partner away from Aliki. But that would not likely have been in her character or her power.
The fact that Papamichael proposed to Aliki on stage during a theatrical performance in 1964 before telling Despo does not do him much credit. That is how she learned their affair was over. (7)
She sent them flowers…
Aliki and Papamichael married in Delphi on January 18, 1965 and had a son, Ioannis, in 1969.
It was not only a cinematic partnership; they played together in theatre as well. One of their most popular productions was Shaw’s My Fair Lady.
It was a stormy marriage from the beginning, involving arguments and physical violence. Playing second fiddle to Aliki in life or on film could not have been easy and, although Papamichael had no problem holding his own in the films and, in fact, was often very, very good, he was not the star. She knew it and so did Filopoimin Finos, their producer, who would side with Aliki when an argument about precedence or favour broke out.
Everyone has a favourite Aliki-Papamichael film. Mine was 1968’s Τhe Lady and the Tramp (Η αρχόντισσα κι ο αλήτης) in which a wealthy Aliki masquerades as a boy in order to escape an unsuitable marriage and Dimitris, a poor, honest lad (of course) helps her, unaware that she is a woman until quite a way through the film!
Aliki as a boy
It is a variation on a well worn theme and kitsch to boot, but they both did it well and it was good fun.
By 1968, it was not even necessary to name the stars in an advertisement. They were that famous:
In 1971, Papamichael branched out without Aliki, to star in Pappaflessas, a film about one of the great heroes of the Greek revolution.
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Where he did get top billing
It was an expensive blockbuster by Greek standards and won acclaim at the 12th annual Thessaloniki Film Festival where many hailed it as the greatest moment in his career thus far. In later interviews, he would agree.
July 20th 1974 saw the police called to their home where Papamichael was beating his wife. Only the fact that it was the same day Turkey invaded Cyprus and that all Greek men of military age, including him, had been called up to active duty, stopped the police from arresting him. It was the beginning of an end that many had been predicting for years. They divorced in 1975. He remarried in the same year to Nana Elikrini (Νανά Ειλικρινή).
The Rest
Papamichael returned to playing the serious roles and the ancient dramas of his early career. In 1978, He played an actor playing Jason in the Jules Dassin film A Dream of Passion (Κραυγή Γυναικών) about a production of Medea. In it, Papamichael is reunited with, not just Melina Mercouri, but also with his former lover Despo who plays Melina’s best friend. (I get the oddest feeling the actors were simply playing themselves.) You can see it in its entirety on youtube. Dassin considered it his best film.
In 1981, Papamichael played Macbeth in a National Theatre production.
And yet…
Unfinished Business…
Aliki’s influence in his life never really faded, nor did her stellar career. She continued to wow audiences at her theatre night after night. He did choose to play opposite her again in the theatre productions of Educating Rita in 1984 and Filumena in 1986. The public still wanted to see them together but his reason for reuniting with Aliki are probably very complicated indeed. During a television talk show when both were present, she maintained perfect control of her image, but Papamichael’s body language exuded discomfort. Aliki complimented his then wife saying that she had had the ‘code’ for Dimitris but that she herself could never find the right ‘button’. She is smiling about something in her past; he is not smiling at all. (8)
In 1988, Papamichael appeared once more in Epidauros, this time in the Agamemnon of Aeschylus.
He also played in the Britannia Theatre of Mimi Denissis (Μιμή Ντενίση)(9) in lighter fare. By the early 90s he had become so obese that he was scarcely recognizable when he came on stage; the crowd didn’t care. They gave him a standing ovation. I know because I was there.
Papamichael with Mimi Denissis
Aliki’s sudden death from cancer in 1996 was a blow. And, like thousands of others, he attended her funeral and mourned.
His final years were full of health issues. He last appeared on stage in 2004, two years before his death from a heart attack.
Afterword
In one of his last interviews he said the role he would have liked to play but never did was as King Lear. Did he feel some empathy for a man who had alienated himself from his family and was lost on a storm of his own making? I wonder…
In a deliberate snub to his son, he disinherited him in what can only be described as a very nastily worded clause in his will. Many have tried to figure out why. His own son believed that it was a kind of transference onto him after his mother died – that he then became the target of his father’s complicated feelings. Still, it is a rather sad coda to a long and successful career.
The Grave
He is all alone here. Most theatre and film stars, including Aliki, are in the Plaza or gathered all together in Section 14.
Section 4, Number 467
Footnotes
(1) In homage to his city of birth, he became a city council member for Piraeus between 1986 and 1990.
(2) This theatrical award was named in honour of Marika Kotopouli. Receiving it was a great honour. Melina Mercouri won it in 1953.
(3) Χylo apo Paradisos literally means Beating comes from Paradise. To ‘eat wood’(xylo) in Greece is to be beaten. It suggests that getting slapped, as so many do in the film, was god given! Well! It was a striking title that got changed to Maidens Cheek in English.
(4) Finos film digitized its productions and rents them out – hence, no free look on youtube,
(5) Both were good singers and excellent composers would be hired to write songs for their films. Aliki is more well known for this talent but if you google the songs of Dimitris Papamichael, a list of his hits comes up.
(6) This was not a Finos Film production. Finos passed it up. He did not think Melina could ever be a star. Her mouth was too big.
(7) Despo seems to have been very forgiving and, in old age, she and Dimitris were friends, each praising the other publically.
(9) Mimi Denissi was something of a rival of Aliki although much younger. She had her own theatre near Syntagma Square and tells the story of how insecure Dimitris was as an actor. She had a tough time talking him out of leaving a few days before an opening. His image always mattered to him.
Sources
And innumerable sites, even in English. I do not list all of his appearances in films and theatre because this information is easily available on the internet and it would be a very long list.
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