Vasilis Logothetidis

Logothetidis was born in 1898 in Myriofyto (today Mürefte, in Turkey), a Greek village on the Sea of Marmara in Eastern Thrace, and grew up in Constantinople. As a young man he came to Athens and went on the stage; from 1919 he acted for many years in the company of Marika Kotopouli, the great actress of the day, learning his craft in front of popular audiences. Greece at that time had a lively theatre scene of revues, operettas and comedies, and a comic actor had to sing, dance and improvise.

Between the wars he became a leading actor, and in 1947 he founded his own theatre company, which he led until his death and which was one of the most successful in Athens. Its great strength was comedy of manners: plays about the middle-class Athenian family, its money worries, its jealousies and its dreams of respectability. Many of these plays were written for him by the comic writers Alekos Sakellarios and Christos Giannakopoulos, and he played them for years to full houses. His companion of many years, the actress Ilia Livykou, was often his partner on stage and on screen.

After the Second World War, Greek cinema began to grow, and from the early 1950s Logothetidis brought his best stage roles to the screen. In less than ten years he made a series of hit films that turned him into a star known in every Greek home. He was still working, on stage and in film, when he died at his home in Palaio Faliro, Athens, in February 1960. His death was felt as the end of an era of Greek comedy.

Logothetidis's great creation was a type: the small, honest, slightly cowardly man of the Athenian middle class, who wants a quiet life and keeps getting into trouble. He is afraid of his wife, of his boss and of what the neighbours will say, he lies to get out of a mess and only makes it worse, and in the end his good heart wins. Audiences recognised themselves and their fathers in him. His comedy was not slapstick; it lived in his voice, his pauses, his frightened eyes and his small, fussy movements.

His best-known films came between 1952 and 1958, many of them directed by Alekos Sakellarios. In Ένα βότσαλο στη λίμνη (A Pebble in the Lake, 1952), as the title says, one small event is enough to stir up a calm family life. Δεσποινίς ετών 39 (Miss Aged 39, 1954) followed, and in Giorgos Tzavellas' Η κάλπικη λίρα (The Counterfeit Coin, 1955) he plays the first of its four stories. Ο Ζηλιαρόγατος (The Jealous Tomcat, 1956), also by Tzavellas, is the comedy of a husband tortured by jealousy. Ένας ήρως με παντούφλες (A Hero in Slippers, 1958) sums up his whole character in its title: a hero, but a domestic one. The films are simple in style, but the acting is first class.

Logothetidis is the father of the Greek film comedy that made the 1950s and 1960s a golden age: actors such as Thanasis Veggos, Lambros Konstantaras and Dinos Iliopoulos worked in the world he opened. His films are shown again and again on Greek television, especially on holiday afternoons, and they are easy to find online. For a learner, they are a gift: the dialogue is clear, the situations are universal, and the Greek of the Athenian family is still the Greek you hear today. Start with Ο Ζηλιαρόγατος or Ένας ήρως με παντούφλες. Greek actors still name him when they speak of perfect comic timing.

• He was born in Myriofyto, a Greek village of Eastern Thrace that is today Mürefte in Turkey.
• Most of his famous films were first stage comedies that he had already played in his own theatre company.
• His long-time companion, the actress Ilia Livykou, often played opposite him.
• All his famous films were made in the last nine years of his life, between 1952 and 1958.