Celebrity Biographies
Michael Callan
He played Riff, leader of the jets, in the original Broadway adaptation of “West Side Story,” before starring in titles like “Cat Ballou” with Jane Fonda. Michael Callan passed away on October 10, 2022, at the age of 86, from pneumonia, at a Woodland Hills nursing home in Los Angeles.
Martin Calinoff – his real name – was born in Philadelphia on November 22, 1935. He studied ballet while the dancers who frequented his father’s restaurant taught him acrobatics in exchange for free milkshakes. From a very young age he dabbled in radio, and by the time he was 15 years old, he was performing in nightclubs. Shortly after graduating high school, he moved to New York and landed a small role in 1954 in “The Boy Friend,” the stage play that marked the American debut of Julie Andrews .
Next, Michael Callan spent about a year on the stage version of “West Side Story” before Joyce Selznick, a talent agent (and niece of Gone with the Wind producer David O. Selznick ) saw him about it . the tables and offered him a fixed seven-year contract with Columbia. In this way he ended up in Hollywood, and appeared in titles such as They Came to Sanity , The Flying Fountains (1959) and Because They Are Young (1960). He also displayed his dancing skills in the musical Pepe (1960), starring Cantinflas and directed by George Sidney .
For United Artists’ 1961 adaptation of West Side Story, Michael Callan auditioned for his role as Riff, which was eventually played by Russ Tamblyn . In Spain he starred in The Mysterious Island , adaptation of the Jules Verne novel .
Michael Callan is remembered in the cinema as a bandit, in The Explosive Ingenue (Cat Ballou) , along with Jane Fonda .
After marrying Carlyn Chapman, Miss Dallas and Las Vegas showgirl, Michael Callan had two daughters.