There was something almost cinematic about Aristotle Onassis long before cinema attempted to capture him. He was the Greek shipping magnate who built an international empire across the oceans, entertained politicians and royalty aboard his yacht, owned his own Mediterranean island and became one of the most famous businessmen of the twentieth century. His story contained wealth, ambition, romance and devastating personal tragedy. Inevitably, Hollywood came calling, and when it did, one actor seemed almost born to inhabit the world of the Greek tycoon: Anthony Quinn.
From Refugee to Shipping Magnate
Aristotle Socrates Onassis was born in Smyrna, in the Ottoman Empire, in 1906. His comfortable childhood was shattered by the Greco-Turkish conflict and the destruction of Smyrna in 1922, which forced his family to flee to Greece. The young Onassis subsequently travelled to Argentina, where he began building the commercial instincts that would eventually make his name synonymous with immense wealth.
His early successes came through tobacco importing and trading, but Onassis recognised something bigger on the horizon. International commerce depended upon ships, and whoever controlled sufficient shipping capacity could place himself at the centre of the world’s expanding trade.
During the Depression he began acquiring ships at bargain prices. He later expanded aggressively into oil tankers, building vessels of enormous capacity and arranging long-term contracts capable of producing revenue whether the ships were sailing full or not.
Onassis was not simply buying ships. He was building a machine for moving the twentieth century.
Oil was becoming the bloodstream of the industrial world. Tankers carried it across oceans, and Onassis understood that the ships transporting the commodity could sometimes be as strategically important as the companies extracting it.
His fleet eventually numbered scores of vessels, while his interests stretched beyond shipping into aviation, property and investment. In 1957 he took control of Greece’s national airline operation and created Olympic Airways, transforming another part of Greek economic life into an international symbol.
The Floating Palace
Then there was Christina O, perhaps the greatest physical expression of the Onassis legend.
Originally a Canadian naval vessel, Onassis converted the ship into one of the world’s most celebrated private yachts and named it after his daughter, Christina. Winston Churchill was among the famous figures who travelled aboard it. So were actors, politicians, businessmen and members of European high society.
For Onassis, wealth was not something to hide discreetly behind the doors of a bank. It sailed into harbour.
He also purchased the Greek island of Skorpios, creating a private Mediterranean kingdom that became inseparable from his public image.
Yet behind the photographs of yachts, champagne and international society was a businessman of formidable appetite. Onassis negotiated, borrowed, invested and gambled on an extraordinary scale. His fortune made him one of the emblematic tycoons of the post-war age, a man whose name became shorthand for almost unimaginable wealth.
Maria Callas and Jacqueline Kennedy
His private life became nearly as famous as his business empire.
Onassis had a long and turbulent relationship with the legendary opera singer Maria Callas. Then came the relationship that turned him into a permanent figure in twentieth-century popular culture.
In 1968 he married Jacqueline Kennedy, widow of the assassinated American president John F. Kennedy.
The marriage brought together two enormous international personalities. Jackie represented American political history and tragedy; Onassis represented European wealth, power and Mediterranean glamour. Their every movement became material for newspapers and photographers.
But enormous wealth offered no immunity from grief.
In 1973 Onassis’s son Alexander died following injuries sustained in an aircraft crash. He was only 24. The loss devastated his father. Onassis’s health subsequently deteriorated, and he died in Paris in March 1975, aged 69.
His daughter Christina inherited much of the family fortune and business interests, but the Onassis dynasty would itself become marked by tragedy.
Anthony Quinn Becomes the Tycoon
Hollywood did not wait long.
In 1978 director J. Lee Thompson released The Greek Tycoon, starring Anthony Quinn opposite Jacqueline Bisset. Officially, Quinn was not playing Aristotle Onassis. His character was called Theo Tomasis, while Bisset played Liz Cassidy, the widow of an assassinated American president.
Nobody was seriously expected to miss the resemblance.
The film was a roman à clef, fiction wearing an exceptionally transparent pair of sunglasses. Its story drew unmistakably upon the lives of Onassis and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, even though names and certain circumstances were changed.
Anthony Quinn was inspired casting.
The Mexican-born actor already possessed one of cinema’s great screen presences. He had played larger-than-life men in films including Zorba the Greek, Lawrence of Arabia, The Guns of Navarone and Lust for Life. He could make a character appear charming, dangerous, vulnerable and enormous within the same performance.
As Theo Tomasis, Quinn adopted the swept-back hair, heavy glasses and commanding manner associated with Onassis. Jacqueline Bisset later recalled the startling effect of seeing Quinn emerge from make-up looking so much like the shipping magnate that the supposedly fictional nature of the production became rather difficult to maintain.
The production itself travelled through the world it was portraying, filming in locations including Athens, Mykonos, Corfu, New York, Washington and London.
Quinn reportedly received around $500,000 for the role, a substantial Hollywood salary for the period. More remarkably, producer Nico Mastorakis had earlier offered Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis $1 million to portray herself. She declined.
A Performance Bigger Than the Film
The Greek Tycoon was hardly embraced by the critics. Roger Ebert awarded it two stars and regarded its fascination with the Onassis-Kennedy story as closer to expensive tabloid entertainment than serious biography. Yet even Ebert recognised how effectively Quinn physically evoked Onassis.
That is perhaps why the film remains fascinating.
Anthony Quinn does not merely suggest a wealthy businessman. He gives us the old-fashioned tycoon, a species of capitalist who seemed capable of bending geography around himself. Ships wait in harbours. Aircraft wait on runways. Islands become private homes. Presidents arrive for dinner.
Quinn fills that world naturally.
And behind the fictional Theo Tomasis stands the unmistakable silhouette of Aristotle Onassis, refugee, dealmaker, shipowner and one of the defining magnates of his age.
His extraordinary fortune bought ships, aircraft, property, islands and access to some of the most powerful people alive.
It could not buy protection from tragedy.
Perhaps that is ultimately why the story has survived beyond the balance sheets. Aristotle Onassis built an empire across the world’s oceans, yet his life became a reminder of something considerably older than capitalism itself: however enormous the fortune, the owner remains human.
And when Hollywood needed someone large enough to play that contradiction, it found Anthony Quinn.
