LOS ANGELES » George Chakiris is best known as Bernardo, head of the finger-snapping Sharks in the 1961 musical film masterpiece "West Side Story." His charisma and lithe athleticism as the Puerto Rican gang leader won the versatile actor-dancer an Academy Award for best supporting actor.

Chakiris followed that triumph with his first major role in a big-budget Hollywood film that also explored the tragic fallout of racial prejudice — not on the mean streets of New York City but on a pineapple plantation in Hawaii.

The movie was the box-office hit "Diamond Head" (1963), starring Charlton Heston as bigoted land owner Richard "King" Howland and Chakiris as part-Hawaiian Dr. Dean Kahana. Reminiscing about the movie in an interview in Los Angeles last week, Chakiris said he felt a kinship with characters from both films.

"This thing of being looked upon as less than other people because of your color is something I’ve always understood somehow, I don’t know why," said Chakiris, the son of Greek immigrants. "That kind of feeling goes on to how Bernardo and his relatives felt when they came to New York for the first time, being looked down upon. And Dean Kahana had to endure a career and life knowing he wasn’t accepted in certain circles."

The actor set aside time to chat about his Hawaii roles — including a guest spot on the original "Hawaii Five-0" — after receiving a Legacy Award from the 10th annual South East European Film Festival in Los Angeles, which ended Thursday.

"Two of the countries that take part in this festival are Greece and Turkey. My parents were from a Greek village in Turkey, Platiano, near Bursa," explained Chakiris, who was born in Ohio in 1934 and grew up with six siblings in Tucson, Ariz., Miami and Long Beach, Calif. He now lives in Los Angeles.

"Diamond Head" was based on Honolulu Star-Bulletin reporter Peter Gilman’s 1960 bestseller, adapted for the big screen by the previously blacklisted Marguerite Roberts. Film critic Michael Atkinson, writing for tcm.com, called the civil-rights-era blockbuster "an overt protest against colonialism and white privilege."

Shot on location on Oahu, Kauai and the Big Island, the melodrama portrays Heston’s character as a ruthless bigot and U.S. Senate candidate who is carrying on a secret affair with his Chinese mistress Mai Chen (France Nuyen, who played Liat in 1958’s "South Pacific," which also filmed on Kauai and dealt with racial prejudice).

Howland reportedly was based on a kamaaina magnate, according to Bishop Museum historian DeSoto Brown. "At the time it was published, the novel was rumored to have been based on the actual life of (Benjamin Dillingham II), who in real life lived at the base of Diamond Head and who also installed his Hawaiian mistress in an apartment just a few blocks away," Brown said.

Music and film heartthrob James Darren played Kahana’s half brother, Paul Kahana.

"He was a Hawaiian and I was hapa-haole," said Chakiris. "They endured prejudice, of course, kind of like the Sharks and Puerto Ricans in ‘West Side Story.’ Heston’s character really did not approve of his sister, Yvette Mimieux (Sloane), getting close to any of these guys. … He was very ambitious and very, very aware that he didn’t want any Hawaiian blood in his family."

Too bad, because Sloane hooks up with Chakiris’ character after Paul is accidentally knifed while trying to keep Mai Chen’s drunken brother from stabbing Howland at the young couple’s engagement party — another similarity to Bernardo’s storyline in "West Side Story."

At one point, Howland derides Kahana as "a hapa-haole — two people jumping around inside the same skin. It’s so crowded in there you can’t sit, stand or lie down." (Unlike in "West Side Story," Chakiris said he did not wear brown makeup in "Diamond Head," although a review in Variety quipped that "Darren, despite a rich tan, seems about as 100 percent Hawaiian as Paul Revere.")

Sloane and Dean Kahana adopt Howland’s part-Chinese baby after Mai Chen dies in childbirth. The plantation owner initially spurns the infant, wrestles with his conscience and finally decides to give his son the family name.

Although Heston’s character was despicable, Chakiris described his co-star as "really great. Chuck was a wonderfully serious actor, constantly working on his character." He also remembers Kauai in 1961, when the movie was shot, as "pristine, so beautiful, paradise."

A decade after "Diamond Head," Chakiris returned to paradise in 1972 to shoot "Hawaii Five-0," once again portraying a Hawaiian, Chris Lahani, in "Death is a Company Policy," co-starring Michael Ansara as a mob boss.

Chakiris played an assistant district attorney who is a double agent "on the wrong side of the law," he said.

"A good script in episodic television is not really easy to come by, but this was a really, really good script," written by Jerome Coopersmith. "Jack Lord was as professional as they come; he was great, wonderful. It was a really well-run show, no snags. When I look back on the episodic television I’ve done, that’s the one I like the most," Chakiris said.

In a career spanning six decades, he appeared on such TV shows as "Medical Center," "Fantasy Island" and "Dallas." His other films include "Kings of the Sun" (1963) in which he played ancient Mayan Balam opposite Yul Brynner and Jacques Demy’s "The Young Girls of Rochefort" (1967) with Catherine Deneuve and Gene Kelly.

At 80, Chakiris looks as trim and fit as he did when he sizzled to the throbbing beat of Leonard Bernstein’s score in "West Side Story." He credits his diet and dance-infused exercise.

"My mother was 103 and her father was 108 (when they died)," he said. "I’ve stayed relatively slim. I tend to go vegetarian. Exercise has always been a really strong part of what I do for myself. Using your body as a dancer — if you don’t do it, you miss it. …

"I don’t take as many dance classes as I used to, but I go to the gym. I incorporate some dance exercises, things that we do at the bar, a dance class, stretching, some of the different ballet positions."

Heston adept at playing Hawaii bigots

“Diamond Head” wasn’t the only film in which Charlton Heston portrayed a Hawaii bigot.

Seven years after his role as Richard “King” Howland, the actor depicted kamaaina racist Whip Hoxworth in “The Hawaiians,” based on James Michener’s generational saga “Hawaii” and a sequel to the 1966 movie of the same name starring Richard Harris as whaling Capt. Rafer Hoxworth (Whip’s grandfather).

“The Hawaiians” is especially noteworthy as the first big-budget Hollywood production to depict the 1893 overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani (played by New Jersey-born Naomi Stevens). Geraldine Chaplin portrays Hoxworth’s part-Hawaiian wife, Purity, who has pro-Native Hawaiian beliefs and is driven mad.

It should be noted that in real life, Heston, who died in 2008, joined Dr. Martin Luther King’s historic March on Washington, D.C., in 1963, and was honored with the Motion Picture Academy’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1978. 

Former Makaha resident Ed Rampell co-authored "The Hawaii Movie and Television Book" (Mutual Publishing).