True friendships are important commodities – even for the most famous of celebrities and the most popular of soap stars. But sometimes that isn’t easy when you’re in the public eye.
Which Soap Star Was It?
All of these actors are either an alum of a long-ago classic – like All My Children – or they currently star in, or are alums of, one of the four currently airing daytime dramas – The Bold and the Beautiful, Days of our Lives, General Hospital and The Young and the Restless.
However, only one of them had such a deep and abiding friendship with fellow thespian Telly Savalas — a former James Bond villain and the star of Kojak — that they asked him to be their child’s godfather.
But who can that actor be? Was it David Canary (ex-Adam/Stuart, AMC), Antonio Sabato Jr. (ex-Dante, BB), John Aniston (Victor), Judith Chapman (ex-Ginny, GH), or Catherine Bach (ex-Anita, YR)?
David Canary
Canary and Savalas weren’t bosom buddies, but the two did have Bonanza (the popular Western series produced in the 1960s) in common. Canary racked up 93 appearances on the show as ranch hand Candy Canaday and Savalas put in a memorable one-time performance as Charles August Hackett – the richest man in the world.
Antonio Sabato Jr.
Sabato Jr. never had the opportunity to work with the silver and small screen legend. However, his father did star opposite Savalas in the 1972 thriller Crime Boss.
Judith Chapman
Chapman wasn’t a close friend of Savalas either. But she did appear in an episode of his long-running crime procedural Kojak. In A Summer Madness, she was a woman of few morals who met an untimely end thanks to an incendiary device. Her secret lover, a cop on Kojak’s investigating team (played by DAYS favorite Joseph Mascolo), spent the episode fearing that his mentally unbalanced wife had been responsible for the bombing.
Catherine Bach
Bach and Savalas both appeared in the Burt Reynold’s film Cannonball Run II. She played one of the participants in the cross country race; he was a terrifying mob enforcer. But this seems to be the extent of the actors’ association.
John Aniston
Aniston and Savalas had far more than their Greek heritage in common – and those similarities in tastes translated into a decades-long friendship that resulted in Savalas being named Jennifer Aniston’s godfather. Family lore has it that shortly after the christening, while cradled in Nono Telly’s arms, Jennifer vomited all over his newly acquired black velvet dinner jacket.
So, if you guessed that the soap star in question was John Aniston, then you were absolutely correct!
