At the height of his fame in the early 1970s, he was the world's #1 box office attraction, commanding $1 million per film.
His birth surname was Buchinsky. He was the 11th of fifteen children in a family of Lithuanian descent who lived in the coal region of Pennsylvania.
He learned to speak English when he was a teenager. Before that he spoke Lithuanian and Russian.
During the Depression his mother could not afford milk for his younger sister, so she fed her warm tea instead.
He flew 25 missions in a bomber during World War II and received a Purple Heart.
He said of himself, "I guess I look like a rock quarry that someone dynamited."
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