Kojak Then and Now 2026 | Who's Still Alive After 53 Years?

Kojak owned Thursday nights in the 1970s, and 53 years after the bald detective with the lollipop first walked into a New York crime scene, the question fans keep asking is who from that cast has tragically passed away. The answer is a hard one, because the four men at the heart of the show are all gone now. In this cast then and now video we look back at the Manhattan South squad room and follow every one of them to the end of the story. Telly Savalas was Lieutenant Theo Kojak, and the role fit him so completely that the catchphrase, the lollipop and the shaved head became part of the culture. He died on 22 January 1994, one day after his birthday, at the age of 72, from cancer. His younger brother George Savalas played the warm, rumpled Detective Stavros and had gone before him, dying of leukaemia on 2 October 1985. Kevin Dobson was Bobby Crocker, the young detective who became Kojak's closest ally, and he went on to a long second life on Knots Landing. He died on 6 September 2020 at the age of 77 after an autoimmune illness. Dan Frazer, who played the long suffering Captain Frank McNeil, outlived most of them, dying in New York on 16 December 2011 at the age of 90. Four men, one squad room, and not one of them still with us. Stay to the end to see them all then and now, and tell us in the comments which Kojak case has stayed with you the longest. Subscribe for more classic cast then and now videos every week.