Anthony Quinn Bay claimed by actor's widow

Anthony Quinn loved Greece so much that, after filming The Guns of Navarone in Rhodes, he decided to buy an isolated bay on the island to create an international centre for artists and film-makers.

Despite promises from the government that the actor, best known for his role as Zorba the Greek, could have the bay for a symbolic sum in recognition of his role in publicising the beauty of the islands, the purchase was later annulled.

It was a move that 50 years on is still haunting the family of the late film star, who vowed never to visit Rhodes again.

"It was his dream to create an international centre for artists and film-makers on the property," said Stefanos Stratis, his lawyer in Greece. "The case got as far as the supreme court. What happened was an error and, right to the end, Quinn was very bitter about it."

The former mayor of Kallithea, in the island's south-east where the bay is situated, said the property consisted of three pieces of land, two of which Quinn bought from individuals. The third, the main beach, belonged to the state. "Despite buying it for a symbolic amount, he could never get the title deeds," said Yiannis Iatrides.

"That was wrong because Quinn made Rhodes famous. He put this island on the map and the beach was practically gifted to him in recognition of that."

Iatrides said Quinn had gone to a lot of trouble and expense to cut through the mountains and bring a road and water to the area before the local authorities intervened. Now, 10 years after his death, his widow Katherine Quinn is hoping to right the wrong.

"Anthony Quinn always believed he bought the property legally. He knew everyone here, even Queen Frederica visited Rhodes during the filming of Navarone," said Stratis. "He never thought he would be duped. He always said 'they'll never do that to me' but they did and now Katherine is determined to at least get compensation."

Katherine Quinn, the actor's third wife and mother of two of his 13 children, has friends in high places. The US ambassador to Greece, Daniel Bennett Smith, recently visited the national economy ministry for a second time in as many months reportedly to resolve the matter.

Last week the prime minister, George Papandreou, asked to be furnished with the "Anthony Quinn file" ahead of an expected visit to Athens by Hillary Clinton. According to newspaper reports, the US secretary of state will raise the issue during bilateral talks.

Greek politicians seem to agree with Quinn. Petros Doukas, a former national economy minister who handled the affair in the early nineties, remembers the case as an example of the country's labyrinthine bureaucracy – one that not even Quinn, who had embodied Greek charm and canniness in his role as the happy-go-lucky Zorba, could bypass.

"I felt the Greek state had made a promise and then failed to deliver," Doukas said. "We tried to push it very hard but there were no papers that would allow us to give him the land."

Not that the star, an acclaimed sculptor and painter when he wasn't on the silver screen, stopped trying. For years he fought through the Greek courts to lay claim to the bay that even today is known as "Anthony Quinn beach".

He was so angry about it that when he visited Greece shortly before his death in Boston in 2001, he stopped only in Crete, where the Mexican American did his Zorba the Greek dance – and never once mentioned Rhodes.