NEW YORK (AP) James Karen, a prolific and beloved character actor whose hundreds of credits included memorable appearances in Poltergeist and The Return of the Living Dead, has died. He was 94.
Karens friend Bruce Goldstein told The Associated Press that he died Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles. He had been battling respiratory ailments.
Few actors had so long and diverse a career. He appeared in Elia Kazans 1940s stage production of A Streetcar Named Desire, which starred Marlon Brando. He befriended Buster Keaton in the 1950s and had a brief role in one of the silent stars most unusual projects, Film, an experimental short written by Samuel Beckett.
He met Marilyn Monroe at the Actors Studio in New York and filmed a commercial with the Three Stooges. He was directed by Oliver Stone in Wall Street and David Lynch in Mulholland Drive. His TV credits ranged from Dallas and The Waltons to Seinfeld and The Larry Sanders Show.
Millions knew him as the friendly man with the glasses in TV ads for Pathmark. Others remembered him as the foreman in Return of the Living Dead, the boss in The China Syndrome or the notorious Mr. Teague, the real estate developer who moves the headstones but not the bodies in Poltergeist.
Karen was born Jacob Karnovsky in Wilkes-Barres, Pennsylvania. He was interested in theater from an early age and, according to his friend Leonard Maltin, the movie critic, turned down a contract with MGM because he wanted to work on the stage.
His years in the theater led to a close bond with Keaton. In 1957, he and Keaton appeared together in a revival of the play Merton of the Movies and they remained friends until Keatons death in 1966. Karen later hosted a Keaton documentary made by Kevin Brownlow and was among those sharing memories in The Great Buster: A Celebration, a documentary by Peter Bogdanovich that was just released.
Jim and Alba had a beautiful apartment in Los Angeles and he had a corner devoted to Buster memorabilia, including one of his hats, Goldstein told The Associated Press. He would let me invite friends over and have them try on the hat.
The veteran actor played a key role in Iolas Keaton Celebration. The Register reached out to his friend, Clyde Toland, for his memories of the man.
Jim Karen was a class act. He was witty, gracious, charismatic, thoughtful, charming, kind, generous, highly intelligent, and an incredibly gifted actor. Being friends with him has been one of the greatest pleasures of my life.
We first spoke in 1994, 24 years ago, when he called, out of the blue, to chat several weeks before that years second annual Buster Keaton Celebration. I later figured out that his call had a dual purpose not only to have a feel for the upcoming celebration through visiting with me, but simply because he liked people and enjoyed visiting with them. In his years of attending Keaton Celebrations, he made many friends here.
Jim and I hit it off as friends at that 1994 celebration, and kept up the friendship by phone, correspondence, visits here during the several celebrations that he and his dear wife, Alba Francesca, attended, and in Los Angeles. Our friendship included Alba; my wife, Nancy; and our three children, who grew up with the fun of Jimmy as one of their friends. Part of my family had dinner just last August with Jim and Alba in L.A.
Our first Keaton Celebration in 1993 was a modest, but promising, affair. Jim had persuaded his close friend, Eleanor Keaton, Buster Keatons widow, to attend with him the second celebration in 1994, and their attendance raised the national stature of our fledgling celebration.
The following year, the centennial of Buster Keatons birth, Jim and Eleanors attendance solidified what a quality affair the celebration was. This put the celebration on the road to an extraordinary run of 21 more celebrations, which provided annually an outstanding and fun cultural event for our local citizens, for people from throughout the nation, and for even a few persons from abroad.
