James Karen

James Karen, born Jacob Karnofsky on November 28, 1923, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, was an American character actor whose career spanned Broadway, film, and television across seven decades. The son of Russian-born Jewish immigrants Mae and Joseph H. Karnofsky, a produce dealer, Karen was a cousin of Morris Carnovsky, the prominent actor and co-founder of the Group Theatre. He served in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II before pursuing a professional acting career. His early interest in performance was encouraged by U.S. Democratic Congressman Daniel J. Flood, an amateur thespian who recruited him into a production at the Little Theatre of Wilkes-Barre. Karen subsequently trained at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York and became a lifelong member of The Actors Studio.

Karen's Broadway career began in 1948 and extended through 1972, encompassing a range of productions across genres. His stage credits included the musical A Country Girl, the comedy Third Best Sport, the play An Enemy of the People, A Cook for Mr. General, and The Engagement Baby. An early milestone in his stage work came when he was asked to understudy Karl Malden in the original Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire.

On screen, Karen built a substantial body of work in both film and television. In the 1982 film Poltergeist, he played Teague, a real-estate developer who constructed the planned California community of Cuesta Verde over a former cemetery. Three years later, he starred in the horror comedy The Return of the Living Dead as the manager of a medical warehouse whose accidental release of a gas reanimates the dead. That performance earned him a Saturn Award nomination for Best Actor in 1985. In a 2006 interview, Karen noted that he contributed to writing his character's scenes, including a moment in which the character, realizing he is becoming a zombie, chooses to incinerate himself in a crematorium and kisses his wedding ring before entering. Karen received an honorary Saturn Award in 1998 for his contributions to the horror film industry, and was nominated for a Fangoria Chainsaw Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Unborn in 1991. His other notable film credits included The China Syndrome, Oliver Stone's Wall Street, Invaders from Mars, and the 2006 film The Pursuit of Happyness, in which he played Martin Frohm. He had filmed scenes as Ben Hubbard in Superman Returns in 2006, but they were cut from the final release. His final film appearances were in Bender, directed by John Alexander, and Cynthia, both released in 2016 and 2018 respectively.

Karen's television work was equally extensive. He originated the role of Lincoln Tyler on All My Children and played Dr. Burke on As the World Turns. He was perhaps most widely recognized on television for his recurring role as Eliot Randolph, Tom Bradford's boss, on Eight Is Enough. His additional television appearances included the 1977 NBC sitcom The Kallikaks, the 1979 miniseries Blind Ambition, in which he played Earl Silbert, a season eleven episode of M*A*S*H, an episode of Cheers in which his character served as Frasier's mentor and the father of Carla's sixth child, an episode of The Golden Girls as a prospective love interest for Dorothy, a 1981 episode of The Jeffersons in which he played Herbert Purcell, a businessman and local Ku Klux Klan chapter leader, and the final Little House on the Prairie television movie, where he portrayed the villain Nathan Lassiter, whose actions result in the destruction of Walnut Grove.

On the East Coast, Karen became a widely recognized figure as the television and radio spokesman for the Pathmark supermarket chain, a role he held for approximately twenty years beginning in the late 1970s. The association earned him the nickname "Mr. Pathmark."

In his personal life, Karen was married to actress and folk singer Susan Reed, with whom he had one son, also named Reed. Buster Keaton, a close friend of Karen's, served as the boy's godfather. Karen and Reed divorced in 1967, and he later married Alba Francesca in 1986. The dedication of James Curtis's 2022 biography Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker's Life reads "In memory of James Karen." Karen died on October 23, 2018, at his home in Los Angeles at the age of 94.