Prolific character actor dies at 94

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.

Karen’s 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 Kazan’s 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 star’s most unusual projects, “Film,” an experimental short written by Samuel Beckett. 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.”

Among his many admirers was George Clooney. When Clooney received a lifetime achievement award from The American Film Institute earlier this year, he spoke about Karen. He called him a “wonderful character actor” and remembered getting a call from the actor’s wife, Alba. She told Clooney that Karen was near death and wanted him to write his obituary.

“So I got out a bottle of booze - pen, paper - and I sat down and I spent the whole night writing about who I thought Jimmy was, his character, what he meant to us,” Clooney said.

“A week goes by, then a month. That was four years ago. I called Alba and said, ‘What the hell.’ She said ‘Yeah, Jimmy’s doing fine. He just wanted to know what everyone thought about him while he was still alive. He got a bunch of people to do it.”’

Karen was born Jacob Karnovsky in Wilkes-Barres, Pennsylvania. He was interested in theatre 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 theatre 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 Keaton’s death in 1966. Karen later hosted a Keaton documentary made by Kevin Brownlow.