Sore wrist or not, I have to write something about a delightful gentleman named James Karen who has just left us at the age of 94. Jimmy was an example, as we all wish we could be, of someone who lived life to the fullest. He was that rare kind of actor who never starred in a long-running series but still somehow managed to always be working. To be that, you have to be either a very, very good actor or a very, very great person to be around. He was both. And he and his splendid wife Alba always seemed to be at every party and every event, even when he'd reached an age where you might not expect a man to be so active.
Leonard Maltin has written a piece about him that I can't top so I'll just add this: Jimmy had been everywhere and knew everyone. He had an anecdote — and often not a clean one — from every film or TV show he'd worked on and about every other actor he'd ever shared a stage or scene with. Amazingly, they all seemed to be true, even the ones about Marilyn. I have met seven men who claimed to have slept with Marilyn Monroe. Jimmy was the only one whose story I believed.
I met Jimmy through my longtime friend Jewel Shepard, who shared screen time with him in the "cult classic," Return of the Living Dead. You usually didn't say a lot around him because if you were talking, he wasn't…and he was infinitely more interesting than you could ever be.
One time, Jewel and I went with our pal Frank Ferrante to see Hal Holbrook perform his legendary — and that way-overused adjective is entirely appropriate here — Mark Twain Tonight show. We were delighted to run into Jimmy Karen and Alba, who were there to see their old friend and we got backstage when Hal came into the green room afterwards to greet a select band of admirers.
Frank and I are in the background of this video. You won't see Jewel (except for a half-second in a mirror) because she was smart enough to sense the importance of the moment and capture it on her cellphone, then post it to YouTube. Notice the love and respect between two men who had both been acting all their lives. This will tell you more about James Karen than I can possibly convey and give you some sense of why he was so beloved. Thank you, Jewel…