JOE TURKEL

(15 July 1927 – 27 June 2022)

The American character actor Joe Turkel, who has died aged 94, was a particular favourite of director Stanley Kubrick who cast him in The Killing, Paths of Glory and The Shining. Ridley Scott directed him in Blade Runner and he also worked for Bert I. Gordon, maker of sci-fi, horror and exploitation movies. He may be best remembered as the barman of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining and the android manufacturer in Blade Runner, although Turkel made many other movies, too, but was quite often uncredited in a career that saw him in nearly 150 films and some TV series over a period of fifty years.

Joe Turkel was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Benjamin Turkel, a tailor, and his wife Gazella, a sometime opera singer, who were Polish Jewish immigrants. Joe joined the army at seventeen and served in Europe during World War II. He made his first film appearance in City Across the River, Maxwell Shane’s film noir with Stephen McNally and Thelma Ritter, in 1948. He was in The Boy and the Pirates, Tormented and Village of the Giants, all directed by Bert I. Gordon.

Apart from the Kubrick films, the other major movies he appeared in include Lewis Milestone’s Halls of Montezuma, Samuel Fuller’s Fixed Bayonets, Robert Parrish’s Lucy Gallant, William Wyler’s Friendly Persuasion, Edward Dmytryk’s Warlock and The Carpetbaggers, Bryan Forbes’s King Rat, Robert Wise’s The Sand Pebbles and The Hindenburg and Melvin Frank’s The Prisoner of Second Avenue. Turkel’s last role was a voice-over on the 1997 Blade Runner video game.

Joe Turkel was married to Anita Josephine Cacciatore and they have two sons, Craig and Robert. Turkel’s memoir, The Misery of Success, is due to be published in 2022.

MICHAEL DARVELL