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James Karen was born Jacob Karnofsky on Nov. 28, 1923, in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. His father, Joseph, was a saloonkeeper who went into the produce business. His mother, Mae (Fried) Karnofsky, was a homemaker.
He left home in 1940 and went to New York with a newly adopted stage name. A cousin, the actor Morris Carnovsky, steered him to the acting teacher Sanford Meisner. When the United States entered World War II in 1941, Mr. Karen joined the Army Air Forces; he spent part of the war as a cryptographer in Alaska, Mr. Goldstein said.
After the war ended in 1945, Mr. Karen returned to New York and spent time at the Actors Studio, including as an understudy for various roles in Elia Kazan’s 1947 Broadway production of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” starring Marlon Brando and Jessica Tandy. He worked on Broadway in small roles or as an understudy into the mid-1970s and also appeared in regional theaters.
By 1970 he was getting regular TV work, and in the middle of that decade he moved to Los Angeles. He was already doing the Pathmark spots, though, and kept that job even though the nearest Pathmark was thousands of miles away.
Mr. Karen found out in 1984 that some television viewers did not grasp the difference between him and the roles he played. In “Little House: The Last Farewell,” a TV movie that was essentially the finale of the beloved series “Little House on the Prairie,” he played a development tycoon named Nathan Lbaditer who wants to take over the town of Walnut Grove.
“Hundreds of letters came in to Pathmark asking the store to do something about me,” Mr. Karen told U.P.I. “The customer relations department couldn’t believe it. For some reason they never objected to other heavies I played. But the evilness of Nathan Lbaditer blew their minds. I guess they realized they’d never see Walnut Grove again, and it created a great sense of loss.”
He took it upon himself to call or write to the people who had voiced complaints.
“They were astounded to be hearing from me,” the Pathmark Man said. “At first they were floored. Then they laughed.”
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