Leonid Kinskey

Life and career

Kinskey was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. He fled the Russian Revolution and acted on stage in Europe and South America before arriving in New York City from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in January 1924. He joined the road production of Al Jolson's musical Wonder Bar, before making his first film appearance, in Trouble in Paradise (1932). His looks and accent helped him gain supporting roles in several movies, including the Sylvanian "agitator" in the Marx Bros. film Duck Soup (1933). He told Aljean Harmetz, author of Round Up the Usual Suspects: The Making of Casablanca, that he was cast in his best-known role, Sascha in Casablanca, because he was a drinking buddy of star Humphrey Bogart. He replaced Leo Mostovoy because the latter was deemed not funny enough.

Kinskey performed in episodes on no less than three dozen television series between the 1950s and early 1970s. His first appearances on the "small screen" were in 1954 on Passport to Danger, The Spike Jones Show, and Lux Video Theater. His final roles on television were in 1971, as a professor on the series Mayberry R.F.D.; a mortician on O'Hara, U.S. Treasury; and as a deli butcher on the sitcom The Chicago Teddy Bears. In 1965, Kinskey was also in the pilot episode of Hogan's Heroes, playing a Russian prisoner-of-war. He decided, however, not to join the cast when that series went into formal production because he was not comfortable playing opposite people pretending to be Nazis.

Kinskey married three times. His second wife was actress Iphigenie Castiglioni, to whom he remained married until her death in 1963. He was married to Tina York from 1983 to his death. He died of complications of a stroke in Fountain Hills, Arizona, at the age of 95.