Leonid Kinskey (April 17, 1903 – September 8, 1998) was a Russian-born American film and television actor, best known for his role as Sascha in the film Casablanca (1942). His last name was sometimes spelled Kinsky.
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Life and career
Kinskey was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. He started his career as a mime in various imperial theatres in Russia in the mid-1910s. In 1921, he fled Russia for Germany. He 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, and in 1926 he made an appearance in the silent film The Great Depression, although his scenes were deleted, before making his 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 had been cast in his best-known role, Sascha in Casablanca, because he was a drinking buddy of star Humphrey Bogart.
Kinskey performed in episodes of some three dozen television shows 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. In 1962, he portrayed a visiting Soviet dignitary (with most of his dialogue in Russian) in the episode "The Good Will Tour" on the sitcom The Real McCoys. In 1965, Kinskey appeared in the pilot episode of Hogan's Heroes as a Soviet soldier who was a prisoner-of-war. He decided not to join the cast of the series, as he was reported to be "uncomfortable playing let's-pretend with people in Nazi garb." His final roles on television came in 1971, as a professor on the series Mayberry R.F.D., a funeral director on O'Hara, U.S. Treasury, and a deli butcher on the sitcom The Chicago Teddy Bears.
After the mid-1950s, Kinskey spent little time on his acting career. He wrote and directed industrial films, owned a restaurant called Bublitschki on Sunset Strip, and wrote and translated stories about Russian life.
Personal life and death
Kinskey was married three times, first to Josephine Tankus from 1930 until her death in 1939. Four years later he married actress Iphigenie Castiglioni, who died in 1963. His final marriage, in 1985 in New York, was to Tina York, who was 38 years younger. They remained married until 1998, when Kinskey died in Fountain Hills, Arizona, from complications of a stroke.
