Noel Purcell

Irish actor Noel Purcell graced many a film and TV show with variations of his standard character, the bearded, boozy son of the Auld Sod. Stage-trained in the classics in Dublin, Purcell moved into films in 1934. His days of prominence, which lasted until the '70s, began with 1947's Captain Boycott, and his best part to date was as the elderly salt whose death marooned the lovers-to-be in The Blue Lagoon (1948). Purcell was dominant among Captain Ahab's crew in Moby Dick (1956) and highly visible as a gameskeeper in The List of Adrian Messenger (1963), both films directed by John Huston. In 1955 he was an off-and-on regular on the British filmed TV series The Buccaneers (released to American TV in 1956), and in 1959 Purcell narrated a Hibernian documentary, Seven Wonders of Ireland. One of Noel Purcell's best-remembered appearances of the '60s was as Lebanese-American entertainer Danny Williams' tactiturn Irish in-law in a 1963 episode of TV's The Danny Thomas Show.

~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide