Actor John Karlen passed away

John Karlen - the famous Dark Shadows actor - died of heart failure in a hospital in Burbank, California. He was 86 years old. Dark Shadows was an American soap series from the ABC. What distinguished the series from other soap opera series so far was the fact that it contained ghosts, vampires, and all sorts of other supernatural beings. John Karlen played the threatening thief Willie Loomis in the series since 1967. He accidentally freed a sleeping vampire from a coffin.


John Karlen

John Karlen later had a role in Cagney & Lacey, for which he received an Emmy Award. In that series he played the husband of a detective. Other series that he featured in were Murder, She Wrote, Mad About You and 227. In total, he had around 100 roles in series and films during his long career. John Karlen had been sick for about ten years. Cagney & Lacey was the last series in which he acted in 1996.

We are sad to report the death of #DarkShadows actor John Karlen, who played Willie Loomis, the unforgettable foil to Barnabas Collins. John died on January 22 in hospice care in Burbank, California. He was 86 had suffered a number of health setbacks over the past decade… pic.twitter.com/MR0cgzvINc

— Dark Shadows News (@DarkShadowsNews) January 23, 2020