Noel Purcell (actor)

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Noel Purcell (born 23 December 1900 — March 3, 1985) was an Irish film and television actor. The female sponsor at his baptism was Mary Boylan (nee Harmon).

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 1970s, began with Captain Boycott (1947), saw Purcell cast as the elderly sailor whose death marooned the lovers-to-be in The Blue Lagoon (1949). Purcell was dominant among [Captain Ahab|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 Purcell narrated a Hibernian documentary, Seven Wonders of Ireland (1959). 1962 was a good year for the hirsute hibernian with a sterling performance as the lusty William McCoy in Lewis Milestone's Mutiny on the Bounty. One of Purcell's best-remembered appearances of the 1960s was as a taciturn Irish in-law to Lebanese-American entertainer Danny Thomas' character Danny Williams in a 1963 episode of The Danny Thomas Show.

In 1971 he turned in a rare and powerful performance in his best part to date as the caring Rabbi in the children's musical drama The Flight of The Doves. Shot in a fictional synagogue in Dublin's now Temple bar area. Purcell is immense as the bearded holy man who assists in the escape of the tragic brother and sister Finn and Derval Dove.

In 1985, Noel Purcell died in Dublin, Ireland, at the age of 84.