Jack O’Connell worked many stints as a barman during his life, and he played one several times on TV and in the movies.
But O’Connell, who died at age 81 on March 3, was proudest of his performances on the stage, including memorably as a barman reciting the lyrics of Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row.”
“We are bereft,” said Margaret O’Connell about the death of her husband of a heart attack at home in Hempstead, N.Y. “He had been sick for weeks with the dreaded flu.”
She told the Echo that he read from his own work on Jan. 26 at City Winery, invited by Ed McCann of Writers Read. [See videos below.]
“He got into writing in the pandemic, because auditions became too difficult,” his wife said, referring to the technical aspects involved. “He loved the writing.”
“I was so deeply saddened to hear of Jack's passing,” a friend, Amy Ellison, commented at fairchildfuneral.com. “I was actually taken aback. Jack had such a formidable presence I just assumed he would be here long after, at least me. Perhaps I thought he would always be here since his image is so indelible in the many characters I've seen him create. No matter the length of the role, Jack's presence would always leap off the screen. Like many others who have written here, I would be utterly delighted whenever I would see him on screens both big and small.”
“My Grandfather was a special guy. He was truly a light in anyone’s life that he crossed paths with,” wrote 22-year-old Lulani O’Connell. “We spoke almost every day, and he taught me so many things in life—how to be selfless, how to love deeply. He brought me closer to God; after all, he is my godfather. And I’d have to say the best of all is that he taught me how to make a good joke. His comedic timing and satire were unmatched.”
“I was heartbroken to hear that Jack had passed. While I met him first through Hofstra Theater, I quickly learned he was also a neighbor living only a half a block away,” wrote Sue Zizza. “Jack was a special neighbor. If he was driving home and saw you outside he would often stop his car just to say hi. Always kind with a big smile on his face. When talking with Jack you didn't check your watch, you let Jack talk and enjoyed his stories.”
O’Connell’s obituary said he was a proud member of both the Teamsters Union and the Screen Actors Guild. In recent years, he became a regular performer at Artists Without Walls, Writers Read and Irish American Writers & Artists events, in addition to his screen work.
The Long Islander who first got involved in community theater in 1975 once told the Echo that he found lead roles in plays “more personally fulfilling than a few lines on a movie.” There were many in the latter category — imdb.com lists 75 of them.
The third, chronologically, was in the press room for the all-star “The Paper” in 1994; he was in the very first scene of Episode One, Series One of the long-running, iconic “Mad Men,” playing, of course, a barman; was in “Doubt” starring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman, and in the latter’s last movie, “God’s Pocket”; and he had a part in the Coen brothers’ “Inside Llewyn Davis,” about a fictional folk singer in early 1960s New York.
O’Connell was a big fan of Bob Dylan and so was delighted to get the opportunity to act in a scene for “A Complete Unknown,” but ahead of its December release, he got a phone call to say that it had been cut from the final version. Jack and Margaret O'Connell went to the film anyway. "We loved it," she said.
The deleted scene was set against the backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, an event, as it happened, that prompted the 19-year-old A & P apprentice butcher to join the army. Another factor was that older friends told him during that fraught time that if he pushed up his draft he would serve two years, instead of three. Those two years turned out to be quite an experience, even if he never considered himself to be a natural soldier. He remembered, “I liked being away from the marching. Once is enough, but every weekend?”
John Anthony O’Connell was born on Oct. 9, 1943 in South Ozone Park, Queens. In 1955, the family moved beyond the city limits to Baldwin, L.I. He recalled for a 2013 Echo feature being swept up, as a 16- going on 17-year-old high school student in Roosevelt, L.I., in the enthusiasm for the candidacy of John F. Kennedy. He could still sing in its entirety the campaign version of Frank Sinatra’s “High Hopes.”
O’Connell then told the story, which was published for the 50th anniversary of the assassination, about his memories around serving with the army’s 3rd Infantry, aka the Old Guard, which involved being regularly part of the two-man detail that guarded the Kennedy Grave Site at Arlington Cemetery in the first half of 1964.
Serving at Fort McNair in the nation’s capital gave him a front-row seat to American history. In June 1963, the assassinated Mississippi Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers was buried at Arlington Cemetery with full military honors; August saw the March on Washington and Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech; and on Friday, Nov. 22, his unit had just returned to the city from a training exercise when it heard that the president had been assassinated.
Years later, a cook in a deli on his route as a salesman for Pepsi heard that he had served with the military during the time of the president’s funeral. She gave him two color snaps she had taken when working in the Kennedy family home in Palm Beach, Fla., circa Easter 1960 — one of JFK posing in front of the house and another of Jackie Kennedy and her daughter Caroline sitting on a lawn. They were published with the Echo article in the Nov. 20, 2013, issue.
O’Connell, who was married previously, had eight children and 12 grandchildren, who called him “Pop Pop.” The first paragraph of his obituary says, “He leaves behind a legacy of love, laughter and kindness to all.” The obituary’s last line is, “In Jack’s memory, do a kind deed for someone.”
Jack O'Connell's Christmas memories from the early 1950s through 1976 in "Songs of the Season."
Jack O'Connell appears briefly as an overbearing head barman in this opening scene from "Mad Men" (2007), with star Jon Hamm, set in the year 1960.
Jack O'Connell recalling his youthful days as an apprentice butcher at a Writers Read show at City Winery, NYC, entitled "The Supermarket" on Jan. 26, 2025.
