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Cahit Irgat

Cahit Irgat

Actor · died at 56

Profile

Age at death56
Birth dateMarch 21, 1915
BirthplaceLüleburgaz
DiedJune 5, 1971
ProfessionActor, Voice actor, Poet, Film director
Zodiac signAries

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Cahit Irgat — Biography

Turkish stage and screen actor, voice actor, film director and poet Saffet Cahit Irgat, known as Cahit Irgat, was born in Lüleburgaz on 21 March 1915 and died in Istanbul on 5 June 1971. Born in Lüleburgaz, Kırklareli province, in the last years of the Ottoman Empire — sources also give 1914 and 1916 — he trained at the Edirne Teachers' School.

Irgat joined the Istanbul Municipal Theatre in 1940, moved to the Küçük Sahne company in 1951 and to the State Theatres in 1957, later founded his own Oda Tiyatrosu and in 1962 joined the Dormen Theatre. He entered cinema at the end of the 1930s and, over a career of more than three decades, appeared in well over a hundred films, with Turkish catalogues listing more than 140 roles. He often played figures of authority in historical films: Emperor Constantine in The Conquest of Constantinople (1951), Sultan Selim III in Üçüncü Selim'in Gözdesi (1950) and Count Vespasyo in Barbaros Hayreddin Paşa (1951). Drakula İstanbul'da (1952) and Sabahsız Geceler (1968) are among his other notable films. He also worked as a director.

Irgat is also remembered as a poet still read in Turkish literary circles. From his marriage to the scholar and writer Mîna Urgan he had two children, Mustafa and Zeynep. He died in Istanbul in 1971.

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Their work through different eyes

History & Society Lens Asks about the period, the social background and what the work reflects.

Most of Cahit Irgat's share in the historical films of the early 1950s is the crown: the East Roman emperor Constantinos XI in İstanbul'un Fethi, the sultan in Üçüncü Selim'in Gözdesi, the khan in Kızıltuğ - Cengiz Han. The cinema of those years told history through the faces of its rulers, and Irgat, in my view, lends those faces credibility with the stage weight he brought from the theatre.

Cinephile Looks at script, editing and directing choices; keeps a distance from formula films.

Ömer Lütfi Akad turns up three times in Cahit Irgat's filmography: Altı Ölü Var/İpsala Cinayeti (1953), Yalnızlar Rıhtımı (1959) and Seninle Ölmek İstiyorum (1969). Sixteen years apart, with named parts in the first and the last, they suggest to me that Irgat was an actor called back by a serious director well beyond the robed historical films.

These are not reader reviews: they are short editorial takes on this person's screen work, written from different viewer perspectives with AI assistance. Reader comments are below.

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