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Hulusi Kentmen
Photo: Wikimedia Commons · Pivox · CC BY-SA 4.0

Hulusi Kentmen

Actor · died at 82

Profile

Age at death82
Birth dateJanuary 20, 1911
BirthplaceVeliko Tarnovo
DiedDecember 20, 1993
Place of deathIstanbul
ProfessionActor, Non-commissioned officer
Zodiac signAquarius

Worked most often with

Filmography / Projects

Hulusi Kentmen — Biography

Hulusi Kentmen was born on 20 January 1911 in Tarnovo, Bulgaria, the son of Ali Bey, an official of the Ottoman postal service; his family migrated to Turkey after the Balkan Wars and he spent his childhood on the Gulf of İzmit. While training at the Naval NCO School and later serving as a submarine petty officer, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1933 and, facing discharge, wrote to Atatürk, whose personal physician examined him and certified him fit. In 1937 he was pulled onto a stage at a Kadıköy Halkevi rehearsal when the cast was short an actor, playing Tahir in Hisse-i Şaiya; his talent was spotted by Burhanettin Tepsi, with whom he turned professional at the French Theatre. He kept up both his naval career and acting, with his superiors' tolerance, until leaving the service in 1961. He entered cinema in 1942 with Sürtük and became known through Ferdi Tayfur's Senede Bir Gün (1946); his warm, gruff fatherly type became so familiar that "like Hulusi Kentmen" entered everyday speech. He married Refika Kentmen in 1938, and they had a son, Volkan. He died of heart and kidney failure at Marmara University Hospital on 20 December 1993 and was buried at Karacaahmet Cemetery; Google marked his memory with a dedicated doodle in 2022.

Reactions

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Their work through different eyes

Yeşilçam Nostalgic A viewer raised on the classics, looking for warm storytelling and strong acting.

Ertem Eğilmez's family comedies are the best door into Hulusi Kentmen: the father of Ferit in Tatlı Dillim, and Fehmi Haznedar in Oh Olsun, who punishes his three sons by putting them to work in his factory. Yalancı Yarim is a gentle comedy of a lie that keeps growing. In these films the father carries sternness and warmth together, and in my view this is how Yeşilçam built its image of the family hearth. Anyone after a warm film with a moral centre can begin here.

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

In Hulusi Kentmen's 1970s work, in my view the same chair keeps coming back: Ferit's father in Tatlı Dillim and Ah Nerede, Fehmi Haznedar in Oh Olsun, the commissioner in Salak Milyoner and Gülşah Küçük Anne. Authority and gruffness arrive ready-made and the films ask little beyond that. It did the job in its day; still, the repeated note makes these parts hard to tell apart.

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

Hulusi Kentmen's roles look at two generations of Turkey. In the films from 1950 to 1960, Fahrettin Bey in Aşktan da Üstün and Captain Henry in Yüzbaşı Tahsin sit inside National Struggle stories; in the 1970s, as father and commissioner, he stands for the order of the well-off family and the soft face of the state. In my view the shift shows a country moving from telling itself through war stories to telling itself through home and neighbourhood comedies.

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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