Constantine Jameson, 88, classics teacher at Boston Latin

No one fell asleep taking Master Jameson's course.

"Connie would teach the classics as if he were acting out Shakespeare," recalled Michael Contompasis, a former Boston Latin headmaster who first knew Mr. Jameson when he was his seventh-grade teacher at the school in 1952.

Larry Carpman of Marshfield, who had Mr. Jameson as his Latin teacher for several years, said that being in one of his classes was like watching a theater production.

"Looking back now," he said, "I can't imagine any other teacher being able to keep 25 or 30 15- or 16-year-olds in such rapt attention to teach Latin. He did that by bringing it alive. . . . Connie would project as if he were on a Broadway stage."

Mr. Jameson - who taught at Boston Latin School for 32 years and also had a career in acting on radio, screen, and television and as a director - died Sunday of cancer at The Boston Center in Roslindale. He was 88 and lived in Jamaica Plain.

Acting might have been his first love, but teaching soon took its place. Onstage, he was a man of many faces, a chameleon visage that changed with each role. In one stage photograph, he looks like Clark Gable.

His brother, Harris of Jamaica Plain, recalled that when Mr. Jameson was a boy he worked after school at a pharmacy near Boston Latin, which had a tenant in the apartment above, Babe Ruth, then of the Red Sox.

"One day," Harris said, "the Babe walks in with a friend. The friend says, 'Hey Babe, do you notice something about the kid behind the counter?' The Babe sees Connie's flat nose and chubby face. 'Hey,' he says, 'he looks like me!' "

Harris said that when all three Jameson brothers were growing up they played semipro baseball with the Hal Crosby Club.

Mr. Jameson had a zest for life. He loved bow ties, golf, baseball, opera, acting, teaching, and keeping in touch with former students. He would burst out in operatic arias, often after a good shot on the golf course.

Instead of giving a high-five, he would greet a friend with the Italian, "Cinque!' He often had a mustache, and he wrote sonnets.

Contompasis recalled that Mr. Jameson would often give a stirring rendition of "Casey at the Bat" to the classroom or elsewhere and that he used to drive around in an old Studebaker.

When Boston Latin honored Mr. Jameson in 2001 as its Distinguished Graduate of the Year, class of 1937, the school's Bulletin said his interest in drama started during his undergraduate days at Boston College.

In 1947, Selznick International Pictures offered to give him a screen test in New York, according to the Bulletin. He went to New York, but he was too busy rehearsing to hear the news: American motion picture assets abroad had been frozen, the Bulletin said, and Selznick was firing actors.

But maybe in the end it didn't matter, because Mr. Jameson decided his passion was in teaching.

The movie industry "wasn't for real," he told the Bulletin. "It was very gratifying, but somehow my nature wanted something more than make-believe."

He still did acting gigs, on air and on stage, but teaching came first. "Most of us learned to be teachers," Contompasis said. "Connie was born to be one."

But the classroom didn't end his film career.

In the 1950s, he played a character named Mr. Fistuche on a children's show on WBZ-TV, aired locally. Contompasis, who remembered watching the show when he was Mr. Jameson's pupil, said the techniques Mr. Jameson used in the classroom to catch a child's attention were the same as the ones he employed on the air.

He also appeared in commercials. In the early 1970s, he did campaign commercials on the air for Larry DiCara, who was running for a seat on the Boston City Council. DiCara had been one of Mr. Jameson's homeroom students.

The son of Greek immigrants, Constantine was born in Peabody to George and Vasiliky (Panagopoulos) Papademetropoulos. Harris said that their father did not want to change their name, but that after he died in 1935, their mother, a seamstress with four children to raise, changed it to Jameson.

Mr. Jameson's full name was Constantine Pappas Jameson. He was more often called Connie and for theatrical purposes used Conrad.

His mother moved her young family to Mission Hill, and the boys attended Boston Latin. Their sister went to Girls Latin.

After graduating from Boston Latin, Connie Jameson went to Boston College, where he studied the classics and graduated in 1942.

He joined the US Army but was honorably discharged after six months because of a sinus problem, said his nephew, Philip Jameson of Wellesley. He started teaching at Boston Latin in 1947 and taught evening courses in drama at Emerson College for 20 years.

Along the way, Harris said, his brother had a role in the Hollywood war movie, "12 Rue Madeleine," filmed in Boston.

In 1980, he played Marley to Orson Bean's Scrooge in "The Christmas Carol" at Charles Playhouse.

Mr. Jameson kept active after retirement, especially by playing golf, his nephew said. He golfed most frequently at the George Wright Golf Course in Hyde Park.

In 2001, on his 81st birthday, Mr. Jameson was playing at Ponkapoag Golf Course when he had a stroke. He fought it, friends said, and even drove during his recovery. The most difficult thing for a man with the golden voice, friends said, was the aphasia that resulted.

But he remained upbeat, even after he was diagnosed with cancer in the past year. He would say to friends, "Thank God, no pain" or "Lucky - 88 years."

A funeral service will be held at 10 a.m. today at the Greek Orthodox Center Chapel in Brookline. Burial will be in Forest Hills Cemetery.