Hal Williams, the actor known for his turns as the friendly neighborhood cop Smitty on Sanford and Son and as Marla Gibbs’ patient husband on another popular NBC sitcom, 227, has died. He was 91.
Williams died from natural causes Wednesday morning at his home in Rancho Mirage, California, his manager Zna Portlock Houston told TMZ. He had some recent health issues.
The Ohio native also portrayed Goldie Hawn’s tough but sympathetic drill sergeant in the Howard Zieff-directed box office hit Private Benjamin (1980), then continued in the role for three seasons on the 1981-83 CBS sitcom adaptation that starred Lorna Patterson.
He played Sinbad’s dad, Rudy, on the 1993-94 Fox comedy The Sinbad Show and appeared on CBS’ The Waltons several times over the years as Harley Foster, a worker at the lumber mill who, it turns out, had escaped prison after he was wrongly incarcerated for killing a man in self-defense. (He eventually receives a presidential pardon from FDR.)
On 227, Williams starred as Lester Jenkins, who has his own construction company in support of his busybody wife, Mary (Gibbs), and their studious daughter, Brenda (Regina King). The comedy, from Norman Lear‘s Embassy Television, was set in an apartment building in Washington, D.C. and lasted five seasons (1985-90).
“He was also a stand-up guy who believed Black fathers on TV should be loving, present, and compassionate,” his 227 co-star Jackée Harry wrote on Instagram. “He helped show America what that looked like.”
Williams’ big acting break came in 1972 when he was hired to play Officer Smith on Sanford and Son, starring Redd Foxx and Demond Wilson as Watts junk dealers (Lear had a hand in that series as well). Smitty walked the beat with Officer “Swanny” Swanhauser (Noam Pitlik) on six episodes, then was partnered with the very square Officer “Hoppy” Hopkins (Howard Platt) the rest of the way.
Hal Williams flanked by Redd Foxx (left) and Kelly Thorsden on ‘Sanford and Son.’
Everett Collection
“The whole concept of how [Hoppy] is struggling so hard to be in the know with the Black culture and the slang and everything [was very popular with viewers],” Williams once noted. “A lot of times the writers would tell us where we fit into the episode and they would say, ‘Go away and think of some slang.’ That’s where ‘hammer hocks’ and ‘black-eyed rice’ came from: ham hocks and black-eyed peas. ‘Right off’ came from ‘Right on.’ Howard was brilliant about corrupting the slang.”
While employed on Sanford and Son during the day, Williams stuck with his overnight shift at the LAX post office. “It wasn’t until the kids went away to school that I felt financially able to give up my regular job,” he said in a 1987 interview.
Halroy Candis Williams was born on Dec. 14, 1934, in Columbus, Ohio. He worked as a juvenile correctional officer and in child family services before deciding in 1968 that he was up for a change.
“I sat down after getting divorced and said, ‘What do I really want to try to do before the maker comes and gets me?’ And it was acting,” said Williams, who had done some community theater. “So, I took the plunge and drove to California in 48 hours.”
He auditioned for roles around his shifts at LAX and at the California Youth Authority and landed gigs on such TV shows as Dan August, That Girl and Cannon.
Hal Williams with his ‘227’ co-stars Marla Gibbs (right) and Regina King.
Courtesy of Columbia Pictures/ Everett Collection
Williams exitedSanford and Son in 1975 to play the inmate Lester DeMott on a new ABC comedy, On the Rocks. That series, like Sanford and Son based on a British comedy, did well in the ratings in its only season but was canceled, he said, because viewers wrote letters to the network complaining that it made prison “look like too much fun.”
He returned to Sanford and Son in 1976 and played Smitty once again on the 1980-81 sequel Sanford.
Williams and Gibbs had first worked together on a 1977 episode of CBS’ The Jeffersons — she starred as the fiesty Florence the maid on that show, of course — when she asked him to join her on stage in 227, a play created by Christine Houston, who had come out of Lear’s writing program.
“The [stage version] was much darker, too earthy and too real to go on television without substantial changes,” he recalled. “I was a philandering sleaze in the play and I was having an affair with the vamp upstairs.”
Hal Williams in ‘Private Benjamin’ with Eileen Brennan (left) and Goldie Hawn.
Everett Collection
Then-NBC president Brandon Tartikoff and Lear came to see it and recognized its potential as a sitcom, but they wanted Mary to be a single woman and have Lester killed off. Gibbs would have none of that.
“Marla didn’t want [her character] to be a black woman in the ghetto struggling to raise children,” he said.
Williams worked consistently through the decades, showing up on episodes of Harry O, Good Times, Hill Street Blues, Magnum, P.I., Night Court, L.A. Law, Roots: The Next Generation, Suddenly Susan, Parks and Recreation,A Black Lady Sketch Show and Mr. Mayor and in films including Hardcore (1979), The Rookie (1990) and Guess Who (2005).
He was married and divorced twice. Survivors include his three kids.
“I’ve been a straight man for a long time,” he said. “It doesn’t bother me, because all I ever aspired to be was a working actor. I’ve been very lucky. Most of the shows I’ve been in have been hits.”