Actor Hal Williams, best known for playing Office “Smitty” Smith on the hit 1970s sitcom Sanford and Son, died this week. He was 91.
The veteran actor’s representative said Williams died on Wednesday at his home in Rancho Mirage, Calif.
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Williams was also known for starring on the ’80s hit show 227 from 1985 to ’90 as Lester Jenkins, the husband of star Marla Gibbs’ Mary Hurley Jenkins. That show, packed with stars including Helen Martin, Regina King, Jackée Harry and Paul Winfield, was a cultural touchstone as the only other Black middle-class family series at the time other than The Cosby Show.
On Sanford and Son, Williams played Smitty, one half of a crime fighting duo who appeared on 22 episodes of the classic NBC show. His partner, Officer “Hoppy” Hopkins, played by Howard Platt, would often lead off a scene with a stiff “official” police explanation of their task at hand, only for Smitty to interrupt in plain English for Fred and Lamont (Redd Foxx and Demond Wilson). Viewers knew something funny was about to happen as soon as Smitty and Hoppy walked into a scene.
Williams said the characters’ shtick happened naturally between him and Platt. “We did it in one time in rehearsal, and the producers thought it was funny,” he told WKYC just last week. “We did it in the first or second episode, and it clicked. Some days we would come to rehearsal and they didn’t have anything solid. [So the producers would say,] ‘Go out, take a break for two hours, and bring us something back.’”
He reprised his role as Smitty on five episodes of NBC’s Sanford in 1980. That was just one chapter of his long-spanning career, during which he worked steadily. He had even longer stints on ABC’s On the Rocks, in which he appeared in 24 episodes, as well as Private Benjamin, on which he played the curmudgeonly Sgt. Ted Ross for the show’s entirety. He also had an extended stint as Rudy Bryan on 20 episodes of The Sinbad Show.
He had guest appearances on TV staples like That Girl, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Cannon, Police Woman, Gunsmoke, Police Story, Quincy M.E., Good Times, Knots Landing, The Waltons, The Dukes of Hazzard, Webster, Hill Street Blues, Magnum P.I., Night Court, L.A. Law, Suddenly Susan, Moesha and Parks and Recreation.
His most recent special guest appearance was on the rebooted Matlock series starring Kathy Bates, where he played Autry, a local resident whose testimony impacts the firm’s cases.
His career stretched to film as well. He played opposite George C. Scott in Hardcore, alongside Clint Eastwood in The Rookie, with James Earl Jones, Billy Dee Williams and Courtney B. Vance in Percy & Thunder, opposite Ashton Kutcher, Bernie Mac and Zoe Saldaña in Guess Who and as Denzel Washington’s father in Flight.
Williams was married and divorced twice. He is survived by two children, three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
