{"id":766163,"date":"2026-07-16T11:42:21","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T11:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/766163\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T11:42:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T11:42:21","slug":"hal-williams-dead-actor-on-227-and-sanford-and-son-was-91","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/766163\/","title":{"rendered":"Hal Williams Dead: Actor on 227 and Sanford and Son Was 91"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tHal Williams, the actor known for his turns as the friendly neighborhood cop Smitty on Sanford and Son<\/a> and as Marla Gibbs\u2019 patient husband on another popular NBC sitcom, 227, has died. He was 91.<\/p>\n

\n\tWilliams died from natural causes Wednesday morning at his home in Rancho Mirage, California, his manager Zna Portlock Houston told TMZ<\/a>. He had had some recent health issues.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Ohio native also portrayed Goldie Hawn\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe played Sinbad\u2019s dad, Rudy, on the 1993-94 Fox comedy The Sinbad Show and appeared on CBS\u2019 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.)<\/p>\n

\n\tOn 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<\/a>\u2018s Embassy Television, was set in an apartment building in Washington, D.C. and lasted five seasons (1985-90).<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tWhile living in apartment 227, Mary Jenkins (Marla Gibbs), a gossiper and housewife, deals with the lives and drama of her husband Lester (Hal Williams), daughter Brenda (Regina King) and neighbors Rose (Reed Hall) and Sandra (Jack\u00e9e Harry). During its five-year run, \u2018227\u2019 was nominated for two Emmys and won one.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Photofest<\/p>\n

\n\tWilliams\u2019 big acting break came in 1972 when he was hired to play Officer Smith on Sanford and Son, starring Redd Foxx and Demond Wilson<\/a> as Watts junk dealers. (Lear had a hand in that series as well.) Smitty walked the beat with Officer \u201cSwanny\u201d Swanhauser (Noam Pitlik) on six episodes, then was partnered with the very square Officer \u201cHoppy\u201d Hopkins (Howard Platt) the rest of the way.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe 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],\u201d Williams noted<\/a>. \u201cA lot of times the writers would tell us where we fit into the episode and they would say, \u2018Go away and think of some slang.\u2019 That\u2019s where \u2018hammer hocks\u2019 and \u2018black-eyed rice\u2019 came from: ham hocks and black-eyed peas. \u2018Right off\u2019 came from \u2018Right on.\u2019 Howard was brilliant about corrupting the slang.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tRedd Foxx (left), Hal Williams (center) and Kelly Thorsden (right) in an episode of \u2018Sanford and Son.\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tEverett Collection<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile employed on Sanford and Son during the day, Williams kept his job on the overnight shift at the LAX post office. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t until the kids went away to school that I felt financially able to give up my regular job,\u201d he said<\/a> in a 1987 interview.<\/p>\n

\n\tHalroy 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.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI sat down after getting divorced and said, \u2018What do I really want to try to do before the maker comes and gets me?\u2019 And it was acting,\u201d said Williams, who had done some community theater<\/a>. \u201cSo, I took the plunge and drove to California in 48 hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tWilliams exited\u00a0Sanford 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 \u201clook like too much fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe returned to Sanford and Son in 1976 and played Smitty once again on the 1980-81 sequel Sanford.<\/p>\n

\"Regina<\/p>\n

\n\tWilliams and Gibbs had first worked together on a 1977 episode of CBS\u2019 The Jeffersons \u2014 she starred as the fiesty Florence the maid on that show, of course \u2014 when she asked him to join her on stage in 227, a play created by Christine Houston, who had come out of Lear\u2019s writing program.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe [stage version] was much darker, too earthy and too real to go on television without substantial changes,\u201d he recalled. \u201cI was a philandering sleaze in the play and I was having an affair with the vamp upstairs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tHal Williams (centre) in \u2018Private Benjamin\u2019 with Eileen Brennan (left) and Goldie Hawn (right). <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tEverett Collection<\/p>\n

\n\tThen-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.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMarla didn\u2019t want [her character] to be a black woman in the ghetto struggling to raise children,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tWilliams 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,\u00a0A Black Lady Sketch Show and Mr. Mayor and in films including Hardcore (1979), The Rookie (1990) and Guess Who (2005).<\/p>\n

\n\tHe was married and divorced twice. Survivors include his three kids.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve been a straight man for a long time,\u201d he said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t bother me, because all I ever aspired to be was a working actor. I\u2019ve been very lucky. Most of the shows I\u2019ve been in have been hits.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hal Williams, the actor known for his turns as the friendly neighborhood cop Smitty on Sanford and Son…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":766164,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[88,10756,208297,12362,92],"class_list":["post-766163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-obituaries","tag-sanford-and-son","tag-theater","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=766163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/766164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=766163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=766163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=766163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}