Hal Williams, the veteran actor whose six-decade career made him a familiar face across some of television’s most beloved Black sitcoms, died Wednesday morning at his home in Rancho Mirage, California. He was 91. His manager, Zna Portlock Houston, confirmed the death, noting he had some health issues. No further cause of death was disclosed.
Williams was born Halroy Candis Williams in Columbus, Ohio in 1938 and did not pursue acting until his 30s, having worked as a social worker, corrections officer and postal worker before driving to Los Angeles after his marriage ended. “I sat down and said, ‘What do I really want to try to do before the maker comes and gets me?’ And it was acting,” he recalled in an interview. “I gave myself three years.”
He made it work. In 1972 he was cast as Officer Smitty Smith on Sanford and Son, the Norman Lear comedy starring Redd Foxx and Demond Wilson. Williams appeared in 22 episodes across the series’ run, playing one half of a recurring comic duo with Howard Platt’s Officer Hoppy Hopkins. The bit, which saw Hoppy explain police situations in elaborate jargon before Smitty translated everything into plain English, became one of the show’s most reliable gags. “We did it one time in rehearsal and the producers thought it was funny,” Williams recalled. “Some days we would come to rehearsal and they didn’t have anything solid. So we’d go to a hot dog joint, sit in the parking lot and come up with something.” He later reprised the role in the short-lived spinoff Sanford in 1980.
From 1985 to 1990 Williams starred in 227, the NBC sitcom created by Marla Gibbs about residents of a Washington D.C. apartment building. Williams played Lester Jenkins, husband to Gibbs’ Mary and father to a young Regina King’s Brenda, appearing across all 116 episodes of the show’s five-season run. The series also starred Jackée Harry, who won an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 1987 for her work on the show. Harry paid tribute to Williams on Instagram Wednesday. “What a gentleman. Hal always carried himself with grace, and he always had me laughing,” she wrote. “He was a stand-up guy who believed Black fathers on TV should be loving, present, and compassionate. He helped show America what that looked like. I’m so lucky to have worked closely with him. Rest in peace, my dear friend.”
Williams consistently described himself not as the funny man but as the straight man in the chaos. “People don’t realize that I’m a serious actor,” he told Antenna TV in 2019. “I wasn’t the funny guy. I was the straight guy in all the madness.”
His television credits across five decades include The Waltons, Private Benjamin, The Sinbad Show, Good Times, Moesha, Hill Street Blues, Magnum P.I., Night Court, L.A. Law, Parks and Recreation and most recently two guest appearances on the CBS reboot of Matlock starring Kathy Bates. On film, he appeared alongside George C. Scott in Hardcore, Clint Eastwood in The Rookie, Denzel Washington in Flight and opposite Ashton Kutcher, Bernie Mac and Zoe Saldaña in Guess Who.
Ernest Harden Jr., recently Emmy-nominated for The Pitt, shared a personal tribute Wednesday. “I’d just spoken to him for an hour on FaceTime yesterday. He binge-watched The Pitt on the plane back from Ohio and congratulated me on my nomination. We ended our conversation when he felt a little jet lag and needed to rest. My heart is heavy today. He always called me son.”
Williams is survived by two children, three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. He was predeceased by his son Mark, in whose memory Williams established the Mark K.A. Williams Memorial Scholarship Foundation, which provides funds to students of color pursuing college degrees in television and communications.