Veteran character actor Harold J. Stone died Friday at the age of 92. Here's a link to the L.A. Times obit.
I had the pleasure of working with Mr. Stone for a week on Welcome Back, Kotter about three decades ago. (The story of how he was cast is in this article I wrote.) He was a true professional and a fine gentleman.
One day that week, while the rest of the cast was rehearsing a scene that did not include him, I found myself sitting in the reception area with Mr. Stone, talking about what he'd been doing lately. For the most part, it was performing around the country in productions of either Norman, Is That You?, Come Blow Your Horn or — less often — Don't Drink the Water. They were all plays in which he portrayed a Jewish father who was upset about his son's lifestyle…which is pretty much what we had him playing that week on Welcome Back, Kotter. Stone said he was frustrated that he kept being cast as essentially the same character but very grateful that he always seemed to be working. In earlier years, he'd played a pretty wide range of ethnicities and a lot of treacherous villain roles. Lately though, it had all been Disapproving Dads. He said his favorite TV job of all time had been playing the magazine editor, patterned loosely on the New Yorker's Harold Ross, on My World and Welcome to It. There's a series someone ought to release on DVD or at least put on some cable channel.
As we were talking, the receptionist was flipping through channels on a muted TV, looking for something to have on, and I spotted X, The Man With X-Ray Eyes — a low-budget 1963 horror film in which Stone played a doctor. "Stop there and turn on the sound," I yelled — and the timing couldn't have been better. Thirty seconds later, Harold J. Stone was on the screen warning Ray Milland that if he continued to experiment with an x-ray vision formula, it could have dire consequences.
Next to me on the couch, the real Harold J. Stone alternately chuckled and cringed. It wasn't a bad movie but his scene was pretty awful. It ended with him crashing through a window and plunging to his death. Sitting there in the reception area, Mr. Stone said, "I guess I was lucky. I didn't have to be in the rest of the movie."
Here's a link to his Internet Movie Database listing which, like most Internet Movie Database listings, is hardly complete, especially with regard to television guest star appearances. Even as is, it includes roles on 159 TV episodes including just about every major dramatic or comedy series filmed in Los Angeles for thirty years. It also lists around three dozen movies, including several with Jerry Lewis. Jerry wasn't dumb. He knew how good Harold J. Stone could be.