I never met Sid Melton but I couldn't let his passing (at age 94) pass without notice. A lot of people knew him as the sidekick on Captain Midnight; others as Danny Thomas's agent on The Danny Thomas Show or as Alf Monroe, one of the carpenters on Green Acres. The guy worked a lot, appearing in more than a hundred movies and TV shows.
He was one of those actors who was regarded as utterly dependable. Once on The Dick Van Dyke Show, they had an episode about a delicatessen owner who has a crush on Sally Rogers (Rose Marie) and tries wooing her with sandwiches and roses. Gavin McLeod was originally cast in the role but when he had to undergo an emergency appendectomy, the producers had to scramble for a replacement. They looked no farther than the soundstage next door to theirs where The Danny Thomas Show filmed. Melton stepped into the part and was very good in it.
One year in the late sixties, my parents and I went to the Greek Theatre here in Los Angeles to see Carol Burnett perform. She took questions from the audience and one little obnoxious man kept asking her to marry him. Apparently, Ms. Burnett couldn't see him from the stage and she tried to move on to another questioner but the annoying guy kept yelling, "Why won't you marry me?" and people around him started to laugh. We could all see it was Sid Melton even if Carol couldn't. Finally, enough people were laughing that Burnett took a closer look, recognized her suitor as Sid Melton, and literally fell down laughing. "My God, you're in everything," she said…and she was right. For a time, he was.