Hal Williams, the actor known for his turns as the friendly neighborhood cop Smitty on Sanford and Son and as Marla Gibbs’ patient husband on another popular NBC sitcom, 227, has died. He was 91. Williams died from natural causes Wednesday morning at his home in Rancho Mirage, California, his manager Zna Portlock Houston told TMZ. He had had some recent health issues. The Ohio native also portrayed Goldie Hawn’s 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. blogherads.adq.push(function () { blogherads .defineSlot( 'medrec', 'gpt-article-mid-article-uid0' ) .setTargeting( 'pos', ["mid-article1","mid-articleX","mid","mid-article"] ) .setTargeting( 'viewable', 'yes' ) .setSubAdUnitPath("ros\/mid-article") .addSize([[300,250],[2,2],[300,251],[620,350],[2,4],[4,2],[320,480],[620,366]]) .setClsOptimization("minsize") ; }); He played Sinbad’s dad, Rudy, on the 1993-94 Fox comedy The Sinbad Show and appeared on CBS’ 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.) On 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‘s Embassy Television, was set in an apartment building in Washington, D.C. and lasted five seasons (1985-90). Williams’ big acting break came in 1972 when he was hired to play Officer Smith on Sanford and Son, starring Redd Foxx and Demond Wilson as Watts junk dealers. (Lear had a hand in that series as well.) Smitty walked the beat with Officer “Swanny” Swanhauser (Noam Pitlik) on six episodes, then was partnered with the very square Officer “Hoppy” Hopkins (Howard Platt) the rest of the way. blogherads.adq.push(function () { blogherads .defineSlot( 'medrec', 'gpt-dsk-tab-mid-article2-uid1' ) .setTargeting( 'pos', ["mid","mid-article2","mid-articleX"] ) .setTargeting( 'viewable', 'yes' ) .setSubAdUnitPath("ros\/mid-article2") .addSize([[300,250],[300,251],[620,350],[2,4],[4,2],[320,480],[620,366]]) .setClsOptimization("minsize") ; }); “The 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],” Williams noted. “A lot of times the writers would tell us where we fit into the episode and they would say, ‘Go away and think of some slang.’ That’s where ‘hammer hocks’ and ‘black-eyed rice’ came from: ham hocks and black-eyed peas. ‘Right off’ came from ‘Right on.’ Howard was brilliant about corrupting the slang.” While employed on Sanford and Son during the day, Williams kept his job on the overnight shift at the LAX post office. “It wasn’t until the kids went away to school that I felt financially able to give up my regular job,” he said in a 1987 interview. Halroy 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. “I sat down after getting divorced and said, ‘What do I really want to try to do before the maker comes and gets me?’ And it was acting,” said Williams, who had done some community theater. “So, I took the plunge and drove to California in 48 hours.”