Hal Williams, the veteran actor whose portrayal of Officer "Smitty" Smith became one of Sanford and Son's most memorable recurring roles, died Wednesday morning (July 15) at his home in Rancho Mirage, California. He was 91.

His manager, Zna Portlock Houston, confirmed to TMZ that Williams died of natural causes after experiencing recent health issues.

Williams had just returned home two days earlier from Ohio, where he attended a reunion celebrating Sanford and Son alongside his longtime on-screen partner, Howard Platt, who played Officer "Hoppy" Hopkins.

He appeared on Cleveland's WKYC just days before his death, sharp and smiling, reflecting on the show's enduring appeal. "Because the humor was so real and wasn't artificial, and it was just generally funny, funny, funny, one laugh after another all the time," he told the station.

As Smitty, Williams appeared in dozens of episodes of the Norman Lear–produced Sanford and Son alongside Redd Foxx and Demond Wilson, developing a running gag with Platt that became one of the show's signature bits. Hoppy would open each scene with stiff, overly formal police language. Smitty would immediately translate it into plain English for Fred and Lamont.

"We did it one time in rehearsal and the producers thought it was funny," Williams told WKYC. "We did it in the first or second episode and it clicked. Some days, we would come to rehearsal and they didn't have anything solid. The producers would say, 'Go out, take a break for two hours, and bring us something back.'"

He returned to the role five more times on the 1980 NBC spinoff Sanford, which reunited Foxx with the franchise.

But Smitty was far from his only contribution. From 1985 to 1990, Williams played Lester Jenkins opposite Marla Gibbs on NBC's 227. The cast included Helen Martin, Regina King, Jackée Harry, and Paul Winfield.

He also starred as the curmudgeonly Sgt. Ted Ross on the full run of the Private Benjamin TV adaptation and played Rudy Bryan across 20 episodes of The Sinbad Show. Earlier, he logged 24 episodes on ABC's On the Rocks and recurred as Harley Foster on The Waltons.

According to his IMDb page, Williams earned dozens of film and television credits over a career spanning more than five decades — guest-starring on Gunsmoke, Good Times, Hill Street Blues, Moesha, L.A. Law, Magnum P.I., Parks and Recreation, and many more.

On the big screen, he appeared opposite Clint Eastwood in The Rookie, alongside Denzel Washington in Flight, and with Ashton Kutcher, Bernie Mac, and Zoe Saldaña in Guess Who. His most recent credit was a recurring role as "Autry" on the rebooted Matlock starring Kathy Bates.

Following the news of Williams’ passing, Ernest Harden Jr., recently Emmy-nominated for his role on HBO Max's The Pitt, wrote on Instagram that he had FaceTimed with Williams for an hour the day before his death — just after Williams had landed home from Ohio, where he'd spent the flight binge-watching The Pitt and calling to offer his congratulations.

"My TV dad Hal Williams died at 91 today," Harden wrote. "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."

Off-screen, Williams served for years on the board of the Los Angeles Actors' Theatre and founded the Mark K.A. Williams Memorial Scholarship Foundation — named for his late son Mark, a broadcasting student who died at 20 during a camping trip in the Angeles National Forest — to provide college scholarships to students of color pursuing careers in television and communications.

Williams is survived by two children, three grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

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