Today, a brief remembrance of character actor Harold J. Stone (1913-2005). I associate Stone with crook and thug characters but he also played doctors, generals, and other rough-hewn authority figures. I imagine many already recognize the face; here are some of the places you might know him from:
The Jerry-Sphere. He was on The Jerry Lewis Show and was in his movies The Big Mouth (1967), Which Way to the Front? (1970) and Hardly Working (1980).
The Hitchcock-verse. He was in The Wrong Man (1956) and appeared on Hitchcock’s tv show five times.
Stone had regular or recurring parts on several TV shows: The Hartmans, The Goldbergs, My World and Welcome To It, and Bridget Loves Bernie. He was a frequent German officer on Hogan’s Heroes, a Russian defector on Gilligan’s Island, and Gabe Kaplan’s dad on Welcome Back, Kotter.
Other films include The Harder They Fall (1956), Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), The Invisible Boy (1957), Spartacus (1960), The Chapman Report (1962), X: The Man With the X Ray Eyes (1963), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), Elvis Presley’s Love Happy (1965), The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (1967), and Russ Meyer’s The Seven Minutes (1971).
Stone is also known for his many guest appearances in TV westerns including 7 episodes of Gunsmoke (though he’s no relation to Milburn Stone), 5 of The Virginian, 3 of The Rifleman, 3 of Have Gun, Will Travel, 2 of Cheyenne, as well as episodes of Wagon Train, Bonanza, Wanted Dead or Alive, etc.
Like Lee. J. Cobb, he was a funny guy to have in westerns. A third generation Yiddish stage actor, Stone made his New York stage debut in White Slave at the age of six. He began appearing regularly on Broadway in 1939, and is especially known for having appeared in the original productions of One Touch of Venus (1943), A Bell for Adano (1944), Stalag 17 (1952), and Irma La Douce (1960).
Stone’s very last screen credit was a 1986 episode of Highway to Heaven. 73 at the time, he couldn’t have known that he wouldn’t be getting onto the actual highway for almost another 20 years.
(Travalanche) 
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