Paul Benedict

Paul Benedict (September 17, 1938 – December 1, 2008)

He was known for his roles as The Number Painter on the popular PBS children's show Sesame Street, and as the English neighbor Harry Bentley on the CBS sitcom The Jeffersons. In the movie The Goodbye Girl (1977) starring Richard Dreyfuss and Marsha Mason, Benedict played the stage director of a production of Richard III in which Richard III was to be portrayed in the play as a stereotypical gay man. He was the patiently-eccentric butler in Dr. Necessiter's Gothic-castle apartment in The Man With Two Brains (1983). When Dr. Hfuhruhurr (Steve Martin) complains loudly that he just learned his wife is a slut, Benedict responds, "Yeah, I've heard this." He was in a short scene in the mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap (1984), playing Tucker Smitty Brown, the awkward desk clerk who checks in the band. Perhaps his best known movie role was of the Reverend Lindquist in Sydney Pollack's 1972 film Jeremiah Johnson starring Robert Redford. Benedict was best known for his role as Harry Bentley on the television series The Jeffersons. He played this role from 1975 when the series began until 1981, and then returned in 1983 and remained until the end of the series in 1985. His character was a well-mannered Englishman who lived in the apartment next door to George and Louise Jefferson. In addition to his varied film and television roles, Benedict was an accomplished theater actor as well, having appeared on Broadway multiple times, notably in Eugene O'Neill's two-character play Hughie in 1996 (performing with Al Pacino) at Circle in the Square, and more recently in The Music Man in 2000–2001. On December 1, 2008, Benedict was found dead of unknown causes at his home in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. He was 70 years old.