Leonard Stone

 Leonard Stone (November 3, 1923 – November 2, 2011)

He appeared in 120 television shows and 35 films in supportive roles. Stone was nominated for a Tony Award in 1959 for Best Supporting Actor in Redhead, a Bob Fosse musical. He also was in the Tony Award-nominated cast of Look Homeward, Angel in 1957, which premiered at the Ethel Barrymore Theater in New York. Based on the Thomas Wolfe novel, it won a Pulitzer Prize. One of his Stone's most notable film roles came in 1971, when he played Sam Beauregarde, the father of Golden Ticket winner Violet Beauregarde, in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. In 1973’s Soylent Green he played Charles, the manager of the building where the murdered character portrayed by Joseph Cotten lived. Other films he appeared in include The Mugger (1958), A Man Called Dagger (1968), Angel in My Pocket (1969), Zig Zag (1970), Getting Straight (1970), I Love My Wife (1970), Mame (1974), and The Man from Independence (1974).

Among his television credits were Peter Gunn, The Untouchables, Gunsmoke, The Rifleman (twice), The Defenders, The Real McCoys , The Outer Limits, Dr. Kildare, McHale's Navy, Rawhide, The F.B.I., The Doris Day Show, The High Chaparral, Gomer Pyle: USMC, Dragnet 1967, The Partridge Family, Barney Miller, The Bob Newhart Show, and others. Between 1988 and 1994, he was cast as Judge Paul Hansen in 10 episodes of the series L.A. Law. Stone died on November 2, 2011, in Encinitas, California, after suffering a brief bout with cancer, one day short of his 88th birthday.