Jonathan Harris

Jonathan Daniel Harris, born Jonathan Charasuchin on November 6, 1914, in the Bronx, New York City, was an American actor whose career encompassed Broadway, television, film, and voice work. He died on November 3, 2002. The second of three children born to Russian Jewish immigrants Jennie and Sam Charasuchin, Harris grew up in a six-story tenement where his mother took in boarders to supplement the family's income. His father worked in Manhattan's Garment District and occasionally brought his son to Yiddish theatre performances and exposed him to opera on the radio. Harris developed an early interest in Broadway plays, as well as in archaeology, Latin, romantic poetry, and Shakespeare. Dissatisfied with his Bronx accent, he cultivated an English one during his high school years by watching British productions at an arts theater. He legally changed his surname from Charasuchin to Harris before entering college, following a year-long dispute with his father over the decision.

Harris earned a degree in pharmacology from Fordham University, graduating in 1936. He had worked as a pharmacy stockboy from the age of twelve. In 1938, he married his high school sweetheart, Gertrude Bregman; the marriage lasted until his death in 2002. Their son, Richard, was born in 1942.

Despite his pharmacology training, acting was Harris's primary ambition. In 1939, at age twenty-four, he prepared a fabricated résumé and auditioned for a repertory company at the Millpond Playhouse on Long Island, where director Richard Brooks hired him to appear in a series of twenty-six plays during the summer of 1940. Harris made his Broadway debut in 1942, winning the leading role of a Polish officer in The Heart of a City, for which he adopted a Polish accent. His Broadway career continued through 1953 and included A Flag Is Born, in which he starred opposite Quentin Reynolds and Marlon Brando in 1946, as well as The Madwoman of Chaillot, The Grass Harp, Hazel Flagg, Right Next to Broadway, and other productions.

Harris made his first television appearance in 1949 in the episode "His Name Is Jason" on The Chevrolet Tele-Theatre, which led to guest roles across numerous series including The Web, Lights Out, the Goodyear Television Playhouse, two episodes of Hallmark Hall of Fame, Armstrong Circle Theatre, three episodes of Studio One, Telephone Time, Schlitz Playhouse of Stars, Climax!, Outlaws, Bonanza, The Rogues, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, and Zorro, among many others. He appeared in the 1953 film Botany Bay. Harris portrayed Charles Dickens in a 1963 episode of Bonanza and appeared in two 1961 episodes of The Twilight Zone: "The Silence," in which he played a character defending a young man challenged to remain silent for a year at a gentleman's club, and "Twenty Two," in which he played a woman's doctor. In a 1971 episode of Night Gallery titled "Since Aunt Ada Came to Stay," he played Professor Nicholas Porteus, an expert on witchcraft.

From 1959 to 1965, Harris co-starred opposite Michael Rennie in the television series The Third Man, playing Bradford Webster, described in the external source alternately as a prudent accountant and an eccentric, cowardly assistant. Half of the episodes were filmed in London and the remainder in Hollywood. From 1963 to 1965, he co-starred in The Bill Dana Show as Mr. Phillips, the pompous manager of a hotel perpetually at odds with the bellhop character played by Bill Dana. Several of Harris's catchphrases and character mannerisms from that series carried over into his subsequent role as Dr. Zachary Smith on Lost in Space.

Harris was cast as Dr. Zachary Smith, an enemy agent, on the CBS science-fiction series Lost in Space, which debuted in 1965. The character did not appear in the original pilot episode, and because starring billing had already been contractually assigned before Harris joined the production, he negotiated to receive "Special Guest Star" billing on every episode. The character was initially written as a straightforward villain, but midway through the first season Harris began rewriting his own dialogue to introduce comedy, believing his strength lay in portraying a comic villain. Producer Irwin Allen approved the changes and gave Harris latitude as a writer. Harris developed a series of alliterative insults directed at The Robot, including phrases such as "bubble-headed booby" and "clamoring clod," which became widely recognized. Actor Bill Mumy credited Harris with single-handedly creating the version of Dr. Smith that audiences came to know. The series ran for 83 episodes before its cancellation in 1968. Harris played a similarly pompous diplomat on Get Smart in 1970 and also guest-starred on The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and Fantasy Island. He starred as the character Fagan in the first episode of the science-fiction series Ark II and appeared in two Saturday morning children's series in the mid-1970s, Space Academy and Uncle Croc's Block. During that period he also served as a television spokesman for the International House of Pancakes and made guest appearances on Bewitched and Sanford and Son.

In addition to his on-screen work, Harris taught drama and served as Chuck Norris's vocal coach for many years, with Norris crediting him for teaching him how to speak. Near the end of his career, Harris provided voices for the animated films A Bug's Life and Toy Story 2. Over the course of his career he accumulated more than 500 television and film appearances, as well as voiceover work.