Leonard Stone

Leonard Stone, born Leonard Steinbock on November 3, 1923, in Salem, Oregon, was an American character actor whose career spanned stage, film, and television. The son of Julia Marguerite and Albert Michael Steinbock, he grew up in Salem and graduated from Salem High School before enrolling at Willamette University, where he studied speech and drama and earned his degree cum laude. During World War II, Stone served in the U.S. Navy, first as a midshipman in training and later as the commanding officer of a minesweeper operating in Japanese waters.

Following his military service, Stone pursued formal actor training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. His early professional stage work included performances in the West End, and he subsequently spent eight years touring Australia and New Zealand in the musical South Pacific. His Broadway career ran from 1957 to 1960 and produced two notable credits. He was part of the cast of Look Homeward, Angel, which opened in 1957 at the Ethel Barrymore Theater. The production, adapted from Thomas Wolfe's novel, received a Tony Award nomination for its cast and won the Pulitzer Prize. Stone's second Broadway credit was Redhead, a musical directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse, for which he won the 1959 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical.

Beyond the stage, Stone built an extensive career in film and television, appearing in more than 120 television productions and 35 films. Among his most recognized film roles was Mr. Beauregarde, father of Violet Beauregarde, in the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, in which Violet was portrayed by Denise Nickerson. Two years later, he appeared in Soylent Green as Charles, the building manager whose tenant, played by Joseph Cotten, is murdered. His other film appearances included The Mugger in 1958, The Big Mouth in 1967, The Shakiest Gun in the West in 1968, in which he played a bartender, and The Man in 1972, in which he played a congressman in a film starring James Earl Jones as the first Black president of the United States. Additional film credits included A Man Called Dagger, Angel in My Pocket, Zig Zag, Getting Straight, I Love My Wife, Mame, and The Man from Independence. An early television appearance came in 1956, when he played a crew member aboard the RMS Titanic in a TV adaptation of Walter Lord's A Night to Remember.

Stone's television work between 1961 and 1985 encompassed dozens of prominent American series. He appeared five times each on Gunsmoke, Dragnet 1967, Barney Miller, and Quincy M.E., four times on both Alice and Mannix, and three times each on Mission: Impossible, Ironside, and Falcon Crest. He made multiple appearances on The Rifleman, The Real McCoys, Dr. Kildare, Rawhide, Lost in Space, Gomer Pyle: USMC, Love American Style, Sanford and Son, and Hill Street Blues, among many others. Single appearances on series such as The Untouchables, The Outer Limits, McHale's Navy, The Doris Day Show, The Partridge Family, Mod Squad, The Waltons, Adam-12, Hawaii Five-O, Kojak, Cannon, The Bob Newhart Show, M*A*S*H, All in the Family, The Dukes of Hazzard, General Hospital, Night Court, Cagney and Lacey, Simon and Simon, and Eight Is Enough further demonstrated the breadth of his television presence. Between 1962 and 1966, he made four guest appearances on Perry Mason, including a 1962 role as murderer Jerel Leland in the episode The Case of the Hateful Hero. He played the recurring character Farnum the Great in two episodes of Lost in Space and portrayed Judge Paul Hansen in ten episodes of L.A. Law between 1988 and 1994. His final screen role came in 2006, when he appeared in the television film Surrender Dorothy at the age of 83.

Stone married Carole H. Kleinman in 1964, and the couple had four children. He died on November 2, 2011, in Encinitas, California, one day before what would have been his 88th birthday, following a brief illness with cancer.