Richard Deacon

Richard Lewis Deacon (May 14, 1922 – August 8, 1984) was an American actor born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who built a prolific career in television and film while also appearing on Broadway. Though born in Philadelphia, he grew up in Binghamton, New York, where he attended West Junior High and Binghamton Central High School. Among his classmates at Binghamton Central was Rod Serling. After graduating, Deacon worked as an orderly at Binghamton General Hospital before serving in the United States Army medical corps during World War II. He returned to Binghamton in 1946 following the completion of his military service and enrolled at Ithaca College, initially pursuing medicine before shifting his focus to acting. In 1949, he was admitted to Bennington College as a student and assistant in the drama department, alongside several other male actors.

Deacon became widely recognized for playing supporting characters frequently described as pompous or imperious in nature. His two most prominent television roles were Mel Cooley, the milksop producer of The Alan Brady Show on CBS's The Dick Van Dyke Show from 1961 to 1966, and Fred Rutherford on Leave It to Beaver, which ran from 1957 to 1963, though he had first appeared in the 1957 pilot episode of that series as a different character, Mr. Baxter. He made recurring appearances on The Jack Benny Program as both a salesman and a barber, and played Principal "Jazzbo" Conroy in The Danny Thomas Show in 1958. He portrayed a hotel manager on NBC's Happy and co-starred as Tallulah Bankhead's butler in an episode of The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour. He also played Roger Buell in the second season of The Mothers-in-Law from 1967 to 1969, taking over the role from Roger C. Carmel.

His television work extended across numerous genres and programs. He appeared in Gunsmoke as the original actor to portray town banker Mr. Botkin, clashed with Walter Brennan over property tax assessments in an episode of The Real McCoys, and played a deceitful character in a Bonanza episode set in San Francisco. He portrayed water district commissioner Mr. Pike in a first-season episode of The Munsters and administered psychological tests to Cousin Itt in an episode of The Addams Family. In 1964, he played Mr. Whipple in the Twilight Zone episode "The Brain Center at Whipple's." He appeared in four episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies in 1970 as a psychiatrist treating Granny, and in 1971 co-starred with Elaine Joyce in the final episode of Green Acres, which served as an unproduced backdoor pilot. He was also an occasional panelist on Match Game during the 1970s and early 1980s, and appeared on the Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour in 1983.

Deacon's film career included a bit role as a policeman in the 1956 Rodgers and Hammerstein adaptation Carousel, a physician in the bookend sequences of Invasion of the Body Snatchers that same year, and a brief appearance in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds in 1963. In Billy Wilder's 1957 film The Spirit of St. Louis, he portrayed Charles A. Levine, chairman of the Columbia Aircraft Corporation. He played Jean Simmons' elder brother, an 18th-century Marseilles silk merchant, in the 1954 film Désirée, and appeared in Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy in 1955. In The Young Philadelphians (1959), starring Paul Newman, he played George Archibald, a butler whose courtroom testimony serves as a turning point in the story. His Disney film credits included Ralph Yarby in The Gnome-Mobile in 1967 and Dean Wheaton in Blackbeard's Ghost in 1968. His final film appearance was a cameo in the 1984 teen comedy Bad Manners.

Deacon's Broadway career brought him to the stage in 1964 in Hello, Dolly!, and he returned to the production in 1969, co-starring as Horace Vandergelder opposite Phyllis Diller, who played the title role. In 1983, he reprised his Leave It to Beaver role of Fred Rutherford in the television movie Still the Beaver. When that film led to a series on The Disney Channel, Deacon was set to continue in the role but died weeks before production began.

Beyond acting, Deacon was a gourmet chef who authored a series of cookbooks in the 1970s and 1980s and hosted a Canadian television program focused on microwave oven cooking. He died of an apparent heart attack on August 8, 1984, at the age of 62. His remains were cremated and his ashes scattered at sea.