Stephen Elliott

Stephen Elliott, born Elliott Pershing Stitzel on November 27, 1918, in New York City, was an American actor who performed on Broadway under his stage name from 1945 to 1972. He died on May 21, 2005, in Woodland Hills, California, from congestive heart failure.

Elliott began his formal training between 1940 and 1942, studying acting under Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. Following his service with the United States Merchant Marine during World War II, he launched his Broadway career with a debut production of Shakespeare's The Tempest. Shortly after, Robert Lewis selected him as one of the founding members of The Actors Studio.

His Broadway work spanned nearly three decades and included productions such as King Lear, The Miser, Georgy, The Crucible, Mary Stuart, and The Creation of the World and Other Business. In 1967, he received a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his work in Marat/Sade. He won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance in 1970 for A Whistle in the Dark.

Elliott became widely recognized to film audiences through two prominent roles: Burt Johnson, the prospective father-in-law, in the 1981 comedy Arthur, and Chief Hubbard in the 1984 film Beverly Hills Cop. On television, his credits included the role of newspaper publisher Douglas Channing in Falcon Crest, General Padget in Columbo, Harold W. Smith in the 1988 television adaptation of Remo Williams, and Judge Harold Aldrich in Chicago Hope. He also portrayed Texan millionaire attorney Scotty Demarest in Dallas, a series in which his third wife, actress Alice Hirson, also appeared in a recurring role, though their characters never shared scenes. In 1981, he appeared as newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst in the television serial Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years and was a regular cast member of the short-lived 1988 sitcom Trial and Error. That same year, he voiced Bail Organa, father of Princess Leia, in the radio drama adaptation of Star Wars.

In his personal life, Elliott's first marriage, to Barbara Blaise, ended in divorce in February 1947. He married stage actress Nancy Chase on October 9, 1947; they had two children, Jency and Jon, and divorced in 1960. He married his third wife, actress Alice Hirson, in 1980, having first met her on Broadway in 1964.