Comic Actor Sid Melton Dies at 94

Sid Melton, a comic character actor best known for his work on three shows starring Danny Thomas, died of pneumonia Wednesday at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, his family told the Los Angeles Times. He was 94.

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During a career that spanned nearly 60 years, Melton appeared in about 140 television and film projects. They included the 1951 films Lost Continent with Cesar Romero and Samuel Fuller's The Steel Helmet and Diana Ross starrer Lady Sings the Blues (1972).

On the 1950s TV show Captain Midnight, Melton co-starred as the hero’s sidekick, Ichabod Mudd. His signature line was, “That’s Mudd with two D’s.”

On The Danny Thomas Show (aka Make Room for Daddy), The Danny Thomas Hour and Make Room for Granddaddy that spanned 1959 to 1971, Melton played Uncle Charley Halper, the owner of the Copa Club where Thomas performed.

Melton also had a recurring role in the late 1960s on the sitcom Green Acres as Alf Monroe, half of an inept brother-sister carpenter team. (Mary Grace Canfield played his sister, Ralph.)

The Brooklyn native also appeared in flashbacks as the husband of Estelle Getty’s widowed character on The Golden Girls and on such other shows as Peter Gunn, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., The Munsters, Love American Style, Hunter, Empty Nest and Dave’s World.

The son of Isidor Meltzer, a comedian in Yiddish theater, Melton made his acting debut in 1939 in a touring production of See My Lawyer and appeared in 1947 on Broadway in The Magic Touch.

Melton also appeared in Shadow of a Thin Man (1941) and directed two films, Bad Girls Do Cry (1965) and … And Call Me in the Morning (1999), in which he also starred opposite Frank Sinatra Jr.

Melton’s older brother was Lewis Meltzer, a screenwriter who worked on Golden Boy (1939) starring William Holden, The Jazz Singer (1952) starring Thomas and Man With the Golden Arm (1955) starring Frank Sinatra.