Hal Williams

Harold "Hal" Williams (born December 14, 1934) appeared as the black cop, LAPD Officer Smith a.k.a. ("Smitty") on Sanford and Son. He is also known as the patriarch Lester Jenkins, the husband of Marla Gibbs's character Mary Jenkins, on the NBC-TV sitcom 227. Hal would later reprise his role as "Smitty" on the spin-off series Sanford.

Career
Hal started out in show business in 1969. Since then, he has appeared in movies such as the 1979 film Hardcore, Private Benjamin (1980) (he also took his role of Sgt L.C. "Ted" Ross to the television series of the same name), and The Rookie (1990). He was controversially fired from The Jimmy Stewart Show in 1971 at the insistence of its star, James Stewart. In the early to mid-1990s, he starred in many of comic Sinbad's productions, including The Sinbad Show and The Cherokee Kid. Most recently, he played the grandfather in the Bernie Mac film Guess Who.

His other television credits include Moonlight, the UPN series Moesha and Minor Adjustments, NBC-TV's Suddenly Susan,L.A. Law, Quincy, M.E., Hill Street Blues, Gimme a Break, and Night Court, CBS series such as Magnum, P.I., The Jeffersons, Good Times, The Dukes of Hazzard, The Waltons, Gunsmoke, Knots Landing and The White Shadow, and ABC-TV shows such as T.J. Hooker, What's Happening!!, Kung Fu, S.W.A.T., and That Girl.

Hal is also the host of the annual Sickle Cell Anemia Foundation nationally-televised telethon.