Born in Columbus, Ohio in 1934, it took Williams years to break into the industry. “I had grown up in theaters as a kid,” he reflected in a 2022 interview with Tell-Tale TV. “But I had no knowledge of how to get really get into business, except I knew two people in the business, Black folks that have been in there a long time. But you know, there was not that much opportunity for Blacks at that time. But I had two job offers and I took them.” He moved to Los Angeles in 1968 and gave himself three years to begin pursuing acting professionally, working nights at the LAX post while improving his skills and auditioning during the day. At the end of those three years, he’d landed roles in Sanford And Son and The Waltons, though he kept his job at the post office until his kids went away to school.
As Officer “Smitty” Smith in Sanford And Son, Williams was often paired with Howard Platt’s Officer Howard “Hoppy” Hopkins. He would recall later how he and Platt would be tasked with injecting Black slang into the show’s scripts. “We [would sit] there write stuff and take it back at the end of the day, to the run through,” he said. “The producer [would be] on the floor laughing. Then they would take it, embellish it, and make it part of the show.” The 1970s also brought roles in Gunsmoke, S.W.A.T., and Roots: The Next Generation.
In 1985, Williams began what may be his most recognizable role: Lester Jenkins, the husband of Marla Gibbs’ Mary Jenkins, in 227. Williams and Gibbs had first worked together when he’d guest starred in an episode of The Jeffersons in 1984. The series was adapted from Christine Houston’s stage play Two Twenty Seven, which Williams recalled was “much darker, too earthy and too real to go on television without substantial changes,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. While Lester was “a philandering sleaze… having an affair with the vamp upstairs” in the play, one initial pitched solution to this was to make Mary a single mother. Gibbs refused. Said Williams, “Marla didn’t want [her character] to be a Black woman in the ghetto struggling to raise children.”
Williams took few roles in the 1990s and 2000s, appearing only in episodes of Moesha, A Black Lady Sketch Show, and Matlock after his role in The Sinbad Show. Williams spoke to the Ohio-based WKYC just last week and reflected on his legacy. “50 years that I’ve been lucky enough to do what I do, and 11 television series,” he said. “That’s unheard of.”
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