Stanley Adams (actor)

Stanley Adams (April 7, 1915 – April 27, 1977) was an American actor and screenwriter.

Career

Born in New York City, Adams had his first film role playing the bartender in the movie version of Death of a Salesman (1951). He played another barkeep in The Gene Krupa Story and a safecracker in Roger Corman's High School Big Shot (1959).

Adams had a lengthy career as a character actor, often playing comic, pompous characters. He is known for playing Cyrano Jones in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Trouble with Tribbles" (1967). During the show's following season he co-wrote the Star Trek episode "The Mark of Gideon". He appeared at a number of Star Trek conventions in the 1970s and reprised (as a voice actor) his role of Cyrano Jones in the Star Trek: The Animated Series episode "More Tribbles, More Troubles". Archive footage of Adams was used in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Trials and Tribble-ations".

Adams played Otis Campbell's brother on an episode of The Andy Griffith Show; the character berated Otis for being the town drunk but turned out to be an alcoholic himself.

His other roles on TV shows include a time-travelling scientist—opposite Buster Keaton—and a bartender on The Twilight Zone (in the episodes "Once Upon a Time" and "Mr Garrity and the Graves"), King Kaliwani in the final episode of Gilligan's Island and "Tybo" the carrot leader of the vegetable rebellion on Lost in Space. He appeared in two episodes of the second season of the 1960s television show Batman ("Catwoman Goes to College"/"Batman Displays his Knowledge") as Captain Courageous. He appeared as political boss Frank Templeton in the final episode of McHale's Navy (1962–1966) entitled "Wally for Congress." He also in 1964 played Ilya Klarpe on "The Addams Family". He also played Bernie the foulmouthed caller in the 1974 action/adventure movie Rape Squad and the Chicano café owner in the 1963 movie Lilies of the Field. He played Rutherford "Rusty" Trawler, "the 9th richest man in America under 50" in the Audrey Hepburn film Breakfast at Tiffany's. He played a realtor on The Dick Van Dyke Show episode "Your Home Sweet Home Is My Home Sweet Home". He also played notorious pool shark "Sure Shot" Wilson on The Odd Couple. Stanley also played a role as bartender on the series Gunsmoke.

A significant film role was indirectly working with writer Rod Serling in the making of the 1962 film version of Requiem for a Heavyweight in which Stan Adams played Mr. Ferrelli, a character Adams was typically type-cast as. This time Adams was a "wrestling" promoter, and the apparent last chance for the star heavyweight to get any sort of regular work, absurd and degrading as it was. A description of the Ferrelli character is best shown when the heavyweight's coach (played by Mickey Rooney) declines to shake hands with Ferrelli.

In "The Lady and the Sourdough", Adams played Tom Despo, a gold miner who partners with a cook, Rupert Johnson (Paul Brinegar), in the episode "The Lady and the Sourdough" of the syndicated western series, Death Valley Days. Then a neighboring widow and baker, (Amzie Strickland), enters the picture.

Adams died in 1977 as the result of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the age of 62.

Selected filmography