Richard Erdman

For the artist, see Richard Erdman (artist).

Richard Erdman
Richard Erdman (1950), in The Admiral Was a Lady
Born	Richard Erdmann June 1, 1925 (1925-06-01) Enid, Oklahoma USA
Other names	Dick Erdman
Occupation	Television actor voice actor, film and television director
Years active	1944–present

Richard Erdman (born Richard Erdmann June 1, 1925, in Enid, Oklahoma) is an American film and television actor and director.

Notable roles

In a career that has spanned seven decades, his best known roles are that of the barracks chief Hoffy in Stalag 17, and McNulty in the classic Twilight Zone episode "A Kind of a Stopwatch". In Tora Tora Tora he played Colonel Edward F. French, the officer who responded to the failure to transmit the warning to Pearl Harbor using Army radio to instead use commercial telegraph rather than using the Navy or FBI radio systems.

Erdman co-starred with Ray Bolger in both seasons of the 1953-1955 ABC sitcom with a variety show theme, Where's Raymond?, renamed The Ray Bolger Show. Bolger portrayed the optimistic Raymond Wallace, a song-and-dance man who was repeatedly barely on time for his performances. Erdman was cast as the pessimistic Pete Morrisey, Ray's landlord and press agent. Others on the series were Allyn Joslyn, Betty Lynn, Sylvia Lewis, Gloria Winters, and Verna Felton.

Erdman appeared as the blackmailer, Arthur Binney, in the Perry Mason first season television episode "The Case Of The Gilded Lily," which aired on CBS on May 24, 1958. In 1960, he co-starred with Tab Hunter in the short-lived The Tab Hunter Show on NBC, which aired opposite The Ed Sullivan Show on CBS and Lawman with John Russell on ABC. He appeared comically as Buck Brown, a Broadway wardrobe man on The Dick Van Dyke Show. In 1962, Erdman had a recurring role as Klugie, the photographer, in the short-lived Nick Adams - John Larkin NBC series Saints and Sinners.

In 1990, Erdman appeared as Howard Banks on Wings in the episode "Around the World in Eighty Years". As of 2011, he has a recurring role as Leonard on Community.

He and his wife Sharon had one daughter, Erica, who was born in 1954 and died in 2010, of an accidental overdose of prescription medicine. Erica was a well known and respected poet and illustrator (The Ellyn Maybe Coloring Book, Sacred Beverage Press, among others) and the author of one full length collection of poems (The Apocalyptic Kid, Sacred Beverage Press). She was a long time student in Laurel Ann Bogen's master class in poetry in Los Angeles.

External links

• Richard Erdman at the Internet Movie Database