Mason Adams, the veteran character actor who won acclaim playing the compassionate newspaper managing editor on “Lou Grant” and was a familiar voice in countless radio and TV commercials, has died. He was 86.
Adams died of natural causes at his Manhattan home, his family said.
As an actor whose career spanned more than 60 years and included playing the title role on the long-running radio soap opera “Pepper Young’s Family,” Adams was best known as managing editor Charlie Hume on “Lou Grant,” the Emmy Award-winning dramatic series starring Ed Asner.
A spinoff of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” the series ran from 1977 to 1982 and earned Adams three Emmy nominations as best supporting actor.
“I thought he was a gorgeous actor,” Asner told the Los Angeles Times on Thursday. “He was a tremendous, key part of whatever good there was in ‘Lou Grant.’”
Being with Adams, Asner said, “was an enriching experience both on camera and off. He had a presence filled with depth and interest and underlying passion. I will miss him greatly.”
Allan Burns, co-creator and executive producer of “Lou Grant,” said Adams “was one of the best actors I ever worked with.”
“What he brings to every part and especially to Charlie Hume was what he was himself, which is smart as hell,” Burns said Thursday. “He had tremendous integrity and he was such a wonderful, wonderful actor.”
As a character actor whose credits included a stint playing Dr. Frank Prescott on the TV soap opera “Another World,” Adams may not have been a household name. But millions recognized his face and voice even before “Lou Grant.”
His distinctive voice was ideal for commercials and, between film, TV and stage roles, he did scores of them.
For more than 30 years, Adams could be heard pitching jams and jellies for the J.M. Smucker Co. for which he delivered his trademark line: “With a name like Smucker’s, it has to be good.”
Over the years, journalists attempted to describe Adams’ voice, coming up with “mellow, with a hint of a rasp,” a “crackling Middle America drawl,” and having a “friendly, light gravelly” quality.
To Adams, it sounded “like a broken clarinet.”
He made his Broadway debut in “Get Away Old Man” in 1943 and acted frequently on radio, including “Big Town,” “Gasoline Alley,” “Inner Sanctum,” “Grand Central Station” and “Superman,” on which he played the Kryptonite-powered Atom Man.
In the mid ’40s, he took over the title role in “Pepper Young’s Family,” staying with the popular soap opera until it left the air in 1959.
Adams also narrated documentaries and worked frequently in the theater. His last stage role was in the 2002 Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s “The Man Who Had All the Luck.”
He is survived by his wife of 48 years wife, Margot; his daughter Betsy and son Bill; and a brother, Dr. Herbert Abrams.
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