Veteran actor Hal Williams, who is probably best known for playing Officer “Smitty” Smith on Sanford and Son, died this morning at his home in Rancho Mirage, according to his representative. He was 91.

As Smitty, Williams was one half of a crimefighting duo who appeared on 22 episodes of the classic show. His partner, Officer “Hoppy” Hopkins — played by Howard Platt — would often lead off a scene with an “official” stiff police explanation of their investigation. Smitty would then interpret in plain English for Fred and Lamont — played by Redd Foxx and Demond Wilson, respectively.

For viewers, watching the duo walk into a scene was akin to seeing Aunt Esther appear: You knew something funny was about to happen.

Williams once told WKYC that the origins of the characters’ schtick came in rehearsal.

“We did it in one time in rehearsal and the producers thought it was funny,” the actor recalled. “We did it in the first or second episode and it clicked. Some days, we would come to rehearsal and they didn’t have anything solid. [So the producers would say,] ‘Go out, take a break for two hours, and bring us something back.’”

He also appeared again as Smitty on five episodes of NBC’s Sanford in 1980, which saw Foxx return to the titular role.

Williams’ career stretched for the better part of six decades and he worked steadily. Though his role on Sanford may be the most recognizable, he had even longer stints on ABC’s On the Rocks (24 episodes) and the full run of the Private Benjamin TV adaptation, on which he played the curmudgeonly Sgt. Ted Ross. Another extended stint came as Rudy Bryan on 20 episodes of The Sinbad Show.

From 1985-1990, Williams was a key part of 227, on which he played Lester Jenkins. That show was a cultural touchstone as the only other Black middle class family series on at the time besides Coby. The star-studded cast included Helen Martin, Marla Gibbs, Regina King, Jackée Harry, Paul Winfield and others.

Throughout his 55-year career, Williams earned guest appearances on TV staples such as That Girl, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Cannon, Police Woman, Gunsmoke, Police Story, Quincy M.E, Good Times, Knots Landing, The Waltons, The Dukes of Hazzard, Webster, Hill Street Blues, Magnum P.I., Night Court, L.A. Law, Suddenly Susan, Moesha and Parks and Recreation.

Most recently, he made two special guest appearances on the rebooted Matlock starring Kathy Bates. He recurred as “Autry,” a local resident whose testimony impacts the firm’s cases.

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On the big screen, Williams appeared opposite George C. Scott in Paul Schrader’s Hardcore, alongside Clint Eastwood in The Rookie, with James Earl Jones, Billy Dee Williams and Courtney B. Vance in Percy & Thunder, opposite Ashton Kutcher, Bernie Mac and Zoe Saldaña in Guess Who and as Denzel Washington’s father in Flight.

The actor was a longtime board member of the Los Angeles Actors’ Theatre (LAAT) founded by Ralph Waite. Decades ago, Williams established the Mark K.A. Williams Memorial Scholarship Foundation to provide funds to students of color pursuing college degrees in television/communications. The Foundation is named for the actor’s late son, Mark, a broadcasting major, who died on a camping trip in the Angeles National Forest at 20 years old.

Williams is survived by two children, three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. He was predeceased by Mark.

A dramedy feature starring Heidi Gardner and William H. Macy is getting ready to make a splash as it adds to its cast.

Lamorne Morris (Spider-Noir, Fargo), Abby Elliott (The Bear, SNL), Michael Strassner (The Baltimorons) and Joey Bicicchi (Rudderless) have joined the cast of The Swimming Lesson, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. THR previously broke the news that Gardner and Macy will star in writer-director Casey Twenter’s indie film that is set to begin production next month in Gardner’s hometown of Kansas City.

The Swimming Lesson centers on Tay (Gardner), a single mother who leaves behind her complicated life in Los Angeles to return to her childhood home. She winds up embroiled in a custody battle over son Albee, an autistic child who is obsessed with the ocean but terrified of swimming. Macy co-stars as Leonard, Tay’s foul-mouthed father whose blunt nature can sometimes disguise the fact that he remains loyal to his daughter and grandson.

Morris will play charming swim instructor Caleb, while Elliott takes on the role of Vickie, the new wife of Tay’s ex. Additionally, Strassner plays Tay’s longtime friend Reiger, and Bicicchi portrays Albee’s newly sober father Steve.

Newcomer Hudson Escudero makes his feature debut as Albee. The production prioritized casting an young autistic performer in the role to embody the character with lived experience.

Twenter marks his solo directorial feature debut with the project that he co-wrote with Jeff Robison. Twenter and Robison previously co-wrote the 2014 drama Rudderless, which was Macy’s directorial debut and landed distribution after premiering at Sundance.

“From top to bottom, this is a murderers’ row of talent,” says Twenter. “This is a deeply personal story, and I’m beyond grateful that these actors have chosen to tell it alongside me. Their excitement for the material has been energizing from the start, and it has only strengthened my own belief in what we’re making.”

The Swimming Lesson’s producers include Dan Koetting for KP’s Remain and Robison for Kindling Productions, along with Jen Greenstreet and Mandi Kearns for Just Like You Films. Mark Williams serves as director of photography, and Mateo Messina is composing the music. Spark Casting’s Stefanie Seifer and Hailey Giles are handling casting.

Morris is represented by CAA, Entertainment 360 and The Lede Company. Elliott is repped by Paradigm Talent Agency and OPE Partners. Strassner is repped by Paradigm Talent Agency and Stride Management. Bicicchi is repped by Luber Roklin Entertainment. Escudero is repped by The Osbrink Agency, Rebel Creative Group and Campbell Agency.

A family of Turks living in Berlin is riven when one younger member’s queer sexuality emerges in drama Hijamat, the earnest but underwhelming latest from Iranian-Turkish writer-director Nader Saeivar, and a competitor for the Crystal Globe at Karlovy Vary this year.

Much is made in the film’s publicity and programming material of the involvement of auteur Jafar Panahi, who serves as the film’s editor and one of its three producers. He had the same credits for Saievar’s 2024 feature The Witness, one of several collaborations between the two. (Saievar co-wrote Panahi’s recent award-winner It Was Just an Accident and also was involved in Panahi’s features 3 Faces and No Bears.) However, this drawn out, sometimes clunky issues-driven drama lacks flow, although it has moments, including an oddly tacked-on but still compelling bit of scenery-chewing from a seldom-seen Nastassja Kinski as a mentally unwell neighbor.

Although, like Panahi, Saeivar has a reputation as something of a dissident within the Iranian film world, where he still teaches in a Tehran university and makes films that are openly critical of the regime, one can only wonder if some kind of self-censorship has muddled the clarity of his storytelling here. That’s an especially tempting conclusion since there are passages that take flight, not least a bravura opening sequence shot as a fluid oner that tracks a little boy arriving at a party as the feted guest of honor.

The occasion is the kid’s circumcision, and as the merriment takes hold (with separate areas for men and women) it all seems very jolly until word arrives that one member of the extended family, Kerem (Jael Cem Ilhan), is getting beaten up. As Kerem’s significantly older brother Murad (Kida Khodr Ramadan) tries to intervene, it emerges that the family is outraged by photographs that have circulated among them showing Kerem being intimate with a German man.

Murad and his Kosovan wife Leyla (Nicolette Krebitz), both of them more open to Western ways than others in the clan, are accepting of Kerem’s homosexuality. But that’s not true of Kerem and Murad’s father Ibrahim (Vedat Erincin), a stern patriarch who controls the family through tradition and money, having done well with restaurants both in Berlin and back home.

In fact, even Kerem himself is too tortured by fear to stand up to the family. He meekly goes along to get along when Ibrahim drags him off to the mosque where Sheikh (Aziz Capkurt), the local cleric, hectors him to confess his shame. But Sheikh’s motivations are not entirely religious. Murad knows that he’s in cahoots with a businessman back home who wants Ibrahim to sell a restaurant, and Sheikh is using his clerical position to leverage the situation.

Just when these various plot strands start to felt together into an overall narrative, Saeivar will weave in a new bundle of plot. Some screen time is given over to the breakdown being experienced by Margot (Kinski), a friend of Murad’s late mother who lives across the street from Ibrahim and is still disturbed by her experience of trying to escape into West Berlin from the east years ago. The subplot serves to remind us of how the city has been a refuge for immigrants of all kinds for years and that the trauma of violent escape echoes across generations, but it’s never worked into the main body of the drama satisfactorily.

Likewise, the late suggestion that Murad himself is tormented by feelings of attraction to men is awkwardly inserted and not especially convincing. But at least this reveal allows for another cameo from a German film star: Moritz Bleibtreu as a New Age healer in a ridiculous wig and headband get-up, who offers to fix Murad with some cupping therapy, also known as hijamat — hence the film title.