Sid Melton, American actor, Died at 94

  Actor

Dead, Sid Melton on November 2, 2011, at the age of 94, he was an American actor known for his roles as incompetent carpenter Alf Monroe in the CBS sitcom Green Acres.

Born as Sidney Meltzer in Brooklyn, New York on May 22, 1917, son of Isidor Meltzer, a Yiddish theater comedian, and brother of screenwriter Lewis Meltzer, he made his stage debut in a 1939 touring production of See My Lawyer and in 1941 was cast as Fingers in Shadow of the Thin Man.

During World War II he entertained American soldier’s overseas and met screenwriter Aubrey Wisberg, who arranged for him to have a part in his The Treasure of Monte Cristo for Robert Lippert.

Other movies included On the Town, The Geisha Boy, The Tunnel of Love, and Blondie Goes to College.

He appeared in two Lippert Pictures, Lost Continent and Radar Secret Service, later featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000, whose hosts gave Melton the nickname “Monkey Boy” due to his comedy relief antics.

He played Captain Midnight’s sidekick, Ichabod Mudd, in Captain Midnight, an early 1950s Saturday-morning children’s show. Until the end of his life, old fans would greet him on the street with his signature introductory gag line, “Mudd with two ‘D’s.”

He appeared in four episodes of the final two seasons of Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. as “Friendly Freddy”, an unsuccessful con-artist who bilks Gomer and Sgt.

Carter, among others, but always gets caught, sometimes several times in the same episode.

He usually blames an unscrupulous supplier and vows to never use him again, and then seems to make up for it by providing a refund or replacement merchandise, which inevitably turns out to be another con.

Melton got his first Hollywood contract in 1949 with Lippert Pictures, a studio that churned out scores of low-budget movies, most of them made in less than a week.

He was the comic relief in dozens of films, including “Treasure of Monte Cristo,” “Mask of the Dragon” and “Lost Continent,” in which he played a nebbish eaten by a triceratops.

Almost to the end of his life, Mr. Melton said, old fans greeted him on the street by reciting Mudd’s signature introductory gag line, “Mudd with two D’s.” On another sitcom, “Green Acres,” from 1965 to 1971, he was Alf Monroe, one of two incompetent carpenters who call themselves the Monroe Brothers, though the other brother, Ralph, is a woman — a recurring gag that somehow worked at the time.

Melton’s older brother was Lewis Meltzer, a screenwriter who worked on Golden Boy (1939) starring William Holden, The Jazz Singer (1952) starring Thomas and Man With the Golden Arm (1955) starring Frank Sinatra.

The Brooklyn native also appeared in flashbacks as the husband of Estelle Getty’s widowed character on The Golden Girls and on such other shows as Peter Gunn, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., The Munsters, Love American Style, Hunter, Empty Nest and Dave’s World.