2016 continues to be particularly cruel as it takes away more actors. Ron Glass of ‘Barney Miller‘ and ‘Firefly‘ fame is reported to have passed away on Friday…
Ronald Earle Glass was born in Indiana in 1945 and found his calling when a teacher told him that his deep, rich imposing voice would be great for the stage. He never looked back.
It could well be possible to tell your age by how you remember Ron Glass and the key roles he played on television. For savvy modern audiences he will fondly be remembered as Shepherd Derrial Book in the cult hit that was Firefly (and its movie spin-off Serenity). He imbued his character, a holy man living in a violent cosmos but always trying to take a tolerant peaceful man, with a sardonic wit, giving the already impressive lines of script an edge of both darkness and humour throughout.
But older audiences, particularly those in America, will remember him from the comedy cop series Barney Miller in which he played Detective Ron Nathan Harris from 1975 to 1982 opposite Hal Linden as the titular Captain. At the forefront of a new wave of African-American actors, Glass played Harris as a cop with a sense of style and fashion and with an aspiration of being a famous author, a challenge the character completed before the show finished.
His other credits include Sanford & Son (the US version of Steptoe & Son), Hawaii-Five-0, All in the Family, The New Odd Couple, Hart to Hart, Star Trek: Voyager, Teen Angel, The Practice, Lakeview Terrace, Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, CSI and CSI:NY to name but a few. There’s also a classic 1985 episode of the revived The Twilight Zone entitled ‘I of Newton‘ in which he plays a demon sent to gather the soul of a maths teacher… and which does not go as planned. You can see that episode below…
A practising Buddhist within the LA community for many years, at the time of writing it is not known the cause of his death (now confirmed by his representative in the last few hours…) though the actor had suffered from some health issues in recent years.
