Primetime Emmy-Nominated Actor Bill Erwin Passes at 96
Erwin earned his Emmy nomination for a 1993 episode of Seinfeld.
Bill Erwin, an actor best known for on the NBC comedy series Seinfeld and the 1980 feature film Somewhere in Time, died December 29, 2010, in Studio City, California. He was 96.
According to news reports, Erwin died due to age-related causes.
Erwin earned a Primetime Emmy nomination for his performance in a 1993 episode of Seinfeld titled “The Old Man.” In the episode, Erwin played Sid Fields, a man Jerry Seinfeld volunteers to look after but then loses.
In Somewhere in Time, set at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Michigan, he played Arthur the Bellman. Erwin returned to the hotel many times celebrate the film with fans. The time-traveling romantic drama starred Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour.
Erwin grew up in Honey Grove, Texas, and graduated from the University of Texas. He came to Hollywood in the early 1950s and appeared on such series as I Love Lucy, Leave It to Beaver, The Twilight Zone, Gunsmoke, The Andy Griffith Show and Perry Mason.
More recently, he worked on Highway to Heaven, Growing Pains, Who’s the Boss?, Married ... With Children, Everwood and My Name Is Earl.
He also starred in numerous television commercials, most notably a Clio Award-winning Dreyer’s Ice Cream spot in which he played an old man notified by his wife that “Dessert’s ready, it’s Dreyer’s Ice Cream.” That prompted Erwin’s chair-bound character to leap up and break dance.
Apart from his film and television work, he had a long career on stage. He performed on Broadway, as well as at the Pasadena Playhouse, the Laguna Playhouse and Theater 40 in Beverly Hills, where he wrote, produced and starred in the long-running one-man show Twisted Twain. In 1983, he received a Drama Critics Award for the Actors Forum production of Old Friends.
Erwin was a member of SAG and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for more than 50 years. He was a self-taught cartoonist whose work was published in The New Yorker, Playboy and Los Angeles magazine. After appearing in Ray Bradbury’s Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby Is a Friend of Mine, Erwin maintained a long friendship with the author.
Survivors include four children, eight grandchildren, a great-grandchild, a sister and two nephews.