Somewhere Out of Time

Bill Erwin, the human Waldorf, has died at the age of 96 from being really, really old. Among his more than 200 appearances over a career that spanned nearly 60 years, the professional codger is probably best remembered as Sid Fields, the cranky titular “Old Man” from a 1993 Seinfeld episode that earned him an Emmy nomination. Appearing with Seinfeld further established Erwin as the Forrest Gump of comedy, with his first screen role in the Phil Silvers movie In the Army Now, a cameo on I Love Lucy, and his start in the business as the original puppet wrangler as ventriloquist Edgar Bergen's stage manager. Even the character name Sid Fields comes from the name of the writer of The Abbott and Costello Show. Other roles included the bellman in Somewhere in Time, Jack Nicholson's father in Cry Baby Killer, Nicholson's first starring role in 1958, a World War II veteran protesting how the atomic bomb drop was handled by the Smithsonian Institute in an episode of The West Wing, the old guy on the plane in Planes, Trains & Automobiles, cameos on virtually every TV Western, including 14 different characters on episodes of Gunsmoke, the son of a 114-year-old murder victim on Monk, and both the TV series and movie Leave it to Beaver.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC2CM7UVzPQ