Like Sam the Butcher
Bringing Alice the Meat
- Beastie Boys
Allan Melvin, a character actor best known for playing Sam the Butcher on “The Brady Bunch,” has died. He was 84.
Allan Melvin, RIP
Source: CNN
Melvin died of cancer Thursday at his home in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles, said Amalia Melvin, his wife of 64 years. The jowly, jovial Melvin spent decades playing a series of sidekicks, second bananas and lovable lugs, including Archie Bunker’s friend Barney Hefner on “All in the Family,” and Sgt. Bilko’s right-hand man Cpl. Henshaw on the “Phil Silvers Show.”
But his place in pop culture will be fixed as butcher and bowler Sam Franklin, the love interest of Brady family maid Alice Nelson, who was played by Ann B. Davis. Melvin played the role from 1970 to 1973, in a total of 8 episodes. By the time “The Brady Brides” aired in 1981, Sam and Alice were married. (In “A Very Brady Christmas”, Sam was played by Lewis Arquette.) Sam owned a butcher shop, but the name of it was never mentioned. Bowling was really the only thing ever mentioned as far as his interests. (source)
He saw steady employment as a voice actor from the early 1960s to the early 1990s, most famously providing the voice of “Magilla Gorilla” for the Hanna Barbera cartoon of the same name.
Here’s an early commercial he did for Liquid Plumber:
