Richard Deacon

Richard Deacon was an American character actor best known for Mel Cooley -- the beleaguered, bald producer perpetually tormented by Buddy Sorrell -- on The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961) and for Fred Rutherford on Leave It to Beaver (1957). He also took a rare dramatic turn as Wallace V. Whipple in the Twilight Zone (1959) episode "The Brain Center at Whipple's," and appeared in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963), across a career that spanned 66 films and 92 television guest appearances. He was gay and his identity was known to Hollywood colleagues, but like virtually every performer of his era in network television, he never publicly addressed it. Away from acting, he became an early authority on microwave cooking, and his cookbook sold more than 1.7 million copies. He died of a heart attack in 1984.