Rob Petrie had four old Army pals who were tall, had
deep voices and wavy blonde hair.
Three were shown in flashbacks (a Dick Van Dyke Show innovation) and were perhaps the same person – the trio were named Sam Pomerantz, Sam Pomeroy, and Sol Pomerantz, depending on the episode. (The blog Toobworld calls them the "Pom-Poms.")
The fourth, a distinctly different character who visits Rob and Laura's New Rochelle home in the present, was an immaculately dressed, pleasant but mysterious jeweler named Harrison B. Harding.
All four (or both, if the Pom-Poms are to be regarded as one fellow) were played by the same person – the consummate TV character actor Allan Melvin.
Melvin also played a prison guard in a Dick Dan Dyke episode, and in another, a gun salesman in the old west in a dream Rob has (dream sequences were another Van Dyke Show innovation).
To further complicate the Pom-Pom legacy, another actor also played an Army buddy of Rob’s named Sam Pomerantz, proving that no one in the ‘60s foresaw home video or the Internet someday enabling sitcom devotees to quibble.
To clear up which Pom is Allan Melvin, behold his familiar face and voice in this Dick Van Dyke Show link as Sol Pomerantz:
As Sgt. Charlie Hacker on Gomer Pyle USMC:
.
And, in one of a series of Liquid Plumber ads he did in the 1970s and ‘80s:
And, in one of a series of Liquid Plumber ads he did in the 1970s and ‘80s:
Now you know who Allan Melvin was -- if telling Sam from Sol is still a little tricky. Melvin was born in Kansas City, Mo., the son of a New York City-based distributor of silent films to amusement arcades in the Midwest. A young Allan moved with his family to New York City, where he grew up, then was educated at Columbia University.
Before the Dick Van Dyke or Gomer Pyle series, Melvin donned a military uniform as Army Corporal Steve Henshaw in The Phil Silvers Show in the 1950s. But he wasn’t just a screen serviceman; Melvin joined the Navy during World War II, helping build naval vessels at the Port Newark Shipyard in New Jersey, the website philsilversshow.com said.
But entertainment was Melvin's avocation during the war.
"He learned to do voices and he practiced doing impressions of all kinds of people and things," The Phil Silvers website said. "Some College acting friends, Frank Campanella, Thomas McDermott and a young actress called Amalia Sestero had started a theatrical group, The Unicorn Players. Frank invited Allan to one of their meetings -- the die was cast. Allan and Amalia started dating, fell in love..."
In 1944 Allan John Melvin and Amalia Faustina Sestero wed in New York City. In a pattern of stability that seems to typify character actors, they stayed married until Allan Melvin died in 2008 at age 84. They had two daughters.
Allan Melvin's debt to the great Phil Silvers:
Before going into television, Melvin did superb voice impressions of legends like James Stewart and Cary Grant while he performed with stage comedy ensembles, and won acclaim for his role in the Broadway play "Stalag 17" as an American POW who amid the misery of the camp entertains co-prisoners using similar talents.
Melvin worked in NBC's sound effects department, creating radio show sounds using devices, recordings and sometimes his own voice.
The forceful yet soothing Allan Melvin vocal style had a career of its own, as he also did cartoon voices of Magilla Gorilla, Sergeant Snorkel, Bumbler, Barney Google and Bristol Hound.
Melvin had a small role in the 1968 Doris Day movie "With Six You Get Eggroll," in which he plays a police sergeant who is confronted by hippies played by future M*A*S*H cast members Jamie Farr and William Christopher (yep, the Father played a hippie)
Allan experiences the '60s,
but he "ain't groovy."
Other than being in that oddly cast scene, Melvin's on-screen work was entirely through television, unlike character actor icons such as Edward Andrews, Reta Shaw and Whit Bissell, who also intermittently acted in movies. That made Allan Melvin probably the top "Household Face," if not name, in TV.
And every generation of TV viewers has its Allan Melvin peg. For some, it’s Henshaw or Charlie Hacker. Seventies kids knew him as Sam the butcher, Alice’s love interest on The Brady Bunch. There was also Barney Hefner, the Bunkers’ neighbor on All in the Family who was just as blue-collar as Archie, but never expressed bigotry.
Published obituaries of Allan in 2008 tended to reveal the generation of the writer based on which of those characters he was described as "best known for playing."
In several of the obits, Amalia Sestero Melvin said her husband's favorite role had been in The Phil Silvers Show. "I think the camaraderie of all those guys made it such a pleasant way to work. They were so relaxed," said Amalia, who lived to age 100, dying in December 2020.
Just as with playing the rotating Army buddy of Rob, Melvin pulled off a switcheroo on All in the Family, too.
Before being the semi-regular Barney Hefner, he appeared as New York City police officer Pulaski in an episode’s final scene where Archie gets his comeuppance for his characteristic use of an anti-Polish slur:
One of the foundations of the character actor profession -- the subliminal semi-recognition viewers have of them – is what enabled Melvin to play two people in one program.
"I went in the same season from Pulaski to Barney Hefner. I think they make allowances for the fact that the audience will accept certain changes,” Melvin said in an early 1970s interview. “I guess they figure since it was a one-shot, I wasn't that established. I've been Barney ever since." This was from a British blog on Phil Silvers Show stars; that great 1950s military comedy had Melvin in the cast as Henshaw, an army cohort of the irrepressible Sgt. Ernie Bilko.
Melvin was recalled to duty as Marine Sergeant Charlie Hacker on Gomer Pyle USMC during the same decade he played the Army "Pom-Poms."
If playing two characters each in New Rochelle and Astoria, N.Y. was a task, Allan Melvin’s work in Mayberry, N.C, was a high-wire juggling act.
On The Andy Griffith Show, he played eight different people, reported the web site fans-pages.com, which labeled Melvin’s constant work on the show: “Mayberry’s Multiple Personality Disorder.”
Among his Andy Griffith Show roles were a jailed suspect whom Barney tries to trick into giving evidence, a roadside vendor who disses the deputy only to learn what authority really means, and a recruiting sergeant who struggles with the not-exactly G.I Ernest T. Bass.
In another roughneck role, Melvin played local bully Fred Plummer, who bedevils Deputy Fife. Barney is impersonated by his judo instructor who overpowers Plummer into respect for the undersized deputy he thinks has clobbered him.
Switching to the right side of the law, Melvin played an eagle-eyed hotel detective in an Andy Griffith Show episode in which Andy and Barney make an out-of-town trip.
Melvin described nearly every TV show he was in as fun more so than work. He regularly praised the entertainment stars he worked with, including Phil Silvers, Frank Sutton, Andy Griffith, and producer Aaron Ruben.
Particularly satisfying to Allan Melvin was the Dick Van Dyke Show:
"It was marvelous, exhilarating," he said. "It was so well written and conceived and the working conditions were so great, working with Carl Reiner and Dick and Mary and the whole crowd. And it was just a joy because it was a very creative show. It was an early kind of a watershed ensemble comedy show."
Those words were posted on Philsilversshow.com, on which Melvin also fondly recalled The Phil Silvers Show -- originally called "You'll Never Get Rich," and also often referred to as "Bilko" -- for timeless TV quality.
"A Bilko show could be funny 50 years from now. Funny is funny. It's as simple as that."
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Brian Arbenz, of Louisville, Ky. USA, has throughout his life loved watching Sams, Sols, Plumbers and Plummers, Marines and Soldiers, Barney adversaries and Barney Hefners named Allan Melvin.
And for a closing act, a few minutes of a rare suit-and-tie clad civilian Allan Melvin as the mysterious old friend (or crook?) Harrison B. Harding:
For even more on Allan Melvin, CLICK HERE to go to KJ Ricardo's YouTube
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