11/1/2007

By Renee Graham

When Paul Benedict ’60 got his first job in the theatre—as a janitor at the Charles Playhouse fresh out of Suffolk—little did he know that he would be defined by a role he never wanted.

Benedict has been in more than 50 films including The Goodbye Girl and The Addams Family, and performed works by playwrights Eugene O’Neill and Nobel Prize-winner Harold Pinter. But to his chagrin, he is best known as Harry Bentley, the genial, bemused British neighbor on the 1970s sitcom, The Jeffersons.

Benedict is still recognized for the role—“You just have to grit your teeth and smile,” he says with a shrug—but it was a part he never sought. Money, the actor admits, is “what the series was about.”

“I thought the thing was so bad, it didn’t have a prayer of going more than two episodes, but it went 11 seasons,” says Benedict, who left the series as soon as his seven-year contract was fulfilled. Two years later, he returned for the series’ final two seasons after it “dawned on me that I could really use that money.”

“Don’t get me wrong; it was a decent job with a good cast and they were lovely people,” the Martha’s Vineyard resident asserts. “But I just didn’t like doing a series, damn it.”

Back in the 1950s, Suffolk didn’t have the extensive theater department the University enjoys today. An English major, Benedict was introduced to acting after joining a small drama club founded by students. He did some backstage work at first and eventually began “acting a little in plays. That was my first taste of it,” he explains.

Robert Brustein, founding director of the ART and the Yale Repertory Theatre, remembers him as “a legend” with the Theatre Company of Boston, performing works by such playwrights as Pinter, Edward Albee, and Bertholt Brecht.

 “He has a quality of sympathy, a quality of affection, depth, warmth, and intelligence that you don’t often find in actors,” says Brustein, an artist-in-residence at Suffolk, who has known and worked with Benedict for more than 20 years.

As he winds down a four-decade career, Benedict has no regrets. Well, maybe one: “I remember saying to people, ‘Just once I’d like to play an axe murderer or a psychopath. I’d love it, I’d be terrific at it.’” 

The full version of this article ran in the Fall 2007 issue of Suffolk Alumni Magazine.

Back to Alumni Homepage.

 

Back to News »