33 Facts About Jonathan Harris

Jonathan Daniel Harris was an American character actor whose career included more than 500 television and film appearances, as well as voiceovers.

The second of three children, Harris was born on November 6,1914, in the Bronx, New York City, to Russian Jewish immigrants Jennie and Sam Charasuchin.

Jonathan Harris detested his Bronx accent and by high school cultivated an English one in its place, watching British B-movies at the arts theater.

Jonathan Harris developed interests in archaeology, Latin, romantic poetry and Shakespeare.

Jonathan legally changed his name from Charasuchin to Harris before entering college after a year-long standoff with his father, who disagreed with the change.

Jonathan Harris earned a degree in pharmacology from Fordham University, from which he graduated in 1936.

Jonathan Harris was married to his high school sweetheart, Gertrude Bregman, from 1938 until his death.

Jonathan Harris was hired by the director, Richard Brooks, to appear in a series of 26 plays the company performed in the summer of 1940.

In 1942, Jonathan Harris won the leading role of a Polish officer in the Broadway play The Heart of a City, adopting a Polish accent.

Jonathan Harris was a popular character actor for 30 years on television, making his first guest appearance on the episode "His Name Is Jason" on The Chevrolet Tele-Theatre in 1949.

Jonathan Harris landed a co-starring role opposite Michael Rennie in The Third Man, from 1959 to 1965.

Jonathan Harris appeared in two 1961 episodes of The Twilight Zone, including a heroic role in "The Silence", in which he ended up defending a young man challenged to be silent for a whole year at a prestigious gentleman's club.

Jonathan Harris portrayed Charles Dickens in a 1963 episode of Bonanza.

From 1963 to 1965, Jonathan Harris co-starred in the sitcom The Bill Dana Show.

Jonathan Harris played Mr Phillips, the pompous manager of a posh hotel who is constantly at odds with his bumbling Bolivian bellhop, the Bill Dana character Jose Jimenez.

Jonathan Harris played a similarly pompous diplomat on Get Smart in 1970.

Jonathan Harris was cast over two other actors for the role of Dr Zachary Smith, the evil and conniving enemy agent on Lost in Space.

Jonathan Harris successfully negotiated to receive "Special Guest Star" billing on every episode.

Jonathan Harris played him as written, which was this really dark, straight-ahead villain.

The series was successful upon its debut and, midway through the first season, Jonathan Harris began to rewrite his own dialogue to add more comedy, because he felt that his strength was in portraying a comic villain.

Jonathan Harris subsequently stole the show, mainly via a seemingly never-ending series of alliterative insults directed toward The Robot, which soon worked their way into popular culture.

Jonathan Harris made several cameo and guest appearances during this period, including episodes of Bewitched and Sanford and Son.

Jonathan Harris starred as the character Fagan in the first episode of the science fiction series Ark II.

Jonathan Harris taught drama, and was Chuck Norris's vocal coach for many years.

Norris credited Jonathan Harris for teaching him "how to speak" by sticking his fingers in Norris's mouth, adding that Jonathan Harris was the only person in the world he would allow to do that.

In 1970, Jonathan Harris played the role of another not-so-likeable villain, the Bulmanian Ambassador in the Get Smart episode "How Green Was My Valet".

Jonathan Harris was a co-star, alongside Charles Nelson Reilly, in the series Uncle Croc's Block, in which Jonathan Harris and Reilly portrayed malcontents producing a children's television show.

Jonathan Harris played the director and Reilly the titular host, Uncle Croc.

Jonathan Harris provided the voice of the Cylon character Lucifer, an antagonist on the original ABC version of Battlestar Galactica.

Jonathan Harris spent much of his later career working as a voice actor, and during it he was heard on television commercials as well as on cartoons such as Channel Umptee-3, The Banana Splits, My Favorite Martians, Rainbow Brite, Darkwing Duck, Happily Ever After, Problem Child, Spider-Man, A Bug's Life, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, Toy Story 2, and Superman: The Animated Series.

In 1990, Jonathan Harris reunited with the cast of Lost in Space in a filmed celebration of the 25th anniversary of the series' debut, at an event attended by more than 30,000 fans.

Jonathan Harris made a number of other convention appearances with other cast members of Lost in Space, including a 1996 appearance at Walt Disney World.

Jonathan Harris refused to make a cameo appearance in the 1990s re-imagined film version of Lost in Space, unlike many of his co-stars in the original series.