Ron Masak, the Sheriff on ‘Murder, She Wrote’ and the ‘King of Commercials,’ died at the age of 86
Ron Masak, the well-known character actor who played Cabot Cove Sheriff Mort Metzger on Murder, She Wrote’s final eight seasons as the beneficiary of Jessica Fletcher’s crime-solving prowess, has died. He was 86.
Masak died of natural causes on Thursday at a hospital in Thousand Oaks, according to his granddaughter Kaylie Defilippis.
During his six-decade career, he appeared six times on Police Story, five times on Bewitched, and four times on Webster, as well as on The Flying Nun, Get Smart, I Dream of Jeannie, Ironside, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, as well as Magnum, P.I., The Rockford FIles, Columbo, Falcon Crest, and Cold Case.
Lucy Simon, Tony-nominated composer and Carly Simon’s sister, died at the age of 82.
Mark Borchardt and Mike Schank
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In February 1960, he played a harmonica-playing soldier on The Twilight Zone’s 19th episode, “The Purple Testament,” and in 1968, he played a crazed Dracula-like count on The Monkees.
Masak and Joyce Bulifant portrayed a husband and wife who discover they’re not as open-minded as they thought when a Black couple (Harrison Page, Janet MacLachlan) moved in next door on the summer 1973 ABC sitcom Love Thy Neighbor, based on a hit British TV show.
Masak made his film debut in John Sturges’ espionage thriller Ice Station Zebra (1968), starring Rock Hudson and Ernest Borgnine, and later appeared in Evel Knievel (1971), opposite George Hamilton, and as a bartender and friend of Barbara Eden’s character in Harper Valley P.T.A. (1978).
Masak was once dubbed “The King of Commercials” by a Hollywood columnist, and he worked as a pitchman for Vlasic pickles for 15 years, voicing the animated, bow-tied stork who sounds a lot like Groucho Marx.
Masak joined the Angela Lansbury-starring Murder, She Wrote in 1988 for its fifth season after the previous inept Cabot Cove sheriff, Amos Tupper (Tom Bosley), left Maine to live with his sister in Kentucky. (In reality, Bosley had left to join the cast of NBC’s Father Dowling Mysteries.)
Metzger appeared in 41 episodes of the CBS show through 1996, driving around town in a red 1976 Cadillac Eldorado as his character, who had left the New York Police Department in search of a quieter work life up north.
Masak’s daughter Kathryn (one of his six children) appeared in a few episodes as Metzger’s deputy, Lynn Olsen.
SHE WROTE MURDER, 1984–1996: Ron Masak, Angela Lansbury, and William Windom
COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION: Ron Masak, Angela Lansbury, and William Windom on ‘Murder, She Wrote.’
Ronald Alan Masak was born on July 1, 1936, and grew up on Chicago’s South Side near Comiskey Park. Floyd, his father, was a salesman and musician, and Mildred, his mother, was a merchandise buyer.
“I was the class clown, the school showoff,” he admitted in 2011. “A teacher once told me that if she could have stopped laughing at me, she would have failed me.”
Masak grew up wanting to be an athlete and was scouted by baseball Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby at the age of 16. He claimed the Chicago White Sox offered him a contract worth $8,500, but he declined.
Masak began acting after graduating from Kelly High School, inspired by Larry Parks in The Jolson Story (1946), and while serving as a military policeman in the United States Army.
He did a lot of impersonations early in his career, and on The Spade Cooley Show in 1956, he sang “Hard Headed Woman” as Elvis Presley.
Masak first appeared in the motivational short film Second Effort in 1968, opposite legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi, and he went on to work on similar projects with James Whitmore, Burgess Meredith, and Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda (1982’s Ya Gotta Believe, which he wrote and directed).
(A lifelong Dodgers fan, Masak played catcher for the Hollywood Stars at Dodger Stadium for over three decades, had season tickets for over 40 years, and frequently drove players to the ballpark. Steve Garvey is one of his children’s godfather, and Steve Yeager was a neighbour.)
Masak replaced Pat Harrington Jr. as the voice of the stork in the Vlasic commercials in the mid-1970s after he was hired to play handyman Dwayne Schneider on the CBS sitcom One Day at a Time.
“I was doing Pat Harrington’s impression of Groucho Marx,” he explained in a 2020 interview. “By the end of my run, I was just doing Groucho readings on myself.”
He also did TV commercials as Lou Costello for Zenith televisions, Rice-a-Roni, Glad sandwich bags, Spray & Wash, and Ford automobiles.
Masak starred in the 1974 family film The Man From Clover Grove, was a Match Game regular, and for many years hosted Jerry Lewis’ Muscular Dystrophy Association telethons from Los Angeles.
In his 2015 book, I’ve Met All My Heroes From A to Z, he wrote about his encounters with famous people over the years.
Survivors include his wife, Kay, whom he married in September 1961, and their other children Tammy, Debbie, Christine, and twins Michael and Robert; nine other grandchildren; and two cousins, actors Michael and Mary Gross.
Masak claimed that President George H.W. Bush once inquired about Cabot Cove’s location. “‘Mr. President, it’s somewhere between Kennebunkport and Universal Studios,’ I said.”