Vaudevillian Sidney Stone; Pitchman for Milton Berle

Sidney Stone, veteran vaudevillian and actor best remembered as the pitchman and announcer on Milton Berle’s early TV variety show, has died. He was 83 years old when he died here Wednesday of heart failure.

The New York native spent years as a vaudevillian, and was featured n such Broadway plays as “Damn Yankees” and “Three Men on a Horse.” Most recently he was seen in the touring burlesque revival, “Sugar Babies.”

But it was on Berle’s “Texaco Star Theater” from 1948 to 1951 that Stone gained his widest recognition, with his routine of sauntering on stage, setting up his pitchman’s tent and saying before he launched into the sponsor’s commercials, “Awright, tell ya what I’m gonna do!”

He often was chased off the stage by a whistle-blowing policeman.

In 1952 Stone was replaced by ventriloquist Jimmy Nelson and his dummy Danny O’Day.