Mason Adams, 86; Played Managing Editor on ‘Lou Grant,’ Was TV Voice of Smucker’s

Mason Adams, the veteran character actor who won acclaim playing the compassionate newspaper managing editor on “Lou Grant” and was a familiar voice in countless radio and TV commercials, has died. He was 86.

Adams died of natural causes at his home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, said his family.

As an actor whose career spanned more than 60 years and included playing the title role on the long-running radio soap opera “Pepper Young’s Family,” Adams was best known as managing editor Charlie Hume on “Lou Grant,” the Emmy Award-winning dramatic series starring Ed Asner.

A spinoff of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” the series ran from 1977 to 1982 and earned Adams three Emmy nominations as best supporting actor.

“I thought he was a gorgeous actor,” Asner told The Times on Thursday. “He was a tremendous, key part of whatever good there was in ‘Lou Grant.’ ”

Being with Adams, Asner said, “was an enriching experience both on camera and off. He had a presence filled with depth and interest and underlying passion. And I stole more from him than he stole from me. I will miss him greatly.”

Allan Burns, co-creator and executive producer of “Lou Grant,” said Adams “was one of the best actors I ever worked with.”

“What he brings to every part and especially to Charlie Hume was what he was himself, which is smart as hell,” Burns told The Times on Thursday. “He had tremendous integrity and he was such a wonderful, wonderful actor.”

Burns said Adams constantly challenged the writers “to find depth to his character,” and when they wrote scripts that fleshed out this “sort of mild, smart, quiet guy,” Adams “would always do it beautifully.”

Adams, who spent time with several newspaper managing editors in preparing for the role, felt he had a special responsibility to maintain the integrity of the job.

“Early on, the writers saw Charlie as a comic buffer between Lou and Mrs. Pynchon,” the strong-willed owner-publisher played by Nancy Marchand, Adams told Associated Press in 1981. “There were times when Charlie came across as a fool. I said to earn respect and credibility, the managing editor has to be like the major general in an army. The character soon achieved its current image.”

That image apparently rang true.

In 1979, a Florida newspaper conducted a poll of the most trusted men in America, and Adams’ Charlie Hume ranked with legendary CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite.

As a character actor whose credits included a stint playing Dr. Frank Prescott on the TV soap opera “Another World,” Adams may not have been a household name. But millions recognized his face and voice even before “Lou Grant.”

His distinctive voice was ideal for commercials; and, between film, TV and stage roles, he did scores of them.

For more than 30 years, Adams could be heard pitching jams and jellies for the J.M. Smucker Co., for which he delivered his trademark line:

“With a name like Smucker’s, it has to be good.”

Over the years, journalists tried to describe Adams’ voice, coming up with “mellow, with a hint of a rasp,” a “crackling Middle America drawl,” and having a “friendly, light gravelly” quality.

To Adams, it sounded “like a broken clarinet.”

“I even have imitators,” he told Associated Press in 1981. “We’d be watching TV, and my wife would say, ‘I didn’t know you did that one.’ I’d tell her, ‘I didn’t; it wasn’t me.’ ”

Born in Brooklyn, Adams received a bachelor’s degree in theater and speech from the University of Wisconsin in 1940 and a master’s degree in theater arts a year later. He also studied acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City and taught speech there for several years.

He made his Broadway debut in “Get Away Old Man” in 1943 and acted frequently on radio, including roles in “Big Town,” “Gasoline Alley,” “Inner Sanctum,” “Grand Central Station” and “Superman,” on which he played the Kryptonite-powered Atom Man.

In the mid-’40s, he took over the title role in “Pepper Young’s Family,” staying with the popular soap opera until it left the air in 1959.

Adams, who co-starred with Jack Warden in the short-lived 1989 sitcom “Knight & Daye,” also narrated documentaries, including “Norman Rockwell: An American Portrait,” and worked frequently in the theater. His last stage role was in the 2002 Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s “The Man Who Had All the Luck.”

He is survived by his wife of 48 years, Margot; his daughter Betsy and son Bill, both of Manhattan; and a brother, Dr. Herbert Abrams of Palo Alto.

A memorial service in New York City is pending.