Lloyd Bochner, 81; Actor Noted for Sophisticated Film and TV Roles

Lloyd Bochner, 81, an actor best known for sophisticated roles he played in dozens of movies and television series, died of cancer Saturday at his Santa Monica home, said his friend, David Horowitz.

A familiar face in episodic television from the 1950s on, he made guest appearances on “Bonanza,” “Mission: Impossible,” “Murder, She Wrote” and other shows. He played Cecil Colby on “Dynasty” for two years in the early 1980s.

Bochner earned cult classic status for a 1962 episode of “The Twilight Zone” titled “To Serve Man.” In it, aliens come to Earth with a book to offer. Once decoded, it proves to be a cookbook with humans as the main ingredient. Bochner’s character boards the spaceship not knowing he could be dinner.

His movie roles included the thrillers “Point Blank” (1967), starring Lee Marvin, and “The Night Walker” (1964), with Barbara Stanwyck. More recently he appeared in “The Naked Gun 2 1/2 : The Smell of Fear” (1991) with Leslie Nielsen.

A native of Toronto, Bochner began his acting career on stage, often performing at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival in Ontario, Canada, in the 1950s. He moved to Hollywood in 1960. In recent years he was a founder of the Committee to End Violence, which addresses the issue as it relates to film and television.