Elliott Pershing Stitzel, better known by his stage name Stephen Elliott, became most successful in films after he reached the half-century mark. He is best remembered for roles as crime boss, Burt Johnson, in the 1981 film Arthur, Chief Hubbard in the 1984 Beverly Hills Cop, The Hospital (1971), Death Wish (1974) and The Hindenburg (1975). His television career began in 1949 in Hands of Murder, a series of live plays on the DuMont network. Over the years, he would appear in dozens of comedies and dramas, starring as patriarch Benjamin Lassiter on the short-lived 1975 CBS prime-time soap Beacon Hill and playing matriarch Jane Wyman's former husband on Falcon Crest in 1981-82. His final television role was in 1999 as Judge Harold Aldrich, a recurring character that appeared over a five-year span in Chicago Hope,
