My Ten Favorite TV Characters: Judge Harry T. Stone (#5)

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Here's another one of my favorite TV characters as I count 'em down. I'm not big on TV so you're probably wondering where a lot of different characters are. Sorry, I didn't watch that show. Here's the next character, and what a character he was! #5: Judge Harry T. Stone How did a 34-year-old get to be the youngest -- and craziest -- municipal court judge? "I was home," he explained. That was just one of the countless strange things in the world of Manhattan Criminal Court, Part 2, the setting for the series Night Court. Harry was a card -- frequently playing card tricks on suspects who came before his bench. He loved magic, he loved laughing, and he loved Mel Tormé. That pretty much describes Harry Anderson, the actor who played Harry for nine seasons on Night Court. He is a professional magician (he won "Magician of the Year" during the series' run), and he's also a devotee of the late jazz/pop singer known as "The Velvet Fog." (Anderson delivered a eulogy at Tormé's funeral in 1999.) And that's pretty much what made Harry so real: actor and character were so alike that it was hard to tell where one stopped and the other began. Anderson was the consultant for a lot of the elaborate "magic" sequences in Night Court (in addition to writing and directing some episodes). According to the book The Sweeps, about the behind-the-scenes decisions and actions that require a TV series (in this case, Night Court) to get on the air, Anderson read that Judge Stone had the word fun tattooed on his arm, so Anderson went out and got a tattoo of the word fun. (He later had it removed, as a scene in his post-Night Court series, Dave's World, showed.) The great thing about Harry was that he always took his job seriously, while never appearing to do so. His lighthearted approach to the bench helped ease the nerves of the people who were coming before him, as he explained in one episode. Another thing about Night Court that may make you laugh: lawyers stated it was one of the most judicially factual shows on the air! Most of the rulings were legally accurate...even if Harry's way of dispensing justice with an exploding gavel was a little unconventional. Night Court was the last episodic television series I ever watched. Harry Anderson, for years, also stood as the only actor I'd ever met (I went to Cleveland to see his comedy/magic show that he toured with while Night Court was on summer hiatus one year)...and one of the tallest (he's 6'4"). The laughs I had while watching this show are countless. Judge Harold T. Stone Portrayed by Harry Anderson From Night Court NBC, 1984-1992 Here's a scene from the Marathon session where the court had to adjudicate 200 cases by midnight: