'Benson' star James Noble dies at 94

James Noble, an actor best known to TV viewers of the ’80s — and those who caught the reruns on Nick at Nite and TV Land — as bumbling governor Eugene X. Gatling, died Monday in Connecticut, according to the New York Times. Noble was 94.

He starred opposite Robert Guillaume in Benson, a sitcom named after Guillaume’s character that ran on ABC from 1979 to 1986.

The show followed Benson DuBois — a character that originated on ABC’s Soap — as he left the wacky Tate family to work as the “head of household affairs” for Noble’s Gatling, the governor of an unnamed state.

(A sign of the times: Though Benson began the series as a glorified domestic, he ended it by running against Gatling in a gubernatorial electionBenson was canceled before it could reveal which man would emerge victorious.) Read more…