Do we like Ron Glass?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Decades of work with no harmful words on record, plus years of real service to a youth charity, though the record on his views is thin.
Ron Glass was an actor from Evansville, Indiana, who worked for nearly 60 years. He was Detective Ron Harris on Barney Miller from 1975 to 1982, then Shepherd Book in Joss Whedon's Firefly and the film Serenity. He also turned up in Sanford and Son, Maude, Good Times, Friends and Star Trek: Voyager.
He took on Felix Unger in The New Odd Couple, and he was initially wary of science fiction because of the heavy makeup, but he came round to the genre. Late in life he told an interviewer he would love to do Book for more years, which tells you how much the role meant to him.
On the harm test, nothing turned up. We found no lawsuits, no allegations and no reported rants, and no record of him campaigning against anyone. He died in 2016, so there is nothing recent to weigh up, and he wasn't a political commentator. That's a clean sheet, with the honest caveat that it's partly a quiet one.
The good stuff is the real stuff. After the 1992 Los Angeles riots he got involved with the Al Wooten Jr. Heritage Center, a nonprofit that mentors young people and helps with college prep, and he chaired its board from 1993 to 2005. When he died, Joss Whedon urged fans to donate to the centre in his name.
Colleagues keep describing the same bloke. His agent called him “a private, gentle and caring man”, and Alan Tudyk praised his laugh and constant generosity. Nathan Fillion remembered him as classy and impeccably dressed, with the odd sharp comeback, and still keeps a piece of clothing Glass gave him after a panel.
Whedon said Glass met the end of his life “with grace, humor & enormous heart”. Nothing recent has come up on him, and it would be odd if it had. The whole record points the same way: a working actor who was kind to colleagues and gave years to a charity helping young people.