Florence Halop
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Florence Halop (January 23, 1923 – July 15, 1986) was a diminutive, mostly comic actress and the sister of Billy Halop, one of the original Dead End/East Side Kids.
Born at Queens, New York, Halop had a long career on radio and got her start at age 4 when she appeared on Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre.
Between 1976 - 1982, she played 6 different characters on the TV series Barney Miller. Her character in St. Elsewhere, Mrs. Hufnagel, was only supposed to be in one episode, but her role was so well received the writers found a way to get her into 15 more episodes. Halop also went uncredited in the films The Glass Bottom Boat and Pretty in Pink.
Florence succeeded Selma Diamond as a female bailiff on Night Court after Diamond's death from lung cancer, but succumbed herself to cancer during the run of the show. (She was replaced on Night Court by Marsha Warfield, who played Roz Russell until the series ended in May 1992.) The two women had other things in common: Halop and Diamond had both worked on the old-time radio hit Duffy's Tavern, Halop succeeding Shirley Booth as man-crazy Miss Duffy and Diamond as one of the show's writers. Also, the two women were diminutive, Jewish, and spoke in raspy voices from years of smoking.
Halop had actually developed breast cancer that spread to her lungs, among other places, so biographies of her alternate between her having died from breast or lung cancer. She was 63. Halop had been married to George Gruskin, who died in 1976. They were the parents of two daughters, Georgeanna and Benita.
