High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Tol Avery (August 28, 1915 – August 27, 1973) was an American film and television character actor with more than a hundred screen appearances between 1950 and 1974. Noted for his enormous girth and cultured voice, Avery usually played sophisticated and articulate villains, including the featured nemesis in seven episodes of Maverick between 1957 and 1962, as well as "Ben Weaver" on The Andy Griffith Show and "Speaker Bert Metcalf" on the short-lived television series Slattery`s People in 1964. He appeared five times on the long running western series The Virginian in the 1960s.