Henry Jones, the character actor whose face was seen in theatre, film and TV, died May 17 at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, the New York Times reported. He was 86.

Mr. Jones won a Tony Award in 1958 for playing an aide to Franklin Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello and created the Broadway role of the nasty groundskeeper in The Bad Seed, a part he repeated, opposite Patty McCormack as an evil pig-tailed child, in the film version.

The Philadelphia native performed early in his career with the Hedgerow Theatre in Moylan, PA. His first Broadway job was in Maurice Evans' Hamlet in 1938. Other stage appearances include "My Sister Eileen," "Henry IV: Part Two," The Solid Gold Cadillac," Eva La Gallienne's "Alice in Wonderland," "The Time of Your Life" and "They Knew What They Wanted."

The Times pointed out that Mr. Jones memorably played the coroner in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. He also has parts in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "The Grifters" and "Dick Tracy," among many films.

But it was for a slew of TV parts, including many guest shots as teachers, lawyers, judges and doctors, that Mr. Jones was best known. He appeared in "The Defenders," "Murder, She Wrote," "Quincy, M.E.," "Phyllis" and many other programs, delivering his late-career lines in a drained, slightly professorial tone. He is survived by a daughter, Jocelyn Jones Watkins, and a son, David, both of California.

-- By Kenneth Jones