John Richard Erdman (June 1, 1925 – March 16, 2019) was an American character actor and occasional film and television director.

In his final years, Erdman found renewed fame through his portrayal of Leonard Briggs in the comedy series Community (2009–2015).

In a career that spanned seven decades, his best-known roles are that of the barracks chief Hoffy in Stalag 17, and the garrulous, tedious barfly McNulty in the Twilight Zone episode "A Kind of a Stopwatch".

He also appeared in The Men (1950) with Marlon Brando and the film noir Cry Danger (1951) with Dick Powell and Rhonda Fleming.

(1970) he played Colonel Edward F. French, the officer who responded to the failure to transmit the warning to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

In the CBS TV series Perry Mason he played as murder victim Arthur Binney in the 1958 episode "The Case of the Gilded Lily".

; I Dream of Jeannie; The Beverly Hillbillies; Here's Lucy; That Girl; The Six Million Dollar Man; The Bionic Woman; One Day at a Time; Lou Grant; Quincy, M.E.