A stout, often bespectacled, character actor of film and TV with a walrus mustache and a flair for accents, Wilford Brimley proved himself adept at playing endearing curmudgeons, giving perhaps his most memorable performance as one of the increasingly frisky senior citizens in Ron Howard's "Cocoon" (1985) and its sequel "Cocoon: The Return" (1988). Brimley brought his familiar persona to the small screen role of Gus Witherspoon, the cantankerous grandfather who took in his widowed daughter-in-law and three grandchildren, in the NBC dramatic series "Our House" (1986-88), and as the folksy