by Conan Simmons – July 11, 2021 – 10:13 pm
Born in Columbia, Missouri on March 24, 1933 William Smith began his career as a child actor in 1940’s Hollywood in films ranging from ‘Ghost of Frankenstein’ to the Oscar winning ‘Going My Way’ to Judy Garland’s ‘Meet Me in St. Louis’. Earlier this week, on July 5, William Smith passed away at the age of 88 in Los Angeles, California.
Iconic in cult movies, William Smith had a long career on both the small screen and silver screen. First appearing on television in 1954 on ‘Kraft Theatre’ he would make his first credited feature film appearance years later in 1959 with the film ‘The Mating Game’.
The 1960’s brought with it consistent work for William Smith with a film appearance in 1961’s fantasy adventure ‘Atlantis: The Lost Continent’. For most of the decade television was where he thrived appearing on many of the decade’s top shows from ‘Perry Mason’, ‘Combat!’, ‘The Alfred Hitchock Hour’, ‘Wagon Train’, ‘Batman’ and ‘I Dream of Jeannie’. He was also a regular and made frequent appearances on ‘The Asphalt Jungle’, ‘Zero One’, ‘Laredo’, ‘The Virginian’ and ‘Daniel Boone’.
The 1970’s kept him in steady demand with stints on ‘Columbo’, ‘The Mod Squad’, ‘The Streets of San Francisco’, ‘Mission: Impossible’, ‘Kung Fu’, ‘The Rockford Files’, ‘The Six Million Dollar Man’, ‘Ironside’, ‘Planet of the Apes’, ‘Kolchak: The Night Stalker’, ‘Barnaby Jones’, ‘S.W.A.T.’, ‘Gunsmoke’ and his most iconic tv role as the villain Falconetti in ‘Rich Man, Poor Man’.
In 1969 William Smith hit his stride on the silver screen starring in several low budget biker flicks starting with ‘Run, Angel, Run’ and continuing with ‘The Losers’ and ‘C.C. & Company’, two films modern audiences may recognize from the clip and trailer played in two of Quentin Tarantino’s films ‘Pulp Fiction’ and ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’.
The 1970’s may have been his best decade as a leading actor on film starring in horror films ‘The Thing with Two Heads’, ‘Grave of the Vampire’, ‘Invasion of the Bee Girls’, ‘Piranha’ and the action flicks ‘Hammer’ and ‘Fast Company’, a forgotten gem directed by David Cronenberg.
In the 1980’s William Smith kept up the hard work on television shows including ‘Hawaii Five-O’, ‘Buck Rogers in the 25th Century’, ‘Fantasy Island’, ‘The Fall Guy’, ‘Matt Houston’, ‘Simon & Simon’, ‘CHiPs’, ‘Knight Rider’ and ‘The A-Team’.
Continuing to make appearances in Hollywood films he had memorable roles in ‘Any Which Way You Can’, ‘Conan the Barbarian’, ‘The Outsiders’, ‘Rumble Fish’ and ‘Red Dawn.
Some of his best known later cult movies were 1988’s ‘Hell Comes to Frogtown’ and 1991’s ‘Cybernator’.
With almost 275 film and television roles on his resume his last film was ‘Irresistable’ which was released last year, in 2020.