William Smith (actor)


William Smith is an American actor. In a Hollywood career spanning more than 75 years, he has appeared in almost three hundred feature films and television productions, with his best known role being the menacing Anthony Falconetti in the 1970s television mini-series Rich Man, Poor Man. Smith is also known for films like Any Which Way You Can, Conan The Barbarian, Rumble Fish, and Red Dawn, as well as lead roles in several exploitation films during the 1970s.

Life and career

Born in Columbia, Missouri, Smith began his acting career at the age of eight in 1942; he entered films as a child actor in such films as The Ghost of Frankenstein, The Song of Bernadette and Meet Me in St. Louis.
Smith served in the United States Air Force. He won the 200 pound arm-wrestling championship of the world multiple times and also won the United States Air Force weightlifting championship. A lifelong bodybuilder, Smith is a record holder for reverse-curling his own body weight. His trademark arms measured as much as 19½ inches. Smith held a 31-1 record as an amateur boxer.
During the Korean War he was a Russian Intercept Interrogator and flew secret ferret missions over the Russian SFSR. He had both CIA and NSA clearance and intended to enter a classified position with the U.S. government, but while he was working on his doctorate studies he landed an acting contract with MGM.
He was a regular on the 1961 ABC television series The Asphalt Jungle, portraying police Sergeant Danny Keller. One of his earliest leading roles was as Joe Riley, a Texas Ranger on the NBC western series Laredo. In 1967, Smith guest starred as Jude Bonner on James Arness's long-lived western Gunsmoke.
Smith was cast as John Richard Parker, brother of Cynthia Ann Parker, both taken hostage in Texas by the Comanche, in the 1969 episode "The Understanding" of the syndicated television series Death Valley Days, which was hosted by Robert Taylor. In the story line, Parker contracts the plague, is left for dead by his fellow Comanche warriors, and is rescued by his future Mexican wife, Yolanda.
He played the outlaw turned temporary sheriff Hendry Brown in the 1969 episode "The Restless Man". In that story line, Brown takes the job of sheriff to tame a lawless town, begins to court a young woman, but soon returns to his deadly outlaw ways in search of bigger thrills.
On Gunsmoke, Smith appeared in a 1972 episode, "Hostage!"; his character beats and rapes Amanda Blake's character Miss Kitty Russell and shoots her twice in the back. Smith has been described as the "greatest bad-guy character actor of our time".
Smith joined the cast of the final season of Hawaii Five-O. He had previously appeared with Jack Lord in Lord's prior series Stoney Burke. Smith starred in one episode each of the Adam West Batman TV series, I Dream of Jeannie, Kung Fu, and as The Treybor, a ruthless warlord, in the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century episode "Buck's Duel to the Death". Smith also made guest appearances opposite James Garner in the 1974 two-hour pilot for The Rockford Files, and George Peppard in The A-Team.
In the 1976 television miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man, he portrayed Anthony Falconetti, nemesis of the Jordache family, and reprised the role in the sequel Rich Man, Poor Man Book II. Other 1970s TV appearances included the episode "The Energy Eater", as an Indian medicine man who advises Kolchak, and an early Six Million Dollar Man episode "Survival of the Fittest" as Commander Maxwell. He also appeared in the 1979 miniseries The Rebels as John Waverly, and in an episode of The Dukes of Hazzard as Jason Steele, a bounty hunter hired by Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane to frame the Duke Boys into jail.
On the big screen, Smith became the star of several cult movies from the early seventies. Smith appeared as heavy Terry Bartell in Darker than Amber in 1970. Also that year, Smith was also featured in two biker flicks Nam's Angels co-starring Bernie Hamilton and C.C. and Company with Ann-Margret, Joe Namath, Jennifer Billingsley and genre favorite Sid Haig, the latter of which was directed by Seymour Robbie and written by Ann-Margret's husband, actor Roger Smith. He starred in 1972's Grave of the Vampire as James Eastman, and 1973's Invasion of the Bee Girls, and 1975's The Swinging Barmaids. In 1972 and 1975, respectively, he appeared in two popular Blaxploitation films, Hammer and the controversially titled Boss Nigger, both with Fred Williamson.
After that, he played a vindictive sergeant in Twilight's Last Gleaming with an all-star cast headed by Burt Lancaster and Richard Widmark, a drag-racing legend in Fast Company also co-starring Claudia Jennings and John Saxon, the main character's father in Conan the Barbarian with Arnold Schwarzenegger, bad guy Matt Diggs in The Frisco Kid opposite Gene Wilder and Harrison Ford, and Clint Eastwood's bare-knuckle nemesis Jack Wilson in 1980's Any Which Way You Can, and also had a top villainous role of the Soviet commander in the hit 1984 theatrical film Red Dawn. In 1983, Smith appeared in two films from Francis Ford Coppola, in The Outsiders as a store clerk and in Rumble Fish as a police officer. In 1985, Smith landed the starring role of Brodie Hollister in the Disney mini-series Wildside, created by writer-producer Tom Greene, and another role as the bookmaker's enforcer known as "Panama Hat" in director Richard Brooks's final movie, Fever Pitch opposite Ryan O'Neal.

Selected filmography