Bill Williams

Bill Williams

actor

Bill Williams was born on May 21, 1915 in USA. Bill Williams's big-screen debut came with Murder in the Blue Room directed by Leslie Goodwins in 1944, strarring Larry (as Bill MacWilliams). Bill Williams is known for The Flight of the Grey Wolf directed by Frank Zuniga, Jeff East stars as Russ Hanson and Bill Williams as The Sheriff. The most recent award Bill Williams achieved is Walk of Fame. The upcoming new movie Bill Williams plays is Goldie and the Boxer Go to Hollywood which will be released on Feb 19, 1981.

A solid film and TV player bearing a strong, honest persona for most his career, this innocent-eyed, boyishly handsome blond "B" actor of the 1940s and '50s was born in Brooklyn on May 21, 1915, and educated there at the Pratt Institute. A natural athlete, Bill Williams was a professional swimmer who broke into the entertainment business combining his swimming and dancing skills performing in aquatic underwater shows. Gaining experience as a performer in vaudeville and stock shows (both here and England), he started appearing in extra or bit parts in films following WWII army duty. He made his debut in Murder in the Blue Room (1944) and could be glimpsed here and there as various student, soldier or rookie types for the first couple of years.By the time the war ended, RKO Pictures had him under contract and gave him co-star billing in such promising entries as Amoureuse (1946) in which he played Robert Mitchum's ex-GI buddy, and the film noir piece Deadline at Dawn (1946) as a sailor who gets tangled up with both murder and lovelies Susan Hayward and Lola Lane. In 1945 fellow RKO actress Barbara Hale asked the director of À l'Ouest du Pecos (1945), Edward Killy, to hire Bill so they could spend time together (see Barbara Hale's personal quotes). They married a year later and went on to co-star together in the light comedy A Likely Story (1947) and the film noir suspense film Le pigeon d'argile (1949). They had two daughters and a son.Bill was a reliable "nice guy" lead and second lead. While he showed steady improvement and likability in films, he had a difficult time rising above the benign "B" adventure material he was shoehorned into playing (L'Homme de Kansas City (1949), Rookie Fireman (1950), La piste des caribous (1950), to name a few). In the early '50s he started checking out the relatively new medium of TV as a viable means of employment. He scored big with the kiddies as the title hero in the syndicated The Adventures of Kit Carson (1951), which ran for three seasons, and later shifted to lighter, less strenuous work as Betty White's hubby in the promising but short-lived domestic comedy Date with the Angels (1957). In 1960 he returned to his watery roots with the "Sea Hunt" inspired adventure Assignment: Underwater (1960) but the program was short-lived. He also appeared in guest assignments in such popular TV shows as "Rawhide," "77 Sunset Strip," and "Hawaiian Eye," not to mention multiple episodes of wife Barbara's series "Perry Mason," in which she co-starred as girl Friday Della Street.While Bill continued to perform throughout the 1970s and into the early '80s in character roles, he was seen less and less as his interest waned. Bill and Barbara did appear together in the films Le pistolero de l'enfer (1968) and L'Invasion des araignées géantes (1975), as well as occasionally on TV. Their middle child, son William Katt, a blond stunner who went on to fame in the movie Carrie au bal du diable (1976) and the weekly series spoof Ralph Super-héros (1981), obviously got his incredibly good looks from his dad. Bill died of a brain tumor in 1992.

  • Birthday

    May 21, 1915
  • Place of Birth

    Brooklyn, New York, USA

Known For

Awards

1 wins & 0 nominations

Walk of Fame
1960
Television
Winner - Star on the Walk of Fame

Movies & TV Shows

All
Movies
TV Shows