William Smithers, an actor best known for a recurring role on the hit ’80s TV series Dallas as well as a featured role in the 1973 Steve McQueen prison drama Papillon, died May 26 in Santa Barbara, California. He was 98.
His death was first reported by the local newspaper Santa Barbara Independent yesterday. A cause of death was not disclosed.
A prolific character actor on TV with dozens of credits from the 1950s though the 1990s, Smithers will likely best be remembered for his performance as oil baron Jeremy Wendell on Dallas. In 1981 and then from 1984 to 1989, he played oil baron Jeremy Wendell, providing the primetime soap with a ruthless arch-villain who caused no end of trouble for the series’ central antihero J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman).
Born in Richmond, Virginia, on July 10, 1927, Smithers served in the Navy during World War II and in 1951 made his Broadway debut as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet starring Olivia de Havilland. The following year he was accepted as a life member of The Actors Studio, and in 1957 received an Obie Award for his performance in Chekhov’s The Seagull.
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In addition to various Off Broadway roles, Smithers’ Broadway credits included Jean Anouilh’s Legend of Lovers (1951), Calder Willingham’s End as a Man (1953), Carson McCullers’s The Square Root of Wonderful (1957) and Terence Rattigan’s Man and Boy (1963).
After appearing in numerous TV anthology drama series in the 1950s, Smithers segued to regular series work in the ’60s, most notably a nine-month run as the character David Schuster in the nighttime soap Peyton Place in 1965-66. Episodic work followed in such shows as Shane, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Judd For The Defense, The Invaders, Mission: Impossible, Mannix, and many others. In 1968 he appeared in the “Bread and Circuses” episode of Star Trek.
He continued TV work on popular series throughout the ’70s and ’80s: He was a series regular on the 1976-77 corporate drama series Executive Suite. In addition Papillon, in which he played a warden in a hellish French Guiana prison, Smithers also appeared in 1973 film Scorpio.
Information on survivors was not immediately available.
