Top 250 MoviesMost Popular MoviesTop 250 TV ShowsMost Popular TV ShowsMost Popular Video GamesMost Popular Music VideosMost Popular Podcasts
    Release CalendarBrowse Movies by GenreTop Box OfficeShowtimes & TicketsMovie NewsIndia Movie Spotlight
    What's on TV & StreamingBrowse TV Shows by GenreTV NewsIndia TV Spotlight
    What to WatchLatest TrailersIMDb OriginalsIMDb PicksIMDb Podcasts
    OscarsBest Picture WinnersBest Picture WinnersSundance Film FestivalIndependent Spirit AwardsBlack History MonthSXSWSTARmeter AwardsAwards CentralFestival CentralAll Events
    Born TodayMost Popular CelebsMost Popular CelebsCelebrity News
    Help CenterContributor ZonePolls
For Industry Professionals
  • All
  • Titles
  • TV Episodes
  • Celebs
  • Companies
  • Keywords
  • Advanced Search
Watchlist
Sign In
Sign In
New Customer? Create account
  • Fully supported
  • English (United States)
    Partially supported
  • Français (Canada)
  • Français (France)
  • Deutsch (Deutschland)
  • हिंदी (भारत)
  • Italiano (Italia)
  • Português (Brasil)
  • Español (España)
  • Español (México)
  • Biography
  • Awards
  • Trivia
IMDbPro

Bill Williams(1915-1992)

  • Actor
IMDbProStarmeter
See rank
Bill Williams
Official Trailer
Play trailer2:04
The Last Outpost (1951)
2 Videos
72 Photos
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 Till the End of Time (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 West of the 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 The Clay Pigeon (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 (Fighting Man of the Plains (1949), Rookie Fireman (1950), The Cariboo Trail (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 Buckskin (1968) and The Giant Spider Invasion (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 (1976) and the weekly series spoof The Greatest American Hero (1981), obviously got his incredibly good looks from his dad. Bill died of a brain tumor in 1992.
BornMay 21, 1915
DiedSeptember 21, 1992(77)
BornMay 21, 1915
DiedSeptember 21, 1992(77)
IMDbProStarmeter
See rank
  • Awards

Photos72

Bill Williams in The Clay Pigeon (1949)
Marya Marco and Bill Williams in The Clay Pigeon (1949)
Bill Williams in The Clay Pigeon (1949)
Bill Williams in The Clay Pigeon (1949)
Bill Williams in The Clay Pigeon (1949)
Van Johnson and Bill Williams in Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)
Van Johnson, Robert Bice, John R. Reilly, and Bill Williams in Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)
Robert Young and Bill Williams in Those Endearing Young Charms (1945)
Kenneth MacDonald and Bill Williams in The Adventures of Kit Carson (1951)
Mara Corday, Lee Frederick, and Bill Williams in The Adventures of Kit Carson (1951)
William Challee and Bill Williams in Deadline at Dawn (1946)
Susan Hayward and Bill Williams in Deadline at Dawn (1946)

Known for

Jane Russell, Bob Hope, Roy Rogers, and Trigger in Son of Paleface (1952)
Son of Paleface
6.8
  • Kirk
  • 1952
Barbara Hale, Richard Loo, and Bill Williams in The Clay Pigeon (1949)
The Clay Pigeon
6.4
  • Jim Fletcher
  • 1949
Hell's Horizon (1955)
Hell's Horizon
5.2
  • Paul Jenkins
  • 1955
Robert 'Buzz' Henry, Ralph Morgan, Jane Nigh, and Bill Williams in Blue Grass of Kentucky (1950)
Blue Grass of Kentucky
6.4
  • Lin McIvor
  • 1950

Credits

Edit
IMDbPro

Actor

  • Goldie and the Boxer Go to Hollywood (1981)
    Goldie and the Boxer Go to Hollywood
  • Night of the Zombies (1981)
    Night of the Zombies
  • Joanna Cassidy, Mark Harmon, and John Bennett Perry in 240-Robert (1979)
    240-Robert
  • Greg Evigan in B.J. and the Bear (1978)
    B.J. and the Bear
  • A Fire in the Sky (1978)
    A Fire in the Sky
  • Angie Dickinson in Police Woman (1974)
    Police Woman
    • ...
  • Kurt Russell and Tim Matheson in The Quest (1976)
    The Quest
  • The Magical World of Disney (1954)
    The Magical World of Disney
    • ...
  • The Flight of the Grey Wolf (1976)
    The Flight of the Grey Wolf
  • Raymond Burr in Ironside (1967)
    Ironside
  • The Giant Spider Invasion (1975)
    The Giant Spider Invasion
  • The F.B.I. (1965)
    The F.B.I.
  • Kate Jackson, Georg Stanford Brown, Sam Melville, and Michael Ontkean in The Rookies (1972)
    The Rookies
  • Kent McCord and Martin Milner in Adam-12 (1968)
    Adam-12
  • The Phantom of Hollywood (1974)
    The Phantom of Hollywood

Videos2

The Last Outpost
Trailer 2:04
The Last Outpost
The Stratton Story
Trailer 2:00
The Stratton Story

Personal details

Edit
    • May 21, 1915
    • Brooklyn, New York, USA
    • September 21, 1992
    • Burbank, California, USA(brain tumor)
    • Barbara HaleJune 22, 1946 - September 21, 1992 (his death, 3 children)
  • Publicity listings
    • 1 Pictorial

Did you know

Edit
  • Trivia
    Father, with actress Barbara Hale, of virtual look-alike son, actor William Katt.

Related news

Contribute to this page

Suggest an edit or add missing content
  • Learn more about contributing
Edit page

More to explore

Recently viewed

Please enable browser cookies to use this feature. Learn more.
Get the IMDb App
  • Get the IMDb App
  • Help
  • Site Index
  • IMDbPro
  • Box Office Mojo
  • IMDb Developer
  • Press Room
  • Advertising
  • Jobs
  • Conditions of Use
  • Privacy Policy
  • Your Ads Privacy Choices
IMDb, an Amazon company

© 1990-2023 by IMDb.com, Inc.