William Smith

Actor William Smith grew up in poverty during the Depression. As a kid, Smith found bit-part work in movies such as "Meet Me in St. Louis," "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," and the perverse "Gilda." He played with Dean Stockwell in 1948 in the loopy Joseph Losey film "The Boy with Green Hair" before taking a break and then returning in the early 1960s for some feature film work and more work on series television like "The Asphalt Jungle" in 1961. He played a character named Adonis on the campy superhero series "Batman" in 1968, and in 1972 appeared on the big screen in the cult classic "The Thing with Two Heads." There were more appearances on TV in the 1970s on shows such as "The Streets of San Francisco"; but Smith got his best part ever in the television mini-series "Rich Man, Poor Man" in 1976, playing the purely evil Falconetti. William Smith died on July 5, 2021 in Woodland Hills, CA at the age of 88.