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In 1976, when Smithers was starring on the short-lived CBS drama\u00a0<\/span>Executive Suite<\/em>, he sued MGM. Within the highly publicized case, he claimed the studio had violated his contract, which said that, with three named exceptions, no other castmember could receive extra money or higher billing than he did.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
He indicated an MGM exec threatened to blacklist him in Hollywood should he follow through on the suit, however the actor pressed on. A jury after which the California Supreme Court present in his favor \u2014 \u201cwe won it big,\u201d he said \u2014 and\u00a0<\/span>Smithers vs. MGM<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>is now taught in entertainment law courses.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Marion Wilkinson Smithers Jr. was born in Richmond, Virginia, on July 10, 1927. His father was an electrician who moved the family in 1936 to Elizabeth, Recent Jersey. At Alexander Hamilton Junior High School, he appeared in a play with future\u00a0<\/span>House of Wax<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>star Phyllis Kirk.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
After 14 months within the U.S. Navy, Smithers attended Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia after which Catholic University in Washington before moving to Recent York in 1950 to pursue an acting profession. To pay the bills, he worked as an usher on the Alvin Theatre on Broadway, where Henry Fonda was starring in\u00a0<\/span>Mr. Roberts<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
For his Broadway bow, Smithers dyed his hair red and received a Theater World award for his turn as Tybalt opposite de Havilland in\u00a0<\/span>Romeo and Juliet<\/em>, then was accepted into The Actors Studio. (A couple of years earlier, the actress had defeated Warner Bros. in a landmark Hollywood suit regarding her seven-year contract.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Smithers also appeared on Broadway within the Nineteen Fifties in\u00a0<\/span>Legend of Lovers<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>with Richard Burton, in\u00a0<\/span>End as a Man<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>with Ben Gazzara, in\u00a0<\/span>The Square Root of Wonderful<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>with Anne Baxter and in\u00a0<\/span>The Shadow of a Gunman<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>with Bruce Dern and received an Obie Award in 1957 for taking part in Treplev in an off-Broadway production of Chekhov\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>The Seagull<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
In 1960, Smithers spent a summer with the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut, and had what he called \u201d an intense \u2014 and illicit love affair\u201d with actress Barbara Barrie. Three years later, he worked alongside Charles Boyer in London and on Broadway in\u00a0<\/span>Man and Boy<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
He moved from Recent York to Los Angeles in 1965 when he was hired on\u00a0<\/span>Peyton Place<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Smithers said he was \u201cpaid little or no\u201d on\u00a0<\/span>Dallas<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>and left the series in a dispute over money. \u201cMy agent was convinced that they might come to the figure that we asked for,\u201d he said, \u201cbut they didn\u2019t. In order that ended the entire thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
He appeared on a lot of TV shows, with guest spots on\u00a0<\/span>The Defenders<\/em>,\u00a0<\/span>Combat!<\/em>,\u00a0<\/span>It Takes a Thief<\/em>,\u00a0<\/span>Mission: Inconceivable<\/em>,\u00a0<\/span>The F.B.I.<\/em>,\u00a0<\/span>Mannix<\/em>,\u00a0<\/span>The Mod Squad<\/em>,\u00a0<\/span>Ironside<\/em>,\u00a0<\/span>The Name of the Game<\/em>,\u00a0<\/span>Barnaby Jones<\/em>,\u00a0<\/span>Cannon<\/em>,\u00a0<\/span>Sledge Hammer!<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>and\u00a0<\/span>Walker, Texas Ranger<\/em>, amongst many others.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
William Smithers, the veteran character actor who because the ruthless oilman Jeremy Wendell gave nemesis J.R. Ewing all he could handle on the CBS primetime soap\u00a0Dallas, has died. He was 98.\u00a0 Smithers, who specialized in playing heavies during his profession, also guest-starred as Capt. R.M. Merik, a onetime Federation officer now presiding over Roman gladiators, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":351892,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20669],"tags":[2870,638,1436,52905,52904,9977],"class_list":["post-351891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hollywood","tag-actor","tag-dallas","tag-dead","tag-papillon","tag-smithers","tag-william"],"aioseo_notices":[{"message":"The permalink for this post just changed! This could result in 404 errors for your site visitors.","status":"warning","options":{"id":"0a2ae5f84bc2c0423042ed7ec22d2e40","isDismissible":true,"actions":[{"url":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/wp-admin\/admin.php?page=aioseo-redirects","label":"Add Redirect to improve SEO","class":"aioseo-redirects-slug-changed"}]},"allowedContexts":["posts"]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351891"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":351894,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351891\/revisions\/351894"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}