{"id":338362,"date":"2026-06-16T12:59:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T12:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/338362\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T12:59:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T12:59:08","slug":"william-smithers-actor-in-dallas-and-papillon-is-dead-at-98","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/338362\/","title":{"rendered":"William Smithers, Actor in ‘Dallas’ and ‘Papillon,’ Is Dead at 98"},"content":{"rendered":"

William Smithers, the veteran character actor who as the ruthless oilman Jeremy Wendell gave nemesis J.R. Ewing all he could handle on the CBS primetime soap\u00a0Dallas<\/a>, has died. He was 98.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Smithers, who specialized in playing heavies during his career, also guest-starred as Capt. R.M. Merik, a onetime Federation officer now presiding over Roman gladiators, on the original\u00a0Star Trek<\/a>\u00a0episode \u201cBread and Circuses,\u201d which premiered in March 1968.<\/p>\n

A member of The Actors Studio, the Virginia native got his start on the stage, and he and\u00a0Olivia de Havilland<\/a>\u00a0made their Broadway debuts together in a 1951 production of\u00a0Romeo and Juliet.<\/p>\n

On the big screen, Smithers portrayed a principled infantry officer in Robert Aldrich\u2019s\u00a0Attack\u00a0(1956) in his first movie, then appeared as a police captain in Ivan Dixon\u2019s\u00a0Trouble Man\u00a0(1972), as a spy in Michael Winner\u2019s\u00a0Scorpio\u00a0(1973) and as the unbending Warden Barrot in Franklin J. Schaffner\u2019s\u00a0Papillon\u00a0(1973).<\/p>\n

\u201cThe rule here is total silence,\u201d\u00a0Barrot tells Steve McQueen\u2019s imprisoned character in\u00a0Papillon<\/a>. \u201cWe make no pretense of rehabilitation here. We\u2019re not priests, we\u2019re processors. A meat-packer processes live animals into edible ones. We process dangerous men into harmless ones. This we accomplish by breaking you. Breaking you physically, spiritually and here [pointing to his head]. Strange things happen to the head here. Put all hope out of your mind and masturbate as little as possible. It drains the strength.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps as a tribute, the warden played by Andr\u00e9 Gregory in the 1993 Sylvester Stallone-Wesley Snipes film\u00a0Demolition Man\u00a0is named William Smithers.<\/p>\n

Smithers had portrayed Peyton Mill owner David Schuster from\u00a01965-66\u00a0on TV\u2019s first primetime soap, ABC\u2019s\u00a0Peyton Place, before he landed on\u00a0Dallas\u00a0in 1981 in its fourth season as the steely Wendell, chairman of WestStar Oil.<\/p>\n

Wendell would make the cutthroat Ewing (Larry Hagman<\/a>) look like a choirboy in comparison during his 50-episode stint through 1989.<\/p>\n

Working with Hagman \u201cwas always a challenge because [their characters] were always competitors because of the scripts,\u201d\u00a0he said<\/a>. \u201cLarry was a strong actor. I feel like I had to be at the top of my game when I was working with him. It was very stimulating.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1976, when Smithers was starring on the short-lived CBS drama\u00a0Executive Suite, he sued MGM. In the highly publicized case, he claimed the studio had violated his contract, which said that, with three named exceptions, no other castmember could receive more money or better billing than he did.<\/p>\n

He indicated an MGM exec threatened to blacklist him in Hollywood should he follow through on the suit, but the actor pressed on. A jury and then the California Supreme Court found in his favor \u2014 \u201cwe won it big,\u201d he said \u2014 and\u00a0Smithers vs. MGM\u00a0is now taught in entertainment law courses.<\/p>\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, New Jersey. At Alexander Hamilton Junior High School, he appeared in a play with future\u00a0House of Wax\u00a0star Phyllis Kirk.<\/p>\n

After 14 months in the U.S. Navy, Smithers attended Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia and then Catholic University in Washington before moving to New York in 1950 to pursue an acting career. To pay the bills, he worked as an usher at the Alvin Theatre on Broadway, where Henry Fonda was starring in\u00a0Mr. Roberts.<\/p>\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\u00a0Romeo and Juliet, then was accepted into The Actors Studio. (A few years earlier, the actress had defeated Warner Bros. in a landmark Hollywood suit regarding her seven-year contract.)<\/p>\n

Smithers also appeared on Broadway in the 1950s in\u00a0Legend of Lovers\u00a0with Richard Burton, in\u00a0End as a Man\u00a0with Ben Gazzara, in\u00a0The Square Root of Wonderful\u00a0with Anne Baxter and in\u00a0The Shadow of a Gunman\u00a0with Bruce Dern and received an Obie Award in 1957 for playing Treplev in an off-Broadway production of Chekhov\u2019s\u00a0The Seagull.<\/p>\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\u00a0Man and Boy.<\/p>\n

He moved from New York to Los Angeles in 1965 when he was hired on\u00a0Peyton Place.<\/p>\n

Smithers said he was \u201cpaid very little\u201d on\u00a0Dallas\u00a0and left the series in a dispute over money. \u201cMy agent was convinced that they would come to the figure that we asked for,\u201d he said, \u201cbut they didn\u2019t. So that ended the whole thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

He appeared on lots of TV shows, with guest spots on\u00a0The Defenders,\u00a0Combat!,\u00a0It Takes a Thief,\u00a0Mission: Impossible,\u00a0The F.B.I.,\u00a0Mannix,\u00a0The Mod Squad,\u00a0Ironside,\u00a0The Name of the Game,\u00a0Barnaby Jones,\u00a0Cannon,\u00a0Sledge Hammer!\u00a0and\u00a0Walker, Texas Ranger, among many others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"William Smithers, the veteran character actor who as the ruthless oilman Jeremy Wendell gave nemesis J.R. Ewing all…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,6946,96929],"class_list":["post-338362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-obituaries","tag-star-trek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}