{"id":338793,"date":"2026-06-16T19:47:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T19:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/338793\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T19:47:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T19:47:11","slug":"william-smithers-dead-dallas-papillon-actor-was-98","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/338793\/","title":{"rendered":"William Smithers Dead: ‘Dallas’, ‘Papillon’ Actor Was 98"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWilliam Smithers<\/a>, an actor best known for a recurring role on the hit \u201980s 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tHis death was first reported by the local newspaper Santa Barbara Independent<\/a> yesterday. A cause of death was not disclosed.<\/p>\n

\n\tA 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\u2019 central antihero J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman).<\/p>\n

\n\tBorn 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\u2019s The Seagull.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn addition to various Off Broadway roles, Smithers\u2019 Broadway credits included Jean Anouilh\u2019s Legend of Lovers (1951), Calder Willingham\u2019s End as a Man (1953), Carson McCullers\u2019s The Square Root of Wonderful (1957) and Terence Rattigan\u2019s Man and Boy (1963).<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter appearing in numerous TV anthology drama series in the 1950s, Smithers segued to regular series work in the \u201960s, 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 \u201cBread and Circuses\u201d episode of Star Trek.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe continued TV work on popular series throughout the \u201970s and \u201980s: 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tInformation on survivors was not immediately available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"William Smithers, an actor best known for a recurring role on the hit \u201980s TV series Dallas as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338794,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,2070,120638],"class_list":["post-338793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-obituary","tag-william-smithers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338793","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=338793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}