THE QUINTESSENTIAL ‘ENGLISHMAN’ OF STAGE, FILM AND TV REMEMBERS
By Gregory N. Joseph
CHANCES ARE, if you’re a film aficionado, you’ll recognize this face from movies like Alfred Hitchcock’s “Dial M for Murder” or “To Catch a Thief,” or Billy Wilder’s “Sabrina” or “Witness for the Prosecution,” playing opposite the biggest stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, from Tyrone Power, Cary Grant and Humphrey Bogart to Marlene Dietrich, Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly.
Or maybe you watched him on television in shows ranging from the iconic fantasy series “The Twilight Zone” to the sitcom “Family Affair” to the sci-fi adventure “Battlestar Galactica.” Or perhaps you might remember seeing him in one of TV’s most often-aired (and stylish, especially by today’s standards) infomercials. Or maybe, if you were lucky, you caught him in person on Broadway, where he won a Tony Award.
His name was John Williams, who, for many years, represented the quintessential “Englishman” on stage, screen and television. He was literally everywhere. If people couldn’t quite place the name, they undoubtedly knew his face — and his rock-solid performances as everything from detectives to barristers to butlers.
Williams, a slender, courtly gentleman with a pencil-thin mustache, was born in Buckinghamshire, England, where he first acted on stage as a teenager.
He moved to the United States at age 21. He never stopped working.
He appeared in more than 30 Broadway productions over four decades opposite the likes of such luminaries as Claudette Colbert, Helen Hayes, and Getrude Lawrence (the latter in George Bernard Shaw’s legendary “Pygmalion”). His first Hollywood appearance was in the 1930 Mack Sennett short “The Chumps.” Some 40 motion picture roles would follow, and as many guest appearances on television.
In 1953, he won a Tony Award as Best Featured Actor as the dogged Chief Inspector Hubbard in the Broadway production of “Dial M for Murder,” and was tapped by Hitchcock to repeat the role in the film version a year later opposite Kelly, Ray Milland and Robert Cummings (he played the role yet again in a 1958 television version on an installment of the prestigious “Hallmark Hall of Fame”). In 1954, he won the Best Supporting Actor Award from the National Board of Review for his turns in the films “Dial M for Murder” and “Sabrina.”
TV viewers recognized his face, and his persona, immediately. He appeared frequently on Hitchcock’s classic series in a breathtaking range of roles as well as in many other shows, dramas and comedies, it didn’t matter, from Rod Serling’s groundbreaking chiller “The Twilight Zone” (in an episode titled “The Bard” — playing, appropriately enough, William Shakespeare) to the popular sitcom “Family Affair” (replacing Sebastian Cabot as the family butler, “French,” when Cabot was having health problems) to “Battlestar Galactica” (in the two-parter “War of the Gods”), the unofficial “military science fiction” counterpart to “Star Trek” that starred Lorne Greene, the former patriarch of the wildly popular Western series “Bonanza.”
At one point he served as the on-air spokesman in one of TV’s first infomercials, an uniquitous spot featuring classical music, “120 Music Masterpieces.” In fact, it became the longest-running nationally broadcast commercial in U.S. television history, airing for 13 years, from 1971 to 1984. (After a short interval of music, Williams would step forward: “I’m sure you recognize this lovely melody as ‘Stranger in Paradise.’ But did you know that the original theme is from ‘Polovtsian Dance №2’ by Borodin? So many of these well-known popular songs were written by the great masters, like these familiar themes … ”)
I met him in the last years of his life through a young television actress I had profiled as part of my job for a large Southern California newspaper and its wire service. I wrote about her acting career and a performance studio she was opening in downtown San Diego, and she insisted with a sly smile that I meet “an actor friend,” she wouldn’t reveal whom, only that I “probably” would recognize him.
Indeed.
Her “actor friend” turned out to be none other than Williams, who at the time was living with his beloved wife Helen not in England, with which he had been identified so unmistakably by audiences throughout the world for generations, but, of all places, in a condominium in the chic, upscale beachfront community of La Jolla, California.
He was a delight, candid and completely forthcoming, speaking impeccably in his patented manicured diction as he described the story of his life and career with candor and wit. This great actor who had acted alongside some of the most identifiable figures in film history was elegant, professional, modest to a fault, and unfailingly generous, to me and to those actors and directors with whom he had worked.
Indeed, he was especially eager to praise other actors, including those of the younger generation, noting at one point that he had become hooked on American daytime television soap operas of the day. “The acting in these shows is so consistently good,” he intoned in that unmistakable voice, marveling at how the performers so quickly memorized pages and pages of dialogue, under pressure, and without fail produced such excellent onscreen results (I had always wished these young performers could have known about this most distinguished of fans).
After my profile of him was published, I prevailed upon him to recall some of his experiences in England during the holiday season for a Christmas story I was writing. He didn’t hesitate, and was completely accommodating, as always. He put me and my readers there with him, regaling us with rich, moving anecdotes.
Williams, who was born on April 15, 1903, died suddenly on May 5, 1983, in La Jolla at the age of 80, from an aneurysm.
Ironically, in death more people probably learned his name than when he was alive (truth to tell, when the name “John Williams” is mentioned, many instead think of the popular composer and conductor who shares the moniker).
But they recognize his face — and his performances. Still. And that would have pleased this stately gentleman, “the quintessential Englishman,” a great deal indeed.
