William Redfield


Born:		Jan 26, 1927 New York City, NY
Career:		1939-1976
Countries:		USA
Genre/Type:		Comedy Drama Crime Romance

Biography by Hal Erickson

The son of a Manhattan orchestra conductor and a former Ziegfeld Follies girl, little Billy Redfield made his Broadway bow at age 9 in Swing Your Lady.  Billy launched his radio career around the same time, and made his earliest movie appearance in 1939. As adult actor William Redfield,  he was one of the original founders of the influential Actors Studio. While his film assignments of the 1950s and 1960s were unremarkable (as Captain Owens in 1966's Fantastic Voyage,  for example, he played third fiddle to the special effects and Raquel Welch's diving suit), he remained a much-in-demand stage performer, and also proved a delightful raconteur on such TV chatfests as The Tonight Show.  His reminiscences of the ups and downs of the acting profession were candid and perceptive without ever descending into maliciousness; many of his best anecdotes were self-deprecatory, notably his oft-repeated tale about being saddled in the 1956 film The Proud and the Profane with some of the worst movie dialogue ever written. An ever-busy TV performer, Redfield played the title role in the 1953 DuMont Network series Jimmy Hughes, Rookie Cop,  and the following year was seen as Bobby Logan in The Marriage,  the first live network series to be regularly broadcast in color. A talented writer, Redfield co-created the popular Wally Cox TV sitcom Mister Peepers,  penned the stage play A View with Alarm,  and published the 1965 volume Letters From an Actor,  a candid memoir of his experiences while playing Guildenstern in the John Gielgud-directed 1964 staging of Hamlet,  which starred Richard Burton.  Not long after making his final film appearance as pensive mental patient Harding in the Oscar-winning One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,  49-year-old William Redfield died of leukemia.

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Filmography

Movie/Film	Released	Rating	Role	Buy
Mr. Billion	1977		Actor [Starring]
The Bob Newhart Show: Warden Gordon Borden	1976		Actor [Starring]
Fear on Trial	1975		Actor [Starring]
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest	1975		Actor [Starring]
Death Wish	1974		Actor [Starring]
For Pete's Sake	1974		Actor [Starring]
The Bob Newhart Show: P-I-L-O-T	1972		Actor [Starring]
The Hot Rock	1972		Actor [Starring]
A New Leaf	1971		Actor [Starring]
Such Good Friends	1971		Actor [Starring]
Pigeons	1970		Actor [Starring]
All Woman	1967		Actor [Starring]
Companions in Nightmare	1967		Actor [Starring]
Duel at Diablo	1966		Actor [Starring]
Fantastic Voyage	1966		Actor [Starring]
Bewitched: We're In For a Bad Spell	1965		Actor [Starring]

Movie/Film	Released	Rating	Role	Buy
Morituri	1965		Actor [Starring]
Hamlet	1964		Actor [Starring]
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: The Greatest Monster of Them All	1961		Actor [Starring]
The Connection	1961		Actor [Starring]
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: The Motive	1958		Actor [Starring]
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Manacled	1957		Actor [Starring]
I Married a Woman	1956		Actor [Starring]
The Proud and Profane	1956		Actor [Starring]
Conquest of Space	1955		Actor [Starring]
Producers' Showcase: Yellow Jack	1955		Actor [Starring]
Back Door to Heaven	1939		Actor [Starring]