William Smithers, Actor in ‘Dallas’ and ‘Papillon,’ Dies
at 98
The veteran character actor, who played the ruthless
oilman Jeremy Wendell on the CBS primetime soap, gave nemesis J.R. Ewing all he
could handle.
The Hollywood Reporter
By Mike Barnes
June 16, 2026
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 Dallas, has died. He was 98.
Smithers’ death was reported by the Santa Barbara
Independent. He lived in Santa Barbara.
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 Star Trek episode “Bread
and Circuses,” which premiered in March 1968.
A member of The Actors Studio, the Virginia native got
his start on the stage, and he and Olivia de Havilland made their Broadway
debuts together in a 1951 production of Romeo and Juliet.
On the big screen, Smithers portrayed a principled
infantry officer in Robert Aldrich’s Attack (1956) in his first movie, then
appeared as a police captain in Ivan Dixon’s Trouble Man (1972), as a spy in
Michael Winner’s Scorpio (1973) and as the unbending Warden Barrot in Franklin
J. Schaffner’s Papillon (1973).
“The rule here is total silence,” Barrot tells Steve
McQueen’s imprisoned character in Papillon. “We make no pretense of
rehabilitation here. We’re not priests, we’re 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.”
Perhaps as a tribute, the warden played by André Gregory
in the 1993 Sylvester Stallone-Wesley Snipes film Demolition Man is named
William Smithers.
Smithers had portrayed Peyton Mill owner David Schuster
from 1965-66 on TV’s first primetime soap, ABC’s Peyton Place, before he landed
on Dallas in 1981 in its fourth season as the steely Wendell, chairman of
WestStar Oil.
Wendell would make the cutthroat Ewing (Larry Hagman)
look like a choirboy in comparison during his 50-episode stint through 1989.
Working with Hagman “was always a challenge because
[their characters] were always competitors because of the scripts,” he said.
“Larry 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.”
In 1976, when Smithers was starring on the short-lived
CBS drama Executive 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.
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 — “we won it
big,” he said — and Smithers vs. MGM is now taught in entertainment law
courses.
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 House of Wax star Phyllis Kirk.
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 Mr. Roberts.
For his Broadway bow, Smithers dyed his hair red and
received a Theater World award for his turn as Tybalt opposite de Havilland in
Romeo 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.)
Smithers also appeared on Broadway in the 1950s in Legend
of Lovers with Richard Burton, in End as a Man with Ben Gazzara, in The Square
Root of Wonderful with Anne Baxter and in The Shadow of a Gunman with Bruce
Dern and received an Obie Award in 1957 for playing Treplev in an off-Broadway
production of Chekhov’s The Seagull.
In 1960, Smithers spent a summer with the Shakespeare
Festival in Stratford, Connecticut, and had what he called ” an intense — and
illicit love affair” with actress Barbara Barrie. Three years later, he worked
alongside Charles Boyer in London and on Broadway in Man and Boy.
He moved from New York to Los Angeles in 1965 when he was
hired on Peyton Place.
Smithers said he was “paid very little” on Dallas and
left the series in a dispute over money. “My agent was convinced that they
would come to the figure that we asked for,” he said, “but they didn’t. So that
ended the whole thing.”
He appeared on lots of TV shows, with guest spots on The
Defenders, Combat!, It Takes a Thief, Mission: Impossible, The F.B.I., Mannix,
The Mod Squad, Ironside, The Name of the Game, Barnaby Jones, Cannon, Sledge
Hammer! and Walker, Texas Ranger, among many others.
SMITHERS, William (Marion Wilkinson Smithers Jr.)
Born: 7/10/1927, Richmond, Virginia, U.S.A.
Died: 5/26/2026,
Santa Barbara, California, U.S.A.
William Smithers’s westerns – actor:
The Road West (TV) 1966 (Sam Gaskins)
Shane (TV) – 1966 (Del Packard)
Cade’s County (TV) - 1972 (William Courtney)
Walker, Texas Ranger (TV) -1994 (Milo Crane)
