This time of year TCM has their “In Memoriam” or “TCM Remembers” segment between movies where they show who died over the past year from the entertainment industry. One of my favorites popped up that surprised me, William Smith. I knew him from the TV western Laredo, Any Which Way You Can and Red Dawn. IMDB had him down as being most famous for Rich Man Poor Man and Conan the Barbarian, and for being in the final season of Hawaii Five-0.

He did a ton of things I was never aware of. He struck me as a ‘guys guy’. His IMDB page is just filled with athletic achievements. I won’t begin to try and cover them all. His pugilistic skills were for real: 31-1 as an amateur boxer. Which helps explain why in the Clint Eastwood film Any Which Way You Can the fight scenes were very believable. Plus he could grunt like nobodies business. I respect a good grunter.

It was interesting reading his bio page about his interactions with Neville Brand on Laredo. Another publication had it as Neville not liking Bill. Bill was very educated, very fit, very good looking, all things Neville wasn’t. Maybe there was some jealousy or resentment there. It looks like Bill was working hard to the end. He scrambled for work his whole life. A TV episode of Batman for example.

He did a lot of other episodic TV: Knight Rider, BJ and the Bear, Dukes of Hazzard, Murder She Wrote. Who knows how Hollywood makes the delineation between A-List actors and ‘B’. Bill probably leaned more towards the latter. He held many jobs and did a lot of very different things over the course of his life. Like I say onscreen he was a very likable guy, who knows what he was like in real life?

One of the tidbits I picked up from his own website was that he liked to write poetry. I put one of his poems below the pictures. Something beyond Hollywood’s mental capacity that I thought should have happened, was a TV series with Bill, Denny Miller, Clint Walker, Fess Parker, playing ranchers? Detectives? Who knows. They all had their moments, but they seemed underutilized to me.

I know a thousand faces that don’t know me
I have seen ’em all, sad and gay, caged and free
Blue, moist eyes crying and yearning for love
Brazen, black ones glaring coldly above
Selfish, evil souls have rehearsed before me
Revealing their greedy plots to me only
So many times I’ve tried to reach out
To aide and soothe those riddled with doubt
There were those who thought they had it all
Sad, puny wretches with hearts so small
And then those poor bastards who were driven
Hoping that their sins would be forgiven
They’d cry and weep ’bout their lonely past
Swearing that their lives were pure and chaste
Yet only to themselves do they lie
And only by themselves will they die
But when out of rage they shatter me
My crumbling pieces shall set me free
Never more will I mirror their sniveling frailty
For my shards mean not seven years, but eternity

[Ode to a Mirror – William Smith]