Bill Williams Movies

In this children's drama, an angry little boy is adopted by a ranching couple. The mean little tyke takes an immediate dislike to his new parents, but his life changes for the better when he finds a wounded German Shepherd that was especially trained by the Marines. The troubled youth begins spending all his time nursing the hurt animal. One day he discovers a gun that the dog had brought with him when he ran away from his master's house after his owner was murdered. The boy's life is jeopardized when he accidentally stumbles across the killer. Fortunately, the brave dog saves him by attacking the killer and making him drop the gun. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Soon to be married in real life, Barbara Hale and Bill Williams also played sweethearts on screen in the frantic farce A Likely Story. After a routine medical examination, ex-GI Bill Baker (Bill Williams) overhears a conversation between two doctors, leading him to the mistaken conclusion that he's doomed to die from a rare heart condition. Chancing to meet aspiring artist Vickie North (Barbara Hale), Baker resolves to help Vickie realize her dream by bankrolling her career. He takes out a huge life insurance policy, then talks a couple of gangsters (Sam Levene and Nestor Paiva) into bumping him off so that Vickie and her kid brother Jamie (Lanny Rees) can collect immediately. Things get complicated when Baker discovers that he's as hale and hearty as the next fellow, prompting him to try to weasel out of his bargain with the gangsters-who, having financed the insurance policy in the first place, aren't inclined to let our hero off the hook so easily. Curiously, what should have been a frothy comedy plays more like a film noir, complete with a brief, hallucinatory nightmare sequence! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This episode is something of a showcase for two former TV-series regulars: Perry Mason's Barbara Hale, and Family Affair's Kathy Garver. While searching for a rapist who preys on hitchhikers, Officers Jim Reed (Kent McCord) and Pete Malloy (Martin Milner) do their best to reunite a drug-peddling teenage runaway (Garver) with her anguished mother (Hale). Also appearing is Barbara Hale's real-life husband Bill Williams as a suspected rapist (Incidentally, Hale and Williams were the parents of future Greatest American Hero star William Katt). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Set in the new state of Alaska, this 1959 "B" drama features both a romantic quadrangle, if not pentagon, and a failing trucking company. Al (Bill Williams) manages the company out of a small town where the trucks make regular runs to Fairbanks. On top of rock slides and bad weather, he now has to handle the visit of his off-site partner Mason (Leslie E. Bradley) and his wife Janet (Lyn Thomas). This is more complex than usual because the company is in the red, and Janet was Al's former girlfriend -- she left him for Mason and his money. Add in the attractive Tina (Nora Hayden) who has her own interest in Al, who is interested in Janet, who is not that interested in Mason anymore, and the story could be set anywhere. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Assignment: Underwater was one of a small group of aquatic adventure series to follow in the wake of Ivan Tors' series Sea Hunt, which had been a massive success in syndication at the end of the 1950's. But as it happens, Assignment: Underwater, which ran for just one season, was much more than a clone of the Tors series, with high-quality scripts and top-notch guest stars, as well as first-rate action sequences and an excellent pair of stars. Bill Williams portrayed Bill Greer, an ex-Marine and an expert diver, a widower living on his boat The Lively Lady with his eight-year-old daughter Patty (Diane Mountford). One of the most experienced divers working on the West Coast, he is frequently hired by the government -- including the police and the Navy Department -- as well as private industry to carry out dangerous assignments, in addition to routine underwater salvage and surveying jobs. Greer's adventures have him coming up against murder, kidnapping, smuggling, counterfeiting, and other criminal activities, just to add to the level of danger that exists inherently in undersea work. The presence of his young daughter also allowed the writers to add a layer of serious complexity to the hero -- Greer may be a top man under the water, but it's also clear in many of the episodes that he's never wholly sure that it's the best thing for his daughter to be raised on a boat at the harbor; and this leaves him with more self-doubt and even occasionally flawed judgement than was typical for an adventure series of this era. The writers also quickly discovered that they could deliver more complex scripts than was usual on shows like this, owing to Diane Mountford's extraordinary abilities as a child actress -- this was most notable in "Panic Off Punta Banda", where she carries more than half the episode brilliantly, while working opposite characters who speak no English and can't communicate with her. The series was conceived by Frank de Felitta (who was also executive producer) and produced by National Telefilm Associates (NTA), which distributed it nationally in syndication, rather than through one of the major networks. The producer of the series was Bernard Glasser, who brought aboard his longtime collaborators Edward Bernds and Elwood Ullman -- although they were veteran film hands most closely associated with comedy (especially that of the Three Stooges), Bernds and Ullman, working in tandem with writer/associate producer Mort Zarcoff (with additional writing contributions by figures such as future director Tom Gries), flexed their dramatic muscles here to great effect in their scripts. The directors included Gene Fowler, Jr., who had already shown his skills as a dramatic filmmaker with movies such as I Was A Teenage Werewolf, I Married A Monster From Outer Space, and Gang War, Steve Sekely (Day Of The Triffids), and Paul Landres (The Vampire). They were aided in their cause by a guest cast list that included notable and dependable performers such as George Macready, Edgar Buchanan, John Van Dreelan, Carlton Young, Alan Hale, Jr., Chill Wills, John Hoyt, DeForest Kelley, Dan Seymour, Robert Shayne, and Charles Aidman, as well as up and coming players such as George Takei, James B. Sikking, and Barbara Luna, at the outset of their careers. All of this talent in the writing and acting departments also allowed Assignment: Underwater to diverge from Sea Hunt in another important respect -- Tors' series tended to be very didactic about its setting, and often seemed focused on teaching audiences about the sea in the course of its adventures; Assignment: Underwater was more oriented toward drama and characterization, although that didn't prevent the makers from informing us about aspects of diving and the oceans. And taking a lesson from one of Sea Hunt's few structural flaws, this show also relied a bit less on voice-over narration by Williams, and more often. where possibly, allowed the visuals to tell the story by themselves. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Bill Williams and Jane Nigh, the stars of Monogram's Blue Grass of Kentucky, are reunited in the strikingly similar Blue Blood. Based on Peter B. Kyne's story Dog Meat, the film traces the efforts made to rescue a thoroughbred from being ground into hamburger by a dog-food factory. Harry Shannon carries the film's dramatic weight as an elderly trainer who prizes his horses above all else. It is giving away nothing to reveal that the film's climax occurs during the obligatory Big Race. The Cinecolor process is put to excellent use during this sequence, with the color red figuring crucially in the race's outcome. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Noted Western director Budd Boetticher helmed this contemporary cowboy story. Tom Moody (John Lund) is a champion rodeo rider who sees real potential in newcomer Bart Eaton (Scott Brady). However, while Bart may have a knack for riding a bull, he's not much for loyalty, and he betrays his mentor by stealing Tom's girlfriend, Judy Bream (Joyce Holden). Tom wallows in self-pity until the death of his buddy Dan Bream (Chill Wills), a rodeo clown, forces him to rethink his life. For added realism, Boetticher incorporated genuine Western footage alongside staged sequences with his actors. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Beautiful Adele Mara, who Republic Pictures took for granted for far too long, finally gets a chance to shine in this fine Western produced and directed by the dependent Joseph Kane. Mara plays Beth Martin, an Easterner traveling west to be reunited with her brother, Bob (Bill Williams). But Bob is not quite the hard-working miner that Beth and kid brother Tommy (Peter Miles) believed him to be and the newcomers quickly find themselves caught between double-crossing saloon owners Mike Prescott (Forrest Tucker) and Lincoln Corey (Jim Davis). Estelita Rodriguez, as Bob Martin's faithful girlfriend, performs "Second Hand Romance" and "I'm Goin' Round in Circles," both by Jack Elliott and Harold Spina. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide