American actor known for his roles in horror films and Star Trek
The actor William Campbell, who has died aged 87, had a long and varied career in films and on television, finding recognition from his association with several low-budget horror pictures and with the TV sci-fi series Star Trek. However, although he had the hooded eyes and languid manner of Robert Mitchum and something of the laid-back anarchism of Jack Nicholson, entry into the major league of stardom eluded him.
Campbell was in the first series of Star Trek, in an episode entitled The Squire of Gothos (1967), in which he has a field day as General Trelane, a foppish, childish humanoid, swinging wildly from joviality to sulkiness to anger. In The Trouble With Tribbles (1967), in the second season, Campbell was equally impressive as Koloth, a bearded, bureaucratic Klingon, a character that he revived 27 years later, towards the end of his working life,...
The actor William Campbell, who has died aged 87, had a long and varied career in films and on television, finding recognition from his association with several low-budget horror pictures and with the TV sci-fi series Star Trek. However, although he had the hooded eyes and languid manner of Robert Mitchum and something of the laid-back anarchism of Jack Nicholson, entry into the major league of stardom eluded him.
Campbell was in the first series of Star Trek, in an episode entitled The Squire of Gothos (1967), in which he has a field day as General Trelane, a foppish, childish humanoid, swinging wildly from joviality to sulkiness to anger. In The Trouble With Tribbles (1967), in the second season, Campbell was equally impressive as Koloth, a bearded, bureaucratic Klingon, a character that he revived 27 years later, towards the end of his working life,...
- 6/20/2011
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
Actor William Campbell died on April 29 at age 87 of "natural causes" at the Motion Picture & Television Fund's hospital in the Los Angeles suburb of Woodland Hills. Though perhaps best-remembered for his roles in two Star Trek episodes, "The Trouble with Tribbles" and "The Squire of Gothos" (doing a Liberace sendup), Campbell appeared in more than 30 features, and nearly 50 television series and movies. On the big screen, Campbell's most notable role was probably as San Quentin inmate Whit Whittier, the "Lovers' Lane Bandit," in Fred F. Sears' Cell 2455 Death Row (1955), a competent if uninspired prison drama based on death-row inmate Caryl Chessman's bestselling autobiography. (Despite worldwide appeals for clemency, Chessman was sent to the gas chamber in 1960.) Had Cell 2455 Death Row been a sleeper hit, Campbell might have become a star (one of his romantic interests in the film, Kathryn Grant, went on to [...]...
- 5/1/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
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