William Conrad (born John William Cann Jr.; September 27, 1920 – February 11, 1994) was an American actor, producer, and director whose career spanned five decades in radio, film. and television.
A radio writer and actor, he moved to Hollywood, California, after his World War II service and played a series of character roles in films. beginning with quintessential film noir The Killers (1946). He created the role of Marshall Matt Dillon for popular radio series Gunsmoke (1952–1961) and narrated the television adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (1959–1964) and The Fugitive (1963–1967).
Finding fewer on-screen roles in the 1950s, he changed from actor to producer-director with television work and a series of Warner Bros. films in the 1960s. Conrad found stardom as a detective in TV series Cannon (1971–1976), Nero Wolfe (1981) and in crime drama Jake and the Fatman (1987–1992).
Read more about William Conrad: Early Life, Later Life, Death, Recognition
Famous quotes containing the word conrad:
“You can’t, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty. And least of all can you condemn an artist pursuing, however humbly and imperfectly, a creative aim. In that interior world where his thought and his emotions go seeking for the experience of imagined adventures, there are no policemen, no law, no pressure of circumstance or dread of opinion to keep him within bounds. Who then is going to say Nay to his temptations if not his conscience?”
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)