William Conrad

William Conrad (born John William Cann, Jr. ^[1] 27 September 1920 – 11 February 1994) was an American actor, film and television director.

Conrad was the son of a theatre owner who moved his family to California when William was a boy. Excelling at drama and literature at school, he began his career as an announcer, writer, and director for Los Angeles radio station KMPC in the late 1930s. Conrad served as a fighter pilot in World War II. On the day he was commissioned in 1943 at Luke Field, he married June Nelson. ^[2] He left the US Army Air Force with the rank of captain, and as a producer-director of the Armed Forces Radio Service. ^[3]

Conrad's deep, resonant voice led to a number of roles in radio, most prominently Marshal Matt Dillon on the Western program Gunsmoke. Conrad voiced Dillion for the show's 9 year run. In addition, Conrad wrote the June 1953 episode "Sundown". ^[4] When Gunsmoke was adapted for television in 1955, executives at CBS were not interested in casting Conrad or his radio costars despite a campaign to get them to change their minds. ^[5] Ironically, was under contract to CBS radio. He could be heard inviting listeners to “get away from it all” on Escape. His other credits included Suspense, The Damon Runyon Theater, Lux Radio Theater, Nightbeat, and Fibber McGee and Molly. In “The Wax Works,” a 1956 episode of Suspense, Conrad performed every part. He directed and narrated the 1957 CBS Radio Workshop episode "Epitaphs," an adaptation of the Edgar Lee Masters poetry volume Spoon River Anthology. Because of his CBS contract, he sometimes appeared on other network radio shows as "Julius Krelboyne".

Among Conrad's various film roles, where he was usually cast as threatening figures, perhaps his most notable role was his first credited one, as one of the gunmen sent to eliminate Burt Lancaster in The Killers. He also appeared in Body and Soul, Sorry, Wrong Number, Joan of Arc, and The Naked Jungle.

As a producer for Warner Brothers, he made a string of feature films, including An American Dream (1966), A Covenant With Death (1966), First to Fight (1967) and The Cool Ones (1967), and directed My Blood Runs Cold, Brainstorm and Two on a Guillotine.

Conrad moved to television in the 1960s. He guest starred in NBC's science fiction series The Man and the Challenge. In 1962, Conrad starred in an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and guest starred and directed episodes of ABC's crime drama Target: The Corruptors!. He and Sam Peckinpah directed episodes of NBC's Klondike in the 1960–1961 season. He returned to voice work as the narrator of This Man Dawson, a 33-episode syndicated crime drama starring Keith Andes in the 1959-1960 television season. He narrated The Fugitive starring David Janssen from 1963–1967 and the direction of Brainstorm in 1965. He narrated the animated Rocky and Bullwinkle series from 1959–1964 (as "Bill Conrad"), and later performed the role of Denethor in the 1980 animated TV version of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Return of the King.

Conrad intoned the rhyming narration heard over the credits of the 1970 John Wayne Western Chisum. From 1973 to 1978, Mr. Conrad narrated a nature program titled The Wild, Wild World of Animals. The 1970s also saw him starring onscreen in the first of three detective series which would bring him an added measure of renown, Cannon, which ran on CBS from 1971–1976. While starring in the show, he weighed a beefy 230 pounds (104 kg), and two seasons later, Conrad ballooned to a portly 260 pounds (118 kg) or more; he joked, "People who were on Weight Watchers were banned from watching the show." He later narrated The Making of Star Wars (1977) and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979). He starred in both Nero Wolfe (1981) and Jake and the Fatman (1987–1992), with Joe Penny. He was also the on-camera spokesman for First Alert fire prevention products for many years, as well as Hai Karate men's cologne.

Conrad's credits as a director include episodes of The Rifleman, Bat Masterson, Route 66, Have Gun – Will Travel, and 77 Sunset Strip, among others.

Conrad had one son, Christopher, with his first wife, who died in 1977 after over thirty years of marriage. Conrad married Tippy Stringer, the widow of NBC newscaster Chet Huntley, in 1980. ^[6]

Conrad died from congestive heart failure, and is buried in the Lincoln Terrace section, at Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills Cemetery.

Conrad was elected to the Radio Hall of Fame in 1997.

• The Killers (1946)
• Body and Soul (1947)
• Four Faces West (1948)
• Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)
• Joan of Arc (1948)
• Any Number Can Play (1949)
• Tension (1949)
• East Side, West Side (1949)
• The Milkman (1950)
• Dial 1119 (1950)
• Cry Danger (1951)
• The Racket (1951)
• Lone Star (1952)
• The Desert Song (1953)
• Cry of the Hunted (1953)
• The Naked Jungle (1954)
• The Conqueror (1956)
• Johnny Concho (1956)
• The Ride Back (1957)
• Zero Hour! (1957) (uncredited narrator)
• -30- (1959)
• Geronimo (1962) (uncredited narrator)
• Battle of the Bulge (1965) (uncredited narrator)
• Chisum (1970) (uncredited opening narrator)
• The Brotherhood of the Bell (1970) (TV)
• The Return of the King (1980) (voice)
• Shocktrauma (1982)

• The Ride Back (1957) (producer)
• Two on a Guillotine (1965) (producer)
• Brainstorm (1965) (director and producer)
• An American Dream (1966) (producer)
• First to Fight (1967) (producer)

• List of famous Louisvillians

• William Conrad at IMDb
• William Conrad at the TCM Movie Database
• William Conrad at the National Radio Hall of Fame
• William Conrad on Television
• Find-A-Grave profile for William Conrad

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