Handsome, strapping, wavy-haired, New Jersey-born Bill Edwards started
out to be an artist but sidetracked somewhat successfully into acting
during WWII. Born on September 14, 1918, he was raised in Wyoming
country and rode on the rodeo circuit for a couple of years until a
number of broken bones forced him to rethink his life's direction. He
traveled to New York to pursue art and studied at the Art Students
League. To supplement his tuition he worked as a 6'5", 215 lb. Conover
model. A talent agent saw his pictures and encouraged him to try
acting.
Despite his complete lack of experience, Warner Brothers saw promise in
Bill's blond-haired, blue-eyed good looks and solid-oak build and
placed him under contract in 1942. For the first two years he appeared
in a number of unbilled parts as reporter and military types in such
films as
Murder in the Big House (1942),
Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942),
Escape from Crime (1942),
In die japanische Sonne (1943) and
Der Pilot und die Prinzessin (1943).
Unable to rise above these small parts, he moved to Paramount where he
earned his first featured part as Forrest Noble, the mayor's son who is
engaged to Ella Raines in the
Preston Sturges classic
Heil dem siegreichen Helden (1944).
He then went on play Diana Lynn's hunky love
interest in
Our Hearts Were Young and Gay (1944)
and its sequel
Our Hearts Were Growing Up (1946)
but couldn't do better than being billed sixth and eighth in the films
Miss Susie Slagle's (1946)
with Veronica Lake and
The Virginian (1946) with
Joel McCrea, respectively.
Freelancing by 1947, Bill found himself cast in primarily "Poverty Row"
programmers. He was billed third behind
Jane Withers and
Robert Lowery in the Pine Thomas
production Danger Street (1947) and
made use of his cowboy-raised upbringing with the westerns, again third
billed in
Home in San Antone (1949)
starring Roy Acuff,
Panorama from a Moving Train on White Pass & Yukon Railway, Alaska (1905)
starring Kirby Grant and
Border Outlaws (1950) starring
cowboy singer Spade Cooley. He received his
one and only star status in the western
The Fighting Stallion (1950)
for the Jack Schwarz Productions.
It would have seemed Bill could have continued on as a cowboy star but
his acting proved wooden and following a few more years in films and TV
guest spots ("Bonanza," "Dragnet," etc.), abandoned his career and
returned to his first joy -- art. He later became a familiar name in
California as an exhibited oil and acrylic painter of the Old West and
as an illustrator. A well-known scuba diver and instructor in the
Southern California area, he at one time owned a diving and scuba gear
shop. Bill also returned to occasional acting in the 1970s and 1980s,
notably the film
Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) and
the TV movies Pearl Harbor (1978) and
Gidget's Summer Reunion (1985).
Long married to Hazel Allen in 1946, the couple had one daughter,
Linda. They divorced in the mid 1970s after nearly 30 years of marriage
and Bill married Beryl Hunter in the ensuing years. Following their
divorce, he remarried first wife Hazel, who survived him. Bill suffered
from a disease that attacked his muscular system in his final years and
he died of pneumonia in Southern California in 1999 at age 81.
