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Originally posted by rat2306:
He was in the old "Laredo" TV series during the late '60s also, along with Neville Brand.

Yes, that is where I first remember him from as well. He was a good guy in that one, and a formidable scrapper. RIP, big man

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Originally posted by HGWTJWH:

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Originally posted by parabellum:
I remember him from the promo for some late '70s or 'early '80s TV show. It was a clip of Smith standing in a street with a bomb wired to him and holding onto a switch, and he was saying to someone "Now, this here is what you call a dead man's switch!"

It was just a little 10 second clip during commercials but I remember it after 40 years. I wonder if I can figure out what show that was.

It was an episode of SWAT. He had been fired by a movie studio and was planting bombs on a movie set where the team had been training.

Well, welcome to you, mysterious stranger with the alphabet soup name. Are you an old geezer, or did you just research it?

October, 1975- that's a ways back, ain't it?

Smith also played a cop on the last season or two of the original (1968-80) Hawaii Five-O. But he was better at playing villains. He had the ability to naturally appear menacing in face and voice, like the character actors Danny Trejo and (you have to go back a while for this) Leo Gordon. Also like those men, he was a nice guy in real life.

He played 'Carrot' in a 1975 Robert Clouse film 'The Ultimate Warrior', (starring Yul Brynner), as the antagonist attempting to take over Max Von Sydow's territory in a post-apocalyptic New York. That's the first time I remember him in a leading movie role.

Just an old geezer with a head full of mostly useless knowledge.

I always thought William Smith was cool and played a great bad guy. He certainly was an athletic stud. RIP.

We watched Any Which Way you Can about a week or so ago, one of the channels ran both Clints Ape Movies. It was a fun movie...

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Originally posted by HRK:
We watched Any Which Way you Can about a week or so ago, one of the channels ran both Clints Ape Movies. It was a fun movie...

I was an acquantince with a co writer who worked on Eastwood's movies. Most notably he co wrote Pale Rider. I was at his house one day and he was showing me all his pictures with him and Clint on movie sets together. He had a wall full of movie posters all signed by Clint with various sentiments written on them. Then there was a movie poster of a Chuck Norris movie and I can't remember which one it was now. I asked him about it and he said the movie was written for Clint as another Dirty Harry installment but Clint turned it down and said he had done enough Dirty Harry and wanted to do something entirely different.

This is how the Any Which But Loose and Any Which Way You Can came to be. He also told me Clint loved northern Minnesota and would sneak into town to visit him once every couple years. I seized the opportunity to offer my private bbq catering service next time Clint was in town. He said he would try to make it happen as long as I promised to keep my mouth shut. Well he passed a few years back now and we never did make it happen but how cool would have that been?

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Originally posted by HGWTJWH:
Just an old geezer with a head full of mostly useless knowledge.

Well, in this case, your trivia serves a purpose- resurrecting a moment from the charismatic Mr. Smith's TV career.

I found the episode. This link is safe: https://www.crackle.com/watch/347/2460226

And, my longterm memory is pretty solid, I would say. At 44:50 of the episode, the line is "Y'see, this here is what we call a dead man's switch!"

He played great villains, yes, especially with being multilingual and good with accents, but like many of you, I first saw him as a likeable good guy in Laredo with Neville Brand, Peter Smith et al.

He had a major role in an episode of "Knight Rider" that played yesterday morning on TV.

flashguy