John McLiam

John McLiam (born John Williams; January 24, 1918 – April 16, 1994) was a Canadian actor and playwright born in Alberta, Canada, who built a career spanning stage, film, and television across five decades. He adopted McLiam — the Gaelic equivalent of his birth surname Williams — as a professional stage name. Educated at St. Mary's College of California in Moraga, he served in the United States Navy as an intelligence officer during World War II and was awarded the Bronze Star. Following the war, he worked briefly as a journalist at the San Francisco Examiner before turning to acting.

McLiam's stage career began in 1946 with Maxwell Anderson's Winterset in San Francisco. After several California productions, he relocated to New York, making his Broadway debut in 1951 as a guard in Anderson's Barefoot in Athens. His Broadway work continued through the decade with the comedy The Sin of Pat Muldoon, the plays One More River and Desire Under the Elms, and the drama Tiger at the Gates, Christopher Fry's adaptation of a Jean Giraudoux play, which ran on Broadway from 1959 to 1960. He also appeared in the original Broadway cast of One More River in 1960. His stage work extended beyond Broadway to include Shaw's Saint Joan.

In addition to performing, McLiam wrote for the stage. His play The Sin of Pat Muldoon, centered on a Roman Catholic family, ran for five performances at the Cort Theatre on Broadway from March 13 to 16, 1957. The central character — a father who renounces his faith after his son's death, spends his savings on partying and loose women, suffers a heart attack, and dies unrepentant despite partial attempts at reconciliation — was played in that production by James Barton. Maxwell Anderson, asked to consider producing the script, dismissed it as well-worn territory in the tradition of Seán O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock.

In 1960, McLiam moved to California to pursue film and television work. His film credits include a cockney role in My Fair Lady (1964), the part of murder victim Herbert Clutter in In Cold Blood (1967), Boss Kean in Cool Hand Luke (1967), a role in Woody Allen's Sleeper (1973), rancher David Braxton in The Missouri Breaks (1976), and Orval in First Blood (1982). He played Jimmy Tomorrow in John Frankenheimer's American Film Theater production of The Iceman Cometh (1973), appearing alongside Fredric March, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, and Jeff Bridges. McLiam was also noted for his facility with accents, a skill evident across his varied screen roles.

His television career was extensive. He portrayed Ulysses S. Grant in the 1979 miniseries Freedom Road and played Doc Holliday in the pilot of Bret Maverick. He appeared in multiple episodes of both The Virginian and Gunsmoke, guest starred opposite Michael Landon in a 1970 episode of Bonanza, three episodes of Little House on the Prairie between 1977 and 1983, and two episodes of Highway to Heaven. He played the lead character's father in T.J. Hooker and appeared as Elsworth Chisolm in two 1989 episodes of Dynasty, having previously played a different character on the same series five years earlier. In 1980, he portrayed retired attorney Nathan Moore in an episode during The Waltons' final season. His guest appearances spanned dozens of additional series, among them The Twilight Zone, M*A*S*H, Perry Mason, Mannix, Magnum P.I., Murder She Wrote, and The A-Team. He also played John of Gaunt in a 1982 filmed version of Shakespeare's Richard II directed by William Woodman.

McLiam and his wife Roberta had a daughter, Claire. He died on April 16, 1994, in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, from melanoma and Parkinson's disease, and was interred at Santa Barbara Cemetery in Santa Barbara, California.