William Campbell

William Campbell (October 30, 1923 – April 28, 2011) was an American actor whose career spanned Broadway, film, and television across several decades. Born in 1923, he served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, stationed on a minesweeper in the Pacific theater. His stage career preceded his work in film and television, with Broadway appearances in 1944 that included Hats Off to Ice and the musical Follow the Girls.

Campbell's screen career launched in 1950 with a minor part in The Breaking Point, a film starring John Garfield. Supporting roles followed over the next several years, among them a co-pilot in William Wellman's The High and the Mighty (1954). His first leading role came in Cell 2455 Death Row (1955), a Columbia Pictures production in which he portrayed a death row inmate whose character was loosely drawn from the real-life case of Caryl Chessman. Critics responded positively to his performance, though the film did not substantially advance his career. He returned to supporting work in Man Without a Star (1955) and Love Me Tender (1956), the latter an Elvis Presley vehicle in which Campbell became the first person to lip sync portions of a song onscreen — a recording made on August 24, 1956, by the Ken Darby Trio. He also appeared in the 1958 film adaptation of Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead. That same year, Campbell co-starred with Paul Birch in Cannonball, a television series about truck drivers that ran for 47 episodes between 1958 and 1959, with Campbell playing the character Jerry Austin.

On Perry Mason, Campbell made two guest appearances, one in 1959 and one in 1960. In the first, he played Allen Sheridan, the title character and murder victim in "The Case of the Artful Dodger." In the second, he portrayed Jim Ferris, the murderer and title character in "The Case of the Ill-Fated Faker."

In 1963, Campbell entered into a working relationship with director Roger Corman, starring in The Young Racers, an auto-racing film shot in Ireland and written by Campbell's brother, screenwriter Robert Wright Campbell. During the production, sound man Francis Ford Coppola persuaded Corman to allow him to remain in Ireland with a small crew to direct a low-budget horror film. The resulting picture, Dementia 13 (1963), was shot for approximately $40,000 and drew clear comparisons to Psycho. Campbell starred as a brooding loner who becomes the primary suspect in a series of axe murders, with Patrick Magee and Luana Anders in supporting roles. Campbell later recorded an audio commentary for the film's DVD release.

Also in 1963, Campbell starred in a second Corman-produced project, filmed in Yugoslavia under the title Operacija Ticijan, again featuring Magee. The film was never released in its original form; it was re-edited, re-dubbed, and broadcast on television as Portrait in Terror before undergoing further transformation through additional footage shot in California by Jack Hill and later Stephanie Rothman. Retitled Blood Bath — also known as Track of the Vampire — the film received a limited theatrical release in 1966. In it, Campbell played an artist who concealed the bodies of his victims inside sculptures and who also functioned as a vampire capable of moving freely in daylight. Campbell also appeared in The Secret Invasion, directed by Corman and written by his brother Robert Wright Campbell, though he was the only member of the film's central ensemble not given above-the-title screen credit. In 1965, he took a supporting role as a reporter in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte.

Campbell's television work extended across numerous series throughout the 1960s and 1970s, including guest appearances on Gunsmoke, Combat!, Bonanza, The Wild Wild West, Ironside, The Streets of San Francisco, and Police Woman, among others. He is particularly remembered for his roles in the Star Trek franchise. In the original series, he played Trelane, a mischievous super-being, in the episode "The Squire of Gothos," and portrayed Klingon Captain Koloth in "The Trouble with Tribbles," both in 1967. Approximately thirty years later, he reprised the role of Koloth in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Blood Oath" (1994). Campbell attended multiple Star Trek conventions during the 1980s and 1990s, with his final convention appearance taking place at a Creation Entertainment event at the Las Vegas Hilton in August 2006. He also voiced the character Trelane in the 1995 CD-ROM video game Star Trek: Judgment Rites.

Campbell was married twice. His first marriage, to Judith Exner in 1952, ended in divorce in 1958. He married Tereza in 1963, and they remained together until his death. Campbell died on April 28, 2011, at the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California.