William Challee

William John Challee (April 6, 1904 – March 11, 1989) was an American actor born in Chicago, Illinois, who attended Lake View High School. His Broadway career spanned from 1926 to 1942 and included productions such as The Inspector General, Wonder Boy, Case of Clyde Griffiths, Waiting for Lefty, and First Stop to Heaven. By 1931, he had become involved in early Group Theatre productions.

On August 2, 1931, Challee married actress Ruth Nelson; the marriage ended in divorce on August 13, 1937. Despite the dissolution of their marriage, the two shared the screen together in the 1947 film The Sea of Grass, each appearing in supporting roles. In 1937, Challee took on a directing role, staging a suite of four Eugene O'Neill one-act plays — Bound East for Cardiff, In the Zone, The Long Voyage Home, and Moon of the Caribbees — at the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem under the collective title Plays of the Sea. Produced by the Federal Theatre Project of the Works Progress Administration, the suite ran for 68 performances beginning October 29, 1937.

By 1940, Challee had returned to Chicago. He later relocated to California, where from the mid-1940s onward he worked primarily in film, taking on supporting and uncredited roles. On April 19, 1944, he married dancer Ella Franklin Crawford in Santa Monica. He went on to appear in the 1970 film Five Easy Pieces, playing the incapacitated family patriarch whose illness draws his son, played by Jack Nicholson, back to the family estate.

Challee also built a substantial television career, appearing in episodes of numerous series. These included a 1953 episode of The Lone Ranger, a 1957 episode of Perry Mason, and a 1960 appearance as Saunders on Laramie. In 1961, he appeared as Eli in the series finale of The Investigators and in the Bat Masterson episode "Meeting at the Mimbres." In 1962, he appeared uncredited as a prisoner in The Virginian and played Feist, a crazed pioneer who attempts to kill Marshal Dillon, in the Gunsmoke episode "The Gallows."

In 1960, Challee and his long-time partner Joan Wheeler Ankrum opened the Ankrum Gallery on La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles. The two married in 1984. Challee died on March 11, 1989, and was buried at Alta Mesa Memorial Park in Palo Alto.