William Roerick

William Roerick was an American actor, stage manager, and writer born on December 17, 1912, in Hoboken, New Jersey. He graduated from Hamilton College in 1934 and trained at the Stockbridge Playhouse drama school in 1935. Though his career extended across film and television, Roerick remained primarily a stage performer, active on Broadway for forty-five years. He died on November 30, 1995, in an automobile accident near Tyringham or the adjacent town of Monterey, Massachusetts.

Roerick made his Broadway debut in 1935 in Romeo and Juliet alongside Katharine Cornell. The following year he appeared in both Saint Joan and the John Gielgud production of Hamlet, which also featured Lillian Gish and Judith Anderson. In 1938 he was part of the original Broadway cast of Our Town, reprising the production on tour in 1939. His subsequent Broadway appearances included The Land Is Bright, the drama Autumn Hill, the comedy The Flowers of Virtue, and This Is the Army, all in the early 1940s. He continued performing on Broadway through the following decades in productions including The Magnificent Yankee, The Great Campaign, The Heiress, The Burning Glass, The Right Honorable Gentleman, Marat/Sade, Harold Pinter's The Homecoming, We Bombed in New Haven, Waltz of the Toreadors, The Night of the Iguana, The Merchant, and Happy New Year in 1980, which marked his final Broadway role. Off-Broadway credits included Madam, Will You Walk, The Cherry Orchard, and Passage to E. M. Forster. His touring work included productions with Tallulah Bankhead in Dear Charles and Glad Tidings, as well as a touring production of Janus with Myrna Loy.

During World War II, Roerick toured Britain with This Is the Army, an Irving Berlin production raising funds for emergency relief. It was during this tour, in 1943, that he met the writer E. M. Forster. The two formed a lasting friendship, and Forster later visited Roerick at his Massachusetts property, a restored farmhouse on ninety acres in Tyringham called The Lost Farm, which lacked electricity and plumbing. Forster dedicated his final book, Two Cheers for Democracy, to Roerick and The Lost Farm. Roerick later wrote a memoir essay about their relationship titled Forster in America, published in the 1969 collection Aspects of E. M. Forster.

As a writer, Roerick collaborated extensively with fellow actor and writer Thomas Coley, who was also his partner and longtime companion. Together they wrote the family comedy The Happiest Years, produced on Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre in 1949 and featuring Peggy Wood. The play opened on April 25, 1949, and closed on April 30 after eight performances, though it subsequently found an audience through summer stock and amateur productions. Roerick and Coley also wrote the play Passage to E. M. Forster, which has been occasionally presented but remains unpublished, as well as television scripts for programs including Mama, Crime Photographer, Claudia, The Billy Rose Show, and The Kate Smith Show.

Roerick's film appearances included Roger Corman's science fiction thrillers Not of This Earth in 1957, in which he played Dr. F. W. Rochelle, and The Wasp Woman in 1959, in which he played Arthur Cooper. Additional film credits included The Harder They Fall, A Lovely Way to Die, The Sporting Club, The Love Machine, A Separate Peace, The Day of the Dolphin, 92 in the Shade, The Other Side of the Mountain, God Told Me To, and The Betsy. On television, Roerick appeared in numerous productions across several decades, including episodes of Perry Mason, Dr. Kildare, Law and Order, and the miniseries The Adams Chronicles. His most sustained television role was Henry Chamberlain on the daytime soap opera Guiding Light, a part he held from 1980 until his death in 1995. His performance earned him a nomination for the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series in 1991.

Roerick spent summers for many years at The Lost Farm in Tyringham, Massachusetts, where he hosted gatherings for the Stockbridge Playhouse company and received visits from figures including Peggy Wood, Mady Christians, Eleanor Steber, and Samuel Barber. Shirley Booth and Lynn Bari assisted in rehabilitating the property. He lived with Thomas Coley both in New York City and at The Lost Farm.