William Traylor

William Hurley Traylor Jr. (October 8, 1930 – September 23, 1989) was an American actor who worked in theatre, film, and television, and who co-founded the Loft Studio acting school in Los Angeles with his wife, actress Peggy Feury. He was born in Kirksville, Missouri, to Edna Mae (Singleton) and William Hurley Traylor Sr., and grew up with two sisters, Patricia and Lucille, in the nearby town of Brashear, Missouri, where their father ran an oil business and service station. Kirksville was also the birthplace of fellow Actors Studio member Geraldine Page.

Traylor arrived in New York City in his twenties to study acting and became a member of the Actors Studio, the training organization founded in 1947 by Elia Kazan, Cheryl Crawford, Robert Lewis, and Anna Sokolow, and later directed by Lee Strasberg. Between 1961 and 1968, he participated in Actors Studio recordings of scenes from dramatic literature, a body of work that has since been archived in the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections.

His Broadway career spanned 1957 to 1967. He made his debut on November 14, 1957, at the Belasco Theatre, appearing in two comedies written by and starring Noël Coward that were performed in repertory on alternating nights. In Present Laughter, Traylor played Roland Maule, and in Nude With Violin he played Clinton Preminger. The productions also featured Eva Gabor, Morris Carnovsky, Joyce Carey, and Mona Washbourne, and Traylor received positive personal notices for his work. He subsequently appeared on Broadway in The Glass Menagerie, Show Boat, and Of Love Remembered, the last of which was directed by Burgess Meredith.

In New York, Traylor also built a substantial television résumé during the medium's early decades, appearing in programs including Screen Directors Playhouse, Highway Patrol, I Led 3 Lives, The Alcoa Hour, Goodyear Playhouse, Naked City, Father Knows Best, and Flipper, among others. In 1961, he married fellow Actors Studio member Peggy Feury, and the couple eventually relocated to Los Angeles with their two children, Stephanie and Susan, both of whom became actresses. In Los Angeles, Traylor continued working in television, with credits that included Adam-12, Bracken's World, The F.B.I., McMillan & Wife, Mannix, Kung Fu, and The Execution of Private Slovik.

His film work included Cisco Pike (1972), The Towering Inferno (1974), Smile (1975), S*H*E (1980), The Long Riders (1980), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981), The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984), and Fletch (1985), in which he played Mr. Underhill.

Together, Traylor and Feury founded the Loft Studio, an acting school grounded in the principles of Stanislavski and informed by their training at the Actors Studio and the Neighborhood Playhouse. The school's students included Sean Penn, Johnny Depp, Anjelica Huston, Nicolas Cage, Michelle Pfeiffer, Ellen Burstyn, Jeff Goldblum, Lily Tomlin, Meg Tilly, Annette O'Toole, Joanna Kerns, and Callie Khouri, the screenwriter of Thelma and Louise. Traylor died of a heart attack at his home on September 23, 1989, fourteen days before his fifty-ninth birthday.