The Guy Williams Centennial

Born 100 years ago today: actor Guy Williams (Armando Joseph Catalano, 1924-1989)

Our previous excuse for a post about Guy Williams was pretty much all about Lost in Space, so I thought today I’d fill out the portrait some. Williams was born and raised in Washington Heights, upper Manhattan, and his lineage was Sicilian. His grandfather was a large landowner, his father an insurance broker. Williams worked at a variety of quotidian jobs in his youth prior to hanging out his shingle as a male model in his early 20s. I guess someone told him he was good looking! His first screen role was in the movie The Beginning or the End (1947), in which he played the bombardier on the Enola Gay (that’s the plane that dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima), a fact I find interesting in light of the fact that Williams had actually worked as an airplane parts inspector during WWII.

For someone who became a very well-known TV actor, Williams has surprisingly few screen credits. Fewer than three dozen! His handful of early movie appearances includes The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Bonzo Goes to College (1952), Seven Angry Men (1955), and I was a Teenage Werewolf (1957). In 1957 he landed the part that put him on the map by becoming the star of Walt Disney’s Zorro,which he played in 82 episodes through 1961, becoming an expert rider and fencer in the bargain. From there he starred in a couple of European “Sword and Sandal” pictures, Damon and Pythias (1962) and Captain Sindbad (1963) [sic]. Next, he was hired to be the replacement for Pernell Roberts on Bonanza (1964) but lasted less than one season — the fans voted him off the show! And then finally, what is now his best remembered role, Dr. John Robinson on Lost in Space (1965-68).

And, believe it or not, that was it, for America, anyway. Jonathan Harris’s scene-stealing success on the show left a bad taste in his mouth. But he learned that he had a huge fan base in Argentina, where naturally Zorro-mania was a thing, so that it is where he chose to retire. In 1983 he did return to the States, however, to reunite with his old Lost in Space colleagues on a celebrity episode of Family Feud! He was only 65 at the time of his death in 1989.