- Born
- Died
- Birth nameWilliam Henry Redfield
- Height5′ 9¾″ (1.77 m)
- Manhattan-born thespian William Redfield was influenced early on into
an acting career as the son of an orchestra conductor and a former
Ziegfeld Follies girl. Born on January 26, 1927, young "Billy Redfield"
made his Broadway debut in "Swing Your Lady" in 1936 at the age of 9.
Within a few years, the young boy was also heard on radio and appeared
in his first movie, the crime drama
Back Door to Heaven (1939).
As a juvenile, he continued on Broadway with such productions as "Our
Town" (1938) and "Junior Miss" (1941). In subsequent years, Redfield
would become one of the original founders of the famed Actor's Studio.
Gainfully employed on stage and TV throughout the 50s, he starred in a
short-lived series as
Jimmy Hughes, Rookie Cop (1953)
(which appeared on the early Dumont Network) in 1953 and followed it up
the next year with the one-season show
The Marriage (1954), which has
the distinction of being the first live network series to be regularly
broadcast in color. An exceptionally talented writer and speaker, he
co-created the
Mister Peepers (1952) sitcom
in the 50s, wrote the theater play "A View with Alarm" and later
published his memoir, "Letters From an Actor", which recalled his
experiences playing Guildenstern in the 1964 theater production of
"Hamlet" starring Richard Burton
and directed by John Gielgud. Other
Broadway fare included "Misalliance" (1953), "Midgie Purvis" (1961)
which starred Tallulah Bankhead, and
"A Man for All Seasons" (1961) with
Paul Scofield. In 1968, he
replaced George Grizzard in the popular
"You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running".
Redfield also stretched his visibility with audiences as a highly
candid, warmly-received raconteur on the talk show circuit. He
certainly didn't mince words as he described the ups and downs of the
acting profession. It wasn't until the late 60s that Redfield started
making a dent in film with roles in such popular screen fare as
Morituri (1965),
Fantastic Voyage (1966),
A New Leaf (1971),
Such Good Friends (1971),
The Hot Rock (1972), and
For Pete's Sake (1974), usually
playing intense, unsympathetic parts.
Redfield finally hit the big time in the third-billed role of
"Harding", the tense, logical, but high-strung mental patient opposite
Jack Nicholson's "Randall
McMurphy" in the Oscar-winning
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975).
What should have been the start of an enviable film support career and
making a name for himself turned out to be nearly his swan song.
Redfield died of leukemia the following year at the age of 49. His son,
Adam Redfield, also
became an actor on stage and TV.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
- SpousesLynda Helen Bright(February 26, 1971 - August 17, 1976) (his death)Betsy Meade(1957 - ?) (divorced, 2 children)
- Children
- Stubborn and Opinionated Intellectual Types
- During the filming of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), fellow actor and real-life
psychiatrist Dean R. Brooks diagnosed Redfield with leukemia (this was
long before the days of bone marrow transplants) and gave him 18
months to live. Redfield died 18 months later, pretty much to the
day. - Redfield wrote a memoir of the 1964 stage production of
Hamlet (1964) directed by John Gielgud and starring
Richard Burton that was captured on film. In "Letters from
an Actor" (1967, Viking Press), Redfield -- who played Guildenstern --
said that his friend Marlon Brando had been considered the Great
White Hope by his generation of American actors. That is, they believed
that Brando's more naturalistic style, combined with his greatness as
an actor, would prove a challenge to the more stylized and technical
English acting paradigm epitomized by Laurence Olivier, and that
Brando would supplant Olivier as the world's greatest actor. Redfield
would tell Burton stories of Brando, whom the Welsh actor had not yet
met. Refield sadly confessed that Brando, by not taking on roles such
as Hamlet, and "betraying" his craft by abandoning the
stage, thus allowing his instrument to be dulled by film work), had
failed not only as an actor, but had failed to help American actors
create an acting tradition that would rival the English in terms of
expertise. - Friend of Marlon Brando, although Redfield's caustic (and snobbish) remarks about Brando's film career put a considerable strain on the friendship.
- Father of actor Adam Redfield.
- He starred in 83 episodes of the "CBS Radio Mystery Theater," which ran on CBS Radio from January of 1974 to December of 1982.
- Let's face it. Movies are the swellest way to make money that ever happened in the history of the world.
- [on Marlon Brando]: Brando, as a young actor, seemed bounded by no borders at all.
- Acting is the most mortal of the arts. Like perishable foods, it must be taken fresh or not at all.
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