Heavy
Long before his face became familiar to television audiences as the obese star of the long-running cop series Cannon, and long after his voice had become familiar to radio audiences as the star of everything from The Lone Ranger and Suspense to Gunsmoke and Buck Rogers, William Conrad was a busy character actor in films, bridging his earlier and later heroic roles by playing a string of killers, corrupt city officials, gangsters, and cowardly busboys, many of them uncredited, most offering him only a few brief moments of screen time, and all of them hard to forget. His smooth corpulence, thick mustache, toadish features, and resonant voice gave him a presence that made playing heavies all but an inevitability when Conrad moved from radio to screen. It also helps explain why a radio star of his magnitude (his voice was as recognizable to the masses as Orson Welles’) would be given such small roles when he made the leap. But the former WWII fighter pilot made the most of them.
In his second screen appearance (after an uncredited role in 1945’s From Pillow to Post), , a then-26 year-old Conrad made an indelible impression on audiences with his five-minute turn as Max, one of two hired assassins gunning for Burt Lancaster’s Swede in the opening minutes of 1946’s The Killers. He’s so coolly menacing yet so cruelly funny sitting in that diner with his partner Al (Charles McGraw) ordering things that aren’t on the menu (“You’re a real bright boy, aren’t you?” he asks the increasingly confused and nervous counterman). For as brief as it was, he turned in perhaps the most singularly memorable performance in an unforgettable film.
The following year he had a larger and slightly less sinister role playing Quinn, the tough fight promoter counting on John Garfield in Body & Soul, before returning to gangster roles in Sorry, Wrong Number. In 1951 he appeared as both the sleazy, about half-legit club owner in Cry Danger and the mobbed up state inspector in The Racket.
He carried his girth well, inhabited it with a solid physicality which, combined with that voice of his, told you that he was not a man to be fucked with, nor was he a man who spent an undue amount of time contemplating the afterlife. Yet for as much as he brought to these supporting roles, the roles never seemed to get any bigger.
And maybe it’s for the best. Of all the roles Conrad played in the ‘40s and 50s, for as much onscreen menace as he could generate, he seemed to make even more of an impact playing smaller, quieter, almost invisible characters than he did as a full-fledged co-star. And knowing full well how much potential violence he could carry into a room (though we rarely saw him unleash it), seeing it fully contained, buried in a character who wasn’t a killer or a corrupt official, made his performances that much more interesting.
In the 1950 “psychopath holds a bar full of people hostage as they one by one re-evaluate their lives” drama, , for instance, Conrad plays Chuckles the bartender. Chuckles is a bitter man who’s stuck with a lousy bar (“a crumb joint,” he calls it) and an obnoxious, drunken crew of regulars (“crumbs” he calls them), who spends much of his brief screen time fiddling with and complaining about the bar’s new large screen television. He never smiles, never laughs, and as he moves from customer to customer he bluntly insults each one in turn. But as dour and misanthropic as he appears to be, he still quietly attempts to look out for each barfly’s well-being. When he’s the first to spot the escaped psycho sitting alone at the bar, he even tries to save the crumbs by making an excuse to sneak away and call the cops. Unfortunately the psycho notices what he’s up to. It’s a fascinating low-key (and brief) performance, but in those few minutes and with those few lines, he creates a much more complicated and compelling character than any of Chuckles’ regulars.
It was even a lower-key performance with fewer lines in ‘55’s Five Against the House, but Conrad nevertheless remains one of the most memorable things about the picture. AS five law students attempt to pull the perfect heist in a crowded Reno casino, Conrad, as a low-level casino employee, becomes an unwilling and integral element of the plan. As the would be thieves explain what he has to do and why he has no choice but to do it, he speaks only a small smattering of quiet lines and stands stock still. He plays the five-minute part almost entirely with his eyes, moving from confusion to hatred to fear to resignation. It’s a nothing role for what could have been an invisible character—a part that could’ve been played by a cardboard cut-out—but he makes it his own. You have to wonder why the filmmakers chose someone like Conrad for the cameo and why he accepted the offer, but I’m glad he did. Even not moving and not talking, he had a strange and fascinating charisma.
By the early ‘60s, Conrad (born John William Cann Jr.), excused himself from screen roles almost entirely, concentrating on directing and voice-over work. As a director he concentrated mostly on television, but did helm a few mid-60s features like Two on a Guillotine and Brainstorm, and his voice became an unforgettable part of everything from The Fugitive to Bullwinkle. Then in the early ‘70s he stepped in front of the cameras again, once more taking on good guy roles.
As Hollywood careers go, Conrad’s was pretty remarkable—a radio star known only for his voice goes on to become a recognizable character actor playing very different roles, then a director, then caps it all off by starring in two hit television series. He even wrote a few songs along the way. He was a remarkable and wide-ranging talent, which makes it all the sadder that he’s mostly remembered today as the butt of fat jokes. But I’ll tell you—the crumbs and the bright boys who crack those jokes never would’ve dared back in the ‘40s.
by Jim Knipfel
(Woodcut by Guy Budziak)