| William Windom | |
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Playbill: Windom Plays Thurber |
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| Born | September 28, 1923 New York City, New York, United States |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1950–present |
| Spouse | Patricia Tunder (1975-present) Jacqulyn Hopkins (1969-1974) Barbara Goetz (1963-1968) Barbara Joyce (1958-1963) Carol Keyser (1947-1955) |
William Windom (born September 28, 1923) is an American actor. He is perhaps best known for his work on television, including several episodes of The Twilight Zone; playing the character of Glen Morley, a congressman from Minnesota like his own great-grandfather and namesake in The Farmer's Daughter; the character of John Monroe on the sitcom My World and Welcome to It, for which he won an Emmy Award for Best Actor in a Comedy Series; as Commodore Matt Decker, commander of the doomed U.S.S. Constellation in the Star Trek episode "The Doomsday Machine"; the character Randy Lane in the Emmy-nominated Night Gallery episode "They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar" and perhaps that of the most common recurring character on the Emmy-winning series Murder, She Wrote, Seth Hazlitt.
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Windom was born in New York City, the son of Isobel Wells (née Peckham) and Paul Windom, an architect.[1] He is the great-grandson of the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury of the same name. He served in the U.S. Army in the European Theater of Operations in World War II, as a paratrooper with Company B, 1st Battalion 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division.[2]
Windom is a tournament chess player.
Windom's first and most famous motion picture role was as Mr. Gilmer, the prosecutor of Tom Robinson in 1962's Academy Award-winning To Kill a Mockingbird. In 1968 he also starred in The Detective with Frank Sinatra as a homophobic killer, and received great reviews from The New York Times.
In the 1969–1970 NBC-TV series My World and Welcome to It, Windom played the James Thurberesque lead and received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Comedy Series. After the show's cancellation he toured the country in a one-man show of Thurber's works.
Windom was a regular for a decade on the series Murder, She Wrote, playing the role of Seth Hazlitt. His initial appearance in the role was in October 1985. (He had previously appeared as a guest star playing another character in April 1985.) The producers enjoyed his work, and consequently invited him to return at the beginning of the second season to take on the role permanently. He briefly left the show to work on another series in 1990, but the show was short lived and he returned to Murder, She Wrote as a semi-regular for the remainder of the series' run.
Although Windom has made guest appearances on many TV shows during his long career, his best known performance has probably been on Star Trek as Commodore Matt Decker in the season 2 episode "The Doomsday Machine", a role he reprised in the Star Trek: New Voyages episode "In Harm's Way".
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