Background
Williams was born in Wall Lake, Iowa.
Williams was born in Wall Lake, Iowa.
In 1952, Williams played the lead, a Los Angeles woman killer, in the film, Without Warning! In 1953, he was cast as Larry, a car bomber, in The Big Heat. He had a leading role in the 1958 science fiction movie The Space Children. Other notable roles include the psychiatrist in Fear Strikes Out (1957) and Valerian in North by Northwest (1959).
During the 1950s and 1960s, he appeared on dozens of television series, including the syndicated Sheriff of Cochise, set in Arizona and starring John Bromfield, and Columbia Broadcasting System"s Have Gun – Will Travel in the episode entitled, "The Reasonable Manitoba".
He portrayed private detective and murderer Jason Beckmeyer in the 1957 Perry Mason episode, "The Case of the Runaway Corpse." In 1961, he was cast as Jim Gates in the episode "Frontier Week" on Joanne Dru"s American Broadcasting Company sitcom, Guestward, Ho!, set on a dude ranch in New Mexico. In 1960 he played the role of a sailor hitching a ride in the Twilight Zone season 1 episode "The Hitch Hiker" where he is picked up by a terrified driver named "Nan" played by Inger Stevens who is compelled to pick him up so that he may offer protection and safety to her from a mysterious hitch hiker who shows up at various times and places along the road while she travels across country.
Many reviewers have cited this episode as one of the Twilight Zone"s "10 Greatest" of the series. He appeared in 1961 as Adam in "A Rope for Charlie Munday" in the American Broadcasting Company adventure series, The Islanders.
He was cast as Burley Keller in the 1961 episode "The Persecuted" of the American Broadcasting Company/Warner Brothers western series, Lawman.
He also guest starred in an episode of the 1961 National Broadcasting Company series The Americans, based on family conflicts stemming from the American Civil War, and in an episode of the 1961 American Broadcasting Company series The Asphalt Jungle. One of his last roles was in the 1976 television movie, Helter Skelter. Williams died in Los Angeles of lymphoma in 2006 at the age of eighty-four.
He is interred in California.