John McLiam
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John McLiam (born John Williams; January 24, 1918 – April 16, 1994) was a Canadian actor noted for his skill at different accents. His film appearances include My Fair Lady (1964), In Cold Blood (1967), John Frankenheimer's movie of The Iceman Cometh (1973), The Missouri Breaks (1976), and First Blood (1982). He was a guest star in numerous television series and wrote a Broadway play, The Sin of Pat Muldoon.
Early life
He attended St. Mary's College of California (Moraga, California). During World War II he served in the United States Navy as an intelligence officer, having received a Bronze Star. After the war he worked briefly as a journalist for the San Francisco Examiner.
He took McLiam, the Gaelic form of his real surname Williams, as a stage name.
Acting career
His acting career began in Maxwell Anderson's Winterset in San Francisco in 1946. After a few roles in plays in California he moved to New York. His first Broadway role was as a guard in Maxwell Anderson's Barefoot in Athens in 1951. His other stage roles include Shaw's Saint Joan, and Tiger at the Gates, Christopher Fry's version of a Jean Giraudoux play, which ran 1959–60 on Broadway. He appeared in the original Broadway cast of One More River (1960).
He moved to California in 1960 to work in film and television. His film roles included a cockney ne'er-do-well in My Fair Lady (1964), Boss Kean in Cool Hand Luke (1967), In Cold Blood (1967) as murder victim Herbert Clutter, John acted as the pilot/flight instructor for Aunt Bee in Season 8 of The Andy Griffith Show, "Aunt Bee's Big Moment" Halls of Anger (1970), Woody Allen's Sleeper (1973), rancher David Braxton in The Missouri Breaks (1976), and Orval in First Blood (1982). He played Jimmy Tomorrow in John Frankenheimer's American Film Theater movie of The Iceman Cometh (1973), alongside Fredric March, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan and Jeff Bridges.
Personal life
McLiam and his wife Roberta had a daughter, Claire. He died in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California in 1994 from melanoma and Parkinson's disease. McLiam was interred at the Santa Barbara Cemetery at Santa Barbara, California. CLR
| Known For | Acting |
|---|---|
| Most Rating | 1.0548 |
| Birthday | 1918-01-24 |
| Place of Birth | Alberta, Canada |
| Also Known As |
1982
First Blood
7.519/7079
When former Green Beret John Rambo is harassed by local law enforcement and arrested for vagrancy, he is forced to flee into the mountains and wage an...
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First Blood
1983
Dempsey
6.25/4
Nominated for two primetime Emmy Awards in 1984, this made-for-TV movie follows the true story of American boxer Jack Dempsey, who became a media sens...
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Dempsey
1973
The Iceman Cometh
6.061/33
Set in 1912, inside a dive bar named The Last Chance Saloon, its destitute patrons eagerly await the arrival of Hickey, who arrives annually and props...
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The Iceman Cometh
1976
The Food of the Gods
4.969/128
Morgan and his friends are on a hunting trip on a remote Canadian island when they are attacked by a swarm of giant wasps. Looking for help, Morgan st...
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The Food of the Gods
1976
The Missouri Breaks
6.508/255
When vigilante land baron David Braxton hangs one of the best friends of cattle rustler Tom Logan, Logan's gang decides to get even by purchasing a sm...
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The Missouri Breaks
1970
Monte Walsh
6.3/67
Monte Walsh is an aging cowboy facing the ending days of the Wild West era. As barbed wire and railways steadily eliminate the need for the cowboy, Mo...
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Monte Walsh
1971
Big Jake
6.8/252
An aging Texas cattle man who has outlived his time swings into action when outlaws kidnap his grandson.
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Big Jake
1970
Halls of Anger
5.25/8
An all-black inner city school has to become an integrated school. Few dozen white kids are transfered there, but the black students are aggressively...
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Halls of Anger
1988
Split Decisions
5.056/27
When a boxer is killed because he wouldn't take a dive, his brother tries to find a way to avenge him even if only symbolically.
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Split Decisions
1968
Madigan
6.2/91
NYPD detectives Bonaro and Madigan lose their guns to fugitive Barney Benesch. As compensation, they are given a weekend to bring Benesch to justice....
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Madigan
1961
Dead to the World
7.5/2
A State Department employee, who is suspected of murdering a high government official, sets out to hunt down the real killer.
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Dead to the World
1970
R.P.M.
5.9/11
R.P.M. stands for (political) revolutions per minute. Anthony Quinn plays a liberal college professor at a west coast college during the hedy days of...
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R.P.M.
1981
The End of August
7/1
In the turn of the century South, a woman feels unfulfilled by marriage and motherhood and has an affair with a younger man. Later, the woman leaves h...
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The End of August
1977
The Return of the Incredible Hulk
6.1/27
Continuing his solitary flight, David Banner arrives in a small town where he saves the life of a young heiress, the target of a deadly conspiracy orc...
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The Return of the Incredible Hulk
1973
A Chant of Silence
0/0
A murdering skyjacker parachutes to safety and poses as a novice monk in an isolated New Mexico monastery.
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A Chant of Silence
1987
Walk Like a Man
4.732/28
Bobo, a feral man raised by wolves, is reunited with his family by a researcher. However, this disappoints his brother, Reggie, who has no intentions...
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Walk Like a Man
1987
J. Edgar Hoover
0/0
He battled the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, encouraged McCarthy and single-handedly changed the course of history. Hired by F.D.R. to be the direc...
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J. Edgar Hoover
1964
My Fair Lady
7.48/1466
A snobbish phonetics professor agrees to a wager that he can take a flower girl and make her presentable in high society.
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My Fair Lady
1982
The Ambush Murders
8/2
An African-American political activist is wrongfully imprisoned for killing two white policemen; he is unwary of yet another white lawyer who claims t...
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The Ambush Murders
1975
Lucky Lady
5.611/18
When an American booze smuggler gets murdered in Prohibition-era Mexico, his widow, a nightclub singer, joins forces with her lover and a desperate lo...
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Lucky Lady
1967
In Cold Blood
7.521/449
After a botched robbery results in the brutal murder of a rural family, two drifters elude police, in the end coming to terms with their own mortality...
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In Cold Blood
1974
The Dove
6.7/11
16-year-old Robin Lee Graham aims to become the youngest person to sail around the world in a 23-foot sloop named "The Dove". On his journey, he meets...
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The Dove
1967
Cool Hand Luke
7.733/1671
When petty criminal Luke Jackson is sentenced to two years in a Florida prison farm, he doesn't play by the rules of either the sadistic warden or the...
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Cool Hand Luke
1972
The Culpepper Cattle Co.
6.392/51
Working as an assistant on a long cattle drive, the young Ben Mockridge contends between his dream of being a cowboy and the harsh truth of the Old We...
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The Culpepper Cattle Co.
1979
Freedom Road
5.167/9
Ex-slave and former Union soldier Gideon Jackson represents other ex-slaves at the constitutional convention, and is soon elected to the U.S. Senate d...
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Freedom Road
1980
Farewell to the Planet of the Apes
6.3/17
When the astronauts Burke and Virdon, with their chimp companion Galen, are captured in a fishing village that employs human slave labor, they must pr...
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Farewell to the Planet of the Apes
1973
Legend in Granite
8/1
Follows Vince Lombardi's football career from one of Fordham University's legendary "Seven Blocks of Granite" to one of American football's greatest p...
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Legend in Granite
1973
Showdown
6.125/32
Two men who have been friends since childhood find themselves on opposite ends of the law.
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Showdown
1981
The Five of Me
9.3/3
Henry Hawksworth is a man menaced by a multiple personality. There is Dana, the conservative family man; Johnny, violent and sociopathic; Peter, creat...
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The Five of Me
1968
Riverrun
5.75/4
A young unmarried couple leave the politically turbulent Berkeley behind for a life in the country. Finding a place in sheep country, the couple await...
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Riverrun
1984
Voyager from the Unknown
4.75/4
It is 1984. Jeffrey Jones is an 11-year-old orphan entrusted to his uncle and aunt. One evening, Phineas Bogg crashes through his bedroom window. As t...
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Voyager from the Unknown
1973
Sleeper
6.855/860
Miles Monroe, a clarinet-playing health food store proprietor, is revived out of cryostasis 200 years into a future world in order to help rebels figh...
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Sleeper
1979
Shadow of Fear
0/0
A boy turns to his pets after his father dies, and on a visit to his great-uncle in the Amish country, he learns their legends and superstitions. He s...
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Shadow of Fear
1968
Gallegher: The Mystery of Edward Sims
9/2
The cub reporter, Gallegher, becomes involved in a land fraud, when some valueless land is sold to a group of Cornish immigrants. A murder implicates...
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Gallegher: The Mystery of Edward Sims
1990
Fall From Grace
6.5/4
Jim Bakker establishes a large televangelical empire in the 1980s, including Heritage Village. However, they are removed from P.T.L, the ministry that...
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Fall From Grace
1969
The Reivers
6.44/58
In turn-of-the-century Mississippi, an 11-year-old boy comes of age as two mischievous adult friends talk him into sneaking the family car out for a t...
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The Reivers
1973
Runaway!
5.667/12
A group of skiers are trapped inside a runaway train hurtling down a mountainside.
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Runaway!
1977
Delta County, USA
10/1
Delta County is a staid Southern community caught between the old traditions and a rapidly changing way of life. For teenagers Terry Nicholas, his sis...
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Delta County, USA
1971
If Tomorrow Comes
7.5/2
In California, a young Caucasian girl and a Japanese-American boy defy local prejudices and secretly marry on Dec. 7, 1941, minutes before Pearl Harbo...
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If Tomorrow Comes
1975
Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins
6.3/11
Hapless driving instructor and former Gunnery Sergeant Rafferty, living in squalor near Hollywood, California, doesn't put up too much of a fight when...
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Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins
1979
The Legend of the Golden Gun
7/3
In Kansas during the middle of the Civil War, John Golden is left for dead and his family has been killed by the ruthless Confederate outlaw William Q...
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The Legend of the Golden Gun
1975
Bite the Bullet
6.431/137
At the beginning of the 20th century, a newspaper organizes an endurance horse race : 700 miles to run in a few days. 9 adventurers are competing, amo...
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Bite the Bullet
1981
Mistress of Paradise
7.5/2
In the 19th century, a wealthy Northern woman marries a Louisiana plantation owner and then becomes suspicious about his first wife's death.
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Mistress of Paradise
1973
Hitched
7.333/3
The adventures of a newly married teenage couple in the Old West.
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Hitched
1976
The Call of the Wild
6.5/4
A prospector, a trapper and their sled dog battle the Klondike elements on their journey to get to the gold country.
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The Call of the Wild
1975
The Secret of the Pond
0/0
A spoiled city youngster learns the hard way that there may be some truth to the legend of a mysterious man roaming the backwaters of Virginia.
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The Secret of the Pond
1982
Richard II
9/1
The incompetent Richard II is deposed by Henry Bolingbroke and undergoes a crisis of identity once he is no longer king.
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