The Life of Adam Williams. Hollywood Charactor Actor

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Adam Williams. 1922-2006.

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Blog Created: 10-24-2025

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Life and career ~

Williams was born Adam William Berg in Wall Lake, Iowa, and likely raised in New York. A veteran "bad guy" actor of 1950s film and TV, he began his career after a distinguished World War II military service as a United States Navy pilot, for which he received the Navy Cross. Berg was commended for his valor while operating a dive bomber off the USS Wasp in June 1944, in which he attacked a Japanese fleet oiler in the East Philippine Sea, and ditched upon his return without suffering casualties to his crew. An accomplished pilot, Williams also served the general aviation community as a fixed wing Designated Pilot Examiner (DPE) for the FAA.

In 1952, Williams played the lead, as 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 film roles include the psychiatrist in Fear Strikes Out (1957) and Valerian in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959).

1952.

During the 1950s and 1960s, he appeared on dozens of television series, including the syndicated The Sheriff of Cochise, set in Arizona and starring John Bromfield, and Have Gun – Will Travel in the episode "The Reasonable Man". 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 sitcom Guestward, Ho!, set on a dude ranch in New Mexico. In 1960, he appeared in the The Twilight Zone season 1 episode "The Hitch-Hiker", starring Inger Stevens. He also appeared in the Twilight Zone episode "A Most Unusual Camera".

Adam with Inger Stevens.

Between 1959 and 1967 he appeared in six episodes of The Rifleman and in four episodes of Bonanza, and in 1961 as Adam in "A Rope for Charlie Munday", in the ABC adventure series The Islanders. He was cast as Burley Keller in the 1961 episode "The Persecuted" of the ABC/Warner Brothers western series Lawman. He guest-starred in an episode of the 1961 NBC series The Americans, based on family conflicts stemming from the American Civil War, and in an episode of the 1961 series The Asphalt Jungle. One of his later roles was in the 1976 television movie Helter Skelter.

Death ~

On December 4, 2006, Williams died in Los Angeles of lymphoma at the age of 84. He was cremated.

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(THE BIG HEAT) USA, 1953, Regie: Fritz Lang, GLORIA GRAHAME, ALEXANDER SCOURBY, LEE MARVIN. (Photo by FilmPublicityArchive/United Archives via Getty Images).