William Campbell (actor): Cell 2455 Death Row star possibly best remembered for his 2 Star Trek appearances
Perhaps best remembered for a couple of Star Trek episodes, “The Trouble with Tribbles” and “The Squire of Gothos” (doing a Liberace sendup), William Campbell was seen in more than 30 features, and nearly 50 television series and movies.
On the big screen, Campbell’s most notable role was probably as San Quentin inmate Whit Whittier, the “Lovers’ Lane Bandit,” in Fred F. Sears’ Cell 2455 Death Row (1955), a competent if uninspired prison drama based on death-row inmate Caryl Chessman’s bestselling autobiography. (Despite worldwide appeals for clemency, Chessman was sent to the gas chamber in 1960.)
Had Cell 2455 Death Row been a sleeper hit, Campbell might have become a star. (An aside: One of his romantic interests in the film, Kathryn Grant, went on to marry Bing Crosby.) As it was, he was stuck with playing leads in B movies and supporting roles in major releases.
Among the former were Abner Biberman’s “lost generation” drama Running Wild (1955), costarring Mamie Van Doren; Joe Parker’s Eighteen and Anxious (1958), in which a teenager’s life is drastically changed after she becomes pregnant; and Francis Ford Coppola’s horror-thriller Dementia 13 (1963).
In supporting roles, Campbell was seen in Escape from Fort Bravo (1953), an “A” Western starring William Holden and Eleanor Parker; William A. Wellman’s all-star (near-)disaster drama The High and the Mighty (1954), opposite John Wayne and Robert Stack; Elvis Presley’s film debut Love Me Tender (1956); and Robert Aldrich’s Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), a successful horror thriller-psychological drama mix starring Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland.
Campbell’s last feature film was Robert Hartford-Davis’ cheapo Black Gunn (1972), starring Jim Brown as the title character.
In the 1950s, Campbell was married to Judith Campbell Exner, known as one of U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s extra-marital lovers. Exner was also a close “friend” of mobster Sam Giancana. She died in 1999.
According to the Los Angeles Times obit, Campbell was born in Newark, New Jersey, on Oct. 30, 1923. Elsewhere, his year of birth is listed as 1926.
“William Campbell: Death Row, Star Trek” notes
William Campbell publicity image ca. mid-1950s.