{"id":30147,"date":"2026-07-01T11:04:31","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T11:04:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/?p=30147"},"modified":"2026-07-01T11:04:31","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T11:04:31","slug":"beloved-dallas-actor-dies-at-98","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/?p=30147","title":{"rendered":"Beloved \u2018Dallas\u2019 Actor Dies at 98"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"PDq2pG_selectionAnchorContainer\" data-start=\"14\" data-end=\"277\">Veteran actor <span class=\"hover:entity-accent entity-underline inline cursor-pointer align-baseline\"><span class=\"whitespace-normal\">William Smithers<\/span><\/span> has died at the age of 98, according to reports from the Santa Barbara Independent. Born in 1927 in Richmond, Virginia, he served in the U.S. military before building a long acting career in television and film.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"279\" data-end=\"605\">Smithers became widely recognized for roles in shows like <em data-start=\"337\" data-end=\"356\">The Twilight Zone<\/em>, <em data-start=\"358\" data-end=\"371\">Perry Mason<\/em>, <em data-start=\"373\" data-end=\"383\">Gunsmoke<\/em>, <em data-start=\"385\" data-end=\"398\">The Waltons<\/em>, and <em data-start=\"404\" data-end=\"414\">L.A. Law<\/em>, as well as films such as <em data-start=\"441\" data-end=\"464\">The Last Picture Show<\/em> and <em data-start=\"469\" data-end=\"479\">Papillon<\/em>. His most famous role came in the CBS drama <em data-start=\"524\" data-end=\"532\">Dallas<\/em>, where he played oil tycoon Jeremy Wendell, a major rival to J.R. Ewing.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"607\" data-end=\"879\">Beyond acting, he was involved in a landmark legal battle against MGM over contract disputes, which he ultimately won in court\u2014a case later studied in entertainment law. Smithers also served on the Screen Actors Guild board and remained active in the industry for decades.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"607\" data-end=\"879\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ZfF-SQdwY7E?si=0b9k7fPaFjKIE4gS\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Veteran actor William Smithers has died at the age of 98, according to reports from the Santa Barbara Independent. Born in 1927 in Richmond, Virginia, he served in the U.S. military before building a long acting career in television and film. Smithers became widely recognized for roles in shows like The Twilight Zone, Perry Mason,&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-wrap\"><a href=\"https:\/\/albotips.com\/?p=30147\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;Beloved \u2018Dallas\u2019 Actor Dies at 98&rdquo;<\/span> &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30148,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30147"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30149,"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30147\/revisions\/30149"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}