Adam Williams (born Adam William Berg; November 26, 1922 – December 4, 2006) was an American film and television actor.
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Early life
Williams was born Adam William Berg in Wall Lake, Iowa, and likely raised in New York.
Career
A veteran "bad guy" actor of 1950s film and TV, Williams began his career after 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).
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 Twilight Zone season 1 episode "The Hitch-Hiker", starring Inger Stevens.
