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Steven Loomis, IC3
to remember
McLiam, John (born John Williams), LT.
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Contact Info
Home Town Alberta, Canada
Last Address Interred at Woodland Hills, Los Angeles. Woodland Hills is a neighborhood bordering the Santa Monica Mountains in the San Fernando Valley region of the city of Los Angeles, California.
Date of Passing Apr 16, 1994
Location of Interment Woodland Memorial Cemetery - Woodland, California
John McLiam (born John Williams in Alberta, Canada; January 24, 1918 – April 16, 1994) was a character actor noted for his extensive work on film and television, and renowned for his skill at different accents. His film appearances included In Cold Blood, My Fair Lady, The Missouri Breaks, First Blood, and John Frankenheimer's movie of The Iceman Cometh. He was a guest star in numerous television series and wrote a Broadway play, The Sin of Pat Muldoon.
He attended St. Mary's College of California (Moraga, California). During World War II 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.
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).
His play The Sin of Pat Muldoon, about a Roman Catholic family, ran for five performances from March 13 to 16, 1957 at the Cort Theatre on Broadway. The central character, played in that production by James Barton, is a father who renounces his faith following the death of his son and spends his savings on partying and loose women before having a heart attack. Though he attempts to resolve some of his family's problems, he dies unrepentant. Playwright and producer Maxwell Anderson, given the script to consider producing it, condemned the play as lying on well-trampled ground following Seán O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock, declaring, "I've grown weary of the whole subject. An ancient, irritable, blasphemous, dying but loveable Irishman says his last ten thousand words and goes to his own place. The hell with him."
