Adam Williams and David Niven

Adam Williams in Without Warning, 1952 Born Adam William Berg November 26, 1922 Ozone Park, Queens, New York City, U.S. Died December 4, 2006 (aged 84) Los Angeles, California, U.S. Occupation Film and television actor, flight school owner Years active 1951–1978 Spouse(s) Marilee Phelps (?–1970; 3 children) Carole Berg (1974–2006; 3 children, 4 stepchildren) Adam Williams (born Adam Berg; November 26, 1922 – December 4, 2006) was an American film and television actor. Williams was born in Wall Lake, Iowa. A veteran "bad guy" actor of 1950s film and TV, he began his career after distinguished World War II military service as a United States Navy pilot, for which he received the Navy Cross. In 1952, Williams played the lead, 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 North by Northwest (1959). An accomplished pilot, Williams also worked as an examiner for the FAA. During the 1950s and 1960s, he appeared on dozens of television series, including the syndicated 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 played the role of a sailor hitching a ride in The Twilight Zone season 1 episode "The Hitch-Hiker", where he is picked up by a terrified driver played by Inger Stevens, who is compelled to pick him up so that he may offer protection and safety to her from a mysterious hitchhiker who shows up at various times and places along the road while she travels across country. Many reviewers have cited this episode as one of The Twilight Zone's "10 Greatest" of the series. He had also appeared in the Twilight Zone episode "A Most Unusual Camera". In the ABC adventure series The Islanders, he appeared in a couple of episodes of The Rifleman and Bonanza, and in 1961 as Adam in "A Rope for Charlie Munday". 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 Williams died in Los Angeles of lymphoma in 2006 at the age of 84. His cremains are interred in California.

The next year, in the box-office hit ''Around the World in 80 Days,'' Mr. Niven's acting attracted less attention than it otherwise might have, because the cast included many other stars in cameo appearances. Reviewing ''Separate Tables,'' the 1958 screen adaptation of Terence Rattigan's play, Bosley Crowther said that, as the fraudulent major ''who turns out to be a particularly sad sort of person, David Niven starts weakly and gains strength, so that his final scene of gathering valor is one of the best in the film.'' In later years, Mr. Niven appeared in such comedies as the entertaining ''Please Don't Eat the Daisies'' (1960) and ''The Pink Panther'' (1964), which was the first of the Panther series. More Recent Films And he won warm praise from critics for his starring role in the 1966 espionage movie ''Where the Spies Are.'' Howard Thompson of The Times said that Mr. Niven gave his ''most appealing performance in several seasons'' and was ''entirely persuasive and convincing as a confused, aging but spunky novice in the cutthroat business of espionage.'' His more recent movies included ''A Man Called Intrepid'' and ''Rough Cut'' in 1979 and ''The Sea Wolves'' in 1980. Mr. Niven also worked in television, serving as host of ''The David Niven Show'' from 1959 to 1964 and starring in ''The Rogues'' in 1964 and 1965, among other activities.