William Smith has a great face. Rugged. Handsome. A big, strong guy, it wasn’t hard for him to be imposing. He could be that rough good guy or a nasty bad guy. And anything in between. He had quite a few movie roles and plenty of guest star spots, but not nearly enough regular/recurring roles on shows. A guy like that deserves to be seen on a regular basis.

He was Jimmy Delaney on Zero One; Joe Riley on Laredo; Falconetti in the mini series Rich Man, Poor Man and in the series Rich Man, Poor Man Book II; Brodie Hollister on Wildside; and he had a recurring role as Willie Shell on Emerald Point N.A.S.

I probably know him best as Detective James “Kimo” Carew in the last season of Hawaii Five-O. At that point, the series had undergone several cast changes over the years, the most recent being James MacArthur choosing not to return after Season 11. William Smith was brought in to help fill that void.

Mr. Smith’s first appearance is a memorable one. He’s not a local boy. He’s an ex-cop from Boston tracking a mainland gangster who may have info about who murdered his wife and child. This mainland mobster’s ties with Hawaiian mobster Tony Alika gets James Carew all tangled up with Steve and Five-O. In the end, Carew ends up joining the team and earning the nickname Kimo, which is Hawaiian for James.

Kimo stands out because he’s not local and he has a personal agenda. He shows up with more baggage than just a change of clothes, an unusual introduction for a team member on this show. It stands out. And the way he bullies Tony Alika, played by Ross Martin, stuck with me.

One of my favorite guest appearances of his is in the Season 1 episode of The A-Team called “Pros and Cons”. The episode is a favorite because of Murdock’s antics and the lengths that Hannibal, BA, and Murdock go to get arrested, but William Smith is the whole reason that the A-team get involved in the first place. Mr. Smith plays Jase Tataro, a friend of B.A.’s who’s doing time in a jail that has prisoners fight to the death for fun and profit. The winners of these fights are given a head start to escape. Jase makes it all the way back to L.A. and meets up with his little brother (who is like twenty years younger than he is; there’s some serious late baby action happening there) before he’s captured. Little brother and B.A. convince the rest of the A-Team to go in on a jailbreak.

Mr. Smith and Mr. T are believable buddies, using their brief screen time before Jase is captured to establish their friendship. The next time we see them together, they’re fighting to the death. Jase’s surprise and joy at seeing his friend in the training area quickly disappears with a simple “shhh” gesture from B.A. The actual fight pulls no punches, the two of them selling it until the rest of the team shows up to put an end to this fight club. We already know about B.A.’s toughness and we saw Jase’s in the beginning. It’s a brutal beating between friends. William Smith does a whole lot for what screen time he has.

As a guest star, he spent a lot of time on Westerns like Stoney Burke, Wagon Train, The Virginian, Daniel Boone, Death Valley Days, Alias Smith and Jones, Gunsmoke, and The Young Riders. He also turned up on plenty of cop shows like Mod Squad, Columbo, The Streets of San Francisco, S.W.A.T., The Blue Knight, Dan August, Bert D’Angelo/Superstar, CHiPs, T.J. Hooker, Ohara, Houston Knights, Due South, Hunter, Walker, Texas Ranger, and Nash Bridges.

He hung out with Raymond Burr on Perry Mason and Ironside; was intriguing on Mission: Impossible, Masquerade, and Search; privately investigated on The Rockford Files, Vega$, Matt Houston, Riptide, Simon & Simon, and Barnaby Jones; went to war on Combat! and checked in on Trapper John, MD; got a little creepy on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and Kolchak: The Nightstalker; saw some action on Knight Rider and Airwolf; hung out with Lee Majors on The Six Million Dollar Man and The Fall Guy; traveled on Movin’ On and B.J. and the Bear; did some lowkey investigating on Longstreet, Murder, She Wrote, Mr. Lucky, and Danger Bay; got a little silly on I Dream of Jeannie and took a vacation on Fantasy Island; went to the dogs on Lassie and martialed some arts on Kung Fu; made some names with Julia, Benson, and Vinnie & Bobby; dealt with caped crusaders on Batman and the General Lee on The Dukes of Hazzard; found some sci-fi fellas on Planet of the Apes, Logan’s Run, and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century; and even got a little nighttime soapy on The Yellow Rose.

Though William Smith had a certain look which might have landed him more of certain kinds of roles than others, he always brought his best, and the TV Universe is greater for it.