Smith was born in Columbia, Missouri. Smith began his acting career at the age of eight in 1942; the physically imposing 62 actor is a lifelong bodybuilder and has the distinction of being the final Marlboro Man before cigarette advertising was discontinued on television. Smith won the 200 pound (91 kg) arm-wrestling championship of the world multiple times and also won the United States Air Force weightlifting championship. Smith is a record holder for reverse-curling his own bodyweight. His trademark arms measured 18 and 1/2 inches. Smith held a 31-1 record as an amateur boxer and studied martial arts with kenpo instructor Ed Parker for several years. Smith also played semi-pro football in Germany and competed in motocross and downhill skiing events. He entered films as a child actor in such films as The Ghost of Frankenstein and The Song of Bernadette. Smith earned a Bachelor of Arts from Syracuse and a Masters degree in Russian Studies from UCLA. He taught Russian at UCLA before abandoning his Ph.D. studies for an MGM contract and stunt doubling for former screen Tarzan Lex Barker in a 1958 French film The Strange Awakening. He also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and the University of Munich while learning languages through the military. Smith is fluent in Russian, Serbo-Croatian, French and German. During the Korean War he was a Russian Intercept Interrogator and flew secret ferret missions over Russia. He had both CIA and NSA clearance and intended to enter a classified position with the U.S. government, but his marriage to a French actress meant the loss of security clearance[citation needed]. One of his earliest leading roles was as Joe Riley, a Texas Ranger on the NBC western series Laredo (1965–1967). Smiths character was good-natured; co-star Peter Browns character was a ladies man, and Neville Brand portrayed a relentless bumbler. In 1967, Smith guest starred on Wayne Maunders short-lived ABC military-western Custer. Smith played Jude Bohner[1] in a 1972 two-hour episode of CBSs Gunsmoke as the greatest bad-guy character actor of our time.[2] Smith was added to the cast on the final season of Jack Lords long-running CBS crime drama, Hawaii Five-O as Honolulu Police Detective James Kimo Carew who was a new officer on the Five O unit. He had also appeared much earlier as a guest star in Lords previous series about a rodeo circuit rider, Stoney Burke. Smith starred in one episode of Kung Fu, and as the Treybor, a ruthless warlord, in the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century episode Bucks Duel to the Death. Smith has also made guest appearances in the 1974 pilot for The Rockford Files, Backlash of the Hunter, I Dream of Jeannie, and two appearances - as different characters - in episodes of The A-Team (the first seasons Pros and Cons, and season fours The A-Team Is Coming, The A-Team Is Coming). In the 1976 television miniseries, Rich Man, Poor Man, Smith portrayed Anthony Falconetti, nemesis of the Jordache family. On film, Smith played Clint Eastwoods bare-knuckle nemesis Jack Wilson in Any Which Way You Can, as a drag racing legend in 1979s Fast Company, as the barbarians father in Conan the Barbarian, bad guy Matt Diggs in The Frisco Kid, as a Russian commander in Red Dawn and a vindictive sergeant in Twilights Last Gleaming. For fans of John D. MacDonalds Travis McGee novels, Smith did a turn as chief heavy Terry Bartell in Darker Than Amber, opposite Rod Taylor and Theodore Bikel, in 1970. He also played Jed Clayton in Boss Nigger (1975) a blaxploitation film from the 1970s which also starred Fred Williamson, and was seen in Francis Ford Coppolas classic 1983 films The Outsiders and Rumble Fish as a store clerk and a police officer, respectively. But, his starring roles typically had titles such as Grave of the Vampire, Invasion of the Bee Girls, and The Swinging Barmaids. Smith also played in several biker flicks including C.C. and Co., where he starred as the menacing Moon, opposite football great Joe Namath and Ann-Margret. He also starred in Nams Angels, which is briefly seen on a television in a scene in Quentin Tarantinos film Pulp Fiction. Smith played Count Dracula in The Erotic Rites of Countess Dracula.
Posted on: Wed, 06 Aug 2014 01:25:33 +0000
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