William Bakewell

Acting

William Bakewell

Born 1908-05-02 · Los Angeles, California, USA

William Bakewell (May 2, 1908 – April 15, 1993), also known as Billy Bakewell, was an American actor, who achieved his greatest fame as one of the premiere juvenile performers of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Bakewell, educated at Los Angeles Harvard Military School, began his film career as an extra in the silent movie Fighting Blood (1924), and went on to appear in some 170 films and television shows. He had supporting roles at the end of the silent era and reached the peak of his career around 1930. He is perhaps best remembered for playing German soldier Albert Kropp in the film classic All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), and Rodney Jordan, Joan Crawford's brother, in Dance, Fools, Dance (1931). He also co-starred in Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929) with Winnie Lightner and Lilyan Tashman. In 1933, he contributed to the founding of the Screen Actors Guild, and was member 44 of the original 50. He never achieved stardom after the Depression years, although he became familiar in dozens of films, including his short appearance as a mounted soldier in Gone with the Wind (1939) whom Scarlett O'Hara asks when the Yankee soldiers are coming to Atlanta. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army with the rank of second lieutenant. He was stationed at the 73rd Evacuation Hospital and at the Radio Section of the Special Service Division as the Post Intelligence Officer. He also worked under the department that handled distribution of recorded programs to overseas station circuits. He starred in the Columbia Pictures serial Hop Harrigan (1946), where he played a top Air Corps pilot. He also portrayed Major Tobias Norton and a Keelboat Race Master of Ceremonies in the phenomenally popular Disney series Davy Crockett (1954-1955). In the 1960s, he guest starred in numerous situation comedy television series, including Guestward, Ho!, Pete and Gladys, Bringing Up Buddy, The Tab Hunter Show, Mister Ed, Leave It to Beaver, The Jack Benny Program, Petticoat Junction , and Hazel. He also was cast in episodes of Peter Gunn, Sea Hunt, Wagon Train, The Roaring 20s, The Virginian, Arrest and Trial, and 87th Precinct He played the Virginia statesman George Wythe in the episode "George Mason" in the 1965 NBC documentary series, Profiles in Courage. He made his last film in 1975. For four decades, Bakewell served on the board of Motion Picture and Television Fund. He died on April 15, 1993 of leukemia at the age of 84.

Acting credits

Gone with the Wind poster
7.9

The spoiled daughter of a Georgia plantation owner conducts a tumultuous romance with a cynical profiteer during the American Civil War and Reconstruction Era.

Gone with the Wind

1939

All Quiet on the Western Front poster
7.8

When a group of idealistic young men join the German Army during the Great War, they are assigned to the Western Front, where their patriotism is destroyed by the harsh realities of combat.

All Quiet on the Western Front

1930

Romance on the High Seas poster
6.7

Georgia Garrett is sent by jealous wife Elvira Kent on an ocean cruise to masquerade as herself while she secretly stays home to catch her husband cheating. Meanwhile equally suspicious husband Michael Kent has sent a private eye on the same cruise to catch his wife cheating. Love and confusion ensues along with plenty of musical numbers.

Romance on the High Seas

1948

The Iron Mask poster
6.7

King Louis XIII of France is thrilled to have born to him a son - an heir to the throne. But when the queen delivers a twin, Cardinal Richelieu sees the second son as a potential for revolution, and has him sent off to Spain to be raised in secret to ensure a peaceful future for France. Alas, keeping the secret means sending Constance, lover of D'Artagnan, off to a convent. D'Artagnan hears of this and rallies the Musketeers in a bid to rescue her. Unfortunately, Richelieu out-smarts the Musketeers and banishes them forever.

The Iron Mask

1929

The Strongest Man in the World poster
6.2

Medfield College science major Dexter Riley and his classmates have been working on a new vitamin compound when a lab accident creates a supercharged mix that ends up in Dexter's cereal box, giving him superhuman strength. The powerful formula comes to the attention of the college dean and two rival cereal companies, touching off a hilarious chain of events.

The Strongest Man in the World

1975

Zenobia poster
5.0

A modest country doctor in the antebellum South has to contend with his daughter's upcoming marriage and an affectionate medicine show elephant.

Zenobia

1939

Straightaway poster
8.0

Auto race champ Tim Dawson and his brother Billy are fired by boss Turnberg when they won't throw an important race to his son Carl. Pop Reeves, a competitor, finds that Turnberg had bribed his top man, Rogan, to lose, and fires him, and hires the Dawsons. His daughter Ann falls for Tim, yet it's Billy that wants her and proposes to her. She says no and declares herself to Tim. At the next big race, Rogan tries to cause Billy to smash, but he does instead, then accuses Tim of being responsible before dying. A police detective decides that Tim had done it so his brother could win, and leaves him one option, his brother must lose the upcoming Indy 500 or he'll know Tim's guilty.

Straightaway

1933

The Show of Shows poster
6.6

Now hear this. The studio that gave the cinema its voice offered 1929 audiences a chance to see and hear multiple silent-screen favorites for the first time in a gaudy, grandiose music-comedy-novelty revue that also included Talkie stars, Broadway luminaries and of course, Rin-Tin-Tin. Frank Fay hosts a jamboree that, among its 70+ stars, features bicyclers, boxing champ Georges Carpentier, chorines in terpsichore kickery, sister acts, Myrna Loy in two-strip Technicolor as an exotic Far East beauty, John Barrymore in a Shakespearean soliloquy (adding an on-screen voice to his legendary profile for the first time) and Winnie Lightner famously warbling the joys of Singing in the Bathtub. Watch, rinse, repeat!

The Show of Shows

1929

The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer poster
6.9

Teenager Susan Turner, with a severe crush on playboy artist Richard Nugent, sneaks into his apartment to model for him and is found there by her sister Judge Margaret Turner. Threatened with jail, Nugent agrees to date Susan until the crush abates.

The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer

1947

Dance, Fools, Dance poster
6.5

When misfortune hits hard on the Jordan family of Chicago's upper class, Bonnie Jordan, a dazzling and witty girl, finds a job as an aspiring reporter; however, her naive younger brother Rodney takes a twisted path and gets involved with the wrong people.

Dance, Fools, Dance

1931

Quality Street poster
5.8

In the 1810s, an old maid poses as her own niece in order to teach her onetime beau a lesson.

Quality Street

1937

Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier poster
6.4

Legends (and myths) from the life of famed American frontiersman Davy Crockett are depicted in this feature film edited from television episodes. Crockett and his friend George Russel fight in the Creek Indian War. Then Crockett is elected to Congress and brings his rough-hewn ways to the House of Representatives. Finally, Crockett and Russell journey to Texas and the last stand at the Alamo.

Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier

1955

Daybreak poster
4.3

An Austrian soldier must choose between a wealthy fiancee and a new girl who takes his fancy.

Daybreak

1931

Davy Crockett and the River Pirates poster
6.3

Davy Crockett and his sidekick Georgie compete against boastful Mike Fink ("King of the River") in a boat race to New Orleans. Later, Davy and Georgie, allied with Fink, battle a group of river pirates trying to pass themselves off as Native Americans.

Davy Crockett and the River Pirates

1956

The Farmer's Daughter poster
7.1

After leaving her family's farm to study nursing in the city, a young woman finds herself on an unexpected path towards politics.

The Farmer's Daughter

1947

Not With My Wife, You Don't! poster
5.8

During the Korean War, Italian nurse Virna Lisi falls in love with two American fliers, Tony Curtis and George C. Scott. Lisi marries Curtis after he convinces her that Scott has been killed in a plane crash. She soon discovers Scott is alive, but remains happily married to Curtis until Scott re-enters their lives 14 years later.

Not With My Wife, You Don't!

1966

So This Is Love poster
4.3

Film biography of opera star Grace Moore, released in 1953.

So This Is Love

1953

Seven Sinners poster
6.0

Banished from various U.S. protectorates in the Pacific, a saloon entertainer uses her femme-fatale charms to woo politicians, navy personnel, gangsters, riff-raff, judges and a ship's doctor in order to achieve her aims.

Seven Sinners

1940

Jungle Menace poster
7.0

Mystery and adventure, surrounding a stolen rubber harvest.

Jungle Menace

1937

Beyond Tomorrow poster
6.1

The ghosts of three elderly industrialists killed in an airplane crash return to Earth to help reunite a young couple whom they initially brought together.

Beyond Tomorrow

1940

Radar Men from the Moon poster
4.6

Commando Cody, 'Sky Marshal of the Universe', works with American scientists Joan Gilbert and Ted Richards in the development of a flying suit and a rocket to the Moon. When the nation's defences are being sabotaged and destroyed, Cody learns that an atomic-gun is being used and that the men on the moon are the culprits.

Radar Men from the Moon

1952

Guilty Hands poster
5.9

A district attorney commits the perfect murder when he kills his daughter's womanizing fiancé and then tries framing the fiancé's lover.

Guilty Hands

1931

Back Street poster
6.4

A woman's love for and devotion to a married man results in her being relegated to the "back streets" of his life.

Back Street

1932

Speed Wings poster
9.0

A kidnapping, three airplane crashes and several fist-fights adds speed to the plot in which the plans of a new, faster airplane motor invented by brothers Tim and Jerry are stolen and suspicion falls on their office secretary Mary Stuart. But she can pilot an airplane with the best of them and she risks her life to save Tim. And when she gets kidnapped, Jerry regains his lost nerve in rescuing her.

Speed Wings

1934