Bill Erwin

Acting

Bill Erwin

Born 1914-12-02 · Honey Grove, Texas, USA

William Lindsey Erwin was an American film, stage and television actor with over 250 television and film credits. A veteran character actor who appeared in Planes, Trains & Automobiles, Somewhere in Time and Home Alone. He was also a stage manager for Edgar Bergen and a security assistant for Clancy. He is widely known for his 1993 Emmy Award-nominated performance on Seinfeld, portraying the embittered, irascible retiree Sid Fields.

Acting credits

Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult poster
6.5

Frank Drebin is persuaded out of retirement to go undercover in a state prison. There he has to find out what top terrorist, Rocco, has planned for when he escapes. Adding to his problems, Frank's wife, Jane, is desperate for a baby.

Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult

1994

Planes, Trains and Automobiles poster
7.3

An irritable marketing executive, Neal Page, is heading home to Chicago for Thanksgiving when a number of delays force him to travel with a well meaning but overbearing shower curtain ring salesman, Del Griffith.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

1987

The Land Before Time poster
7.2

An orphaned brontosaurus named Littlefoot sets off in search of the legendary Great Valley. A land of lush vegetation where the dinosaurs can thrive and live in peace. Along the way he meets four other young dinosaurs, each one a different species, and they encounter several obstacles as they learn to work together in order to survive.

The Land Before Time

1988

Dennis the Menace poster
5.9

Mr. Wilson's ever-present annoyance comes in the form of one mischievous kid named Dennis. But he'll need Dennis's tricks to uncover a collection of gold coins that go missing when a shady drifter named Switchblade Sam comes to town.

Dennis the Menace

1993

Forces of Nature poster
5.5

Ben Holmes, a professional book-jacket blurbologist, is trying to get to Savannah for his wedding. He just barely catches the last plane, but a seagull flies into the engine as the plane is taking off. All later flights are cancelled because of an approaching hurricane, so he is forced to hitch a ride in a Geo Metro with an attractive but eccentric woman named Sara.

Forces of Nature

1999

Somewhere in Time poster
7.5

Young writer Richard Collier is met on the opening night of his first play by an old lady who begs him to "Come back to me". Mystified, he tries to find out about her, and learns that she is a famous stage actress from the early twentieth century. Becoming more and more obsessed with her, by self-hypnosis he manages to travel back in time—where he meets her.

Somewhere in Time

1980

Inferno poster
6.2

Eddie Lomax is a drifter who has been in a suicidal funk since the death of his close friend Johnny. Riding his motorcycle into a small desert town where Johnny once lived, Lomax is confronted by a gang of toughs, who beat him and steal his bike. However, Lomax is not a man to take an injustice lying down, and soon he begins exacting a violent revenge on the men who stole his motorcycle, with local handyman Jubal Early lending a hand and several area ladies offering aid and comfort.

Inferno

1999

Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead poster
6.4

Five different criminals face imminent death after botching a job quite badly.

Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead

1995

Stewardess School poster
4.9

A group of varied misfits (including a former prostitute/stripper and a bumbler who can't see more than 6 inches in front of his face) enter a school to become flight attendants. Somehow, the group makes it through to the final test: a cross-country flight.

Stewardess School

1986

Jet Pilot poster
5.5

John Wayne stars as U.S. Air Force aviator Jim Shannon, who's tasked with escorting a Soviet pilot (Janet Leigh) claiming -- at the height of the Cold War -- that she wants to defect. After falling in love with and wedding the fetching flyer, Shannon learns from his superiors that she's a spy on a mission to extract military secrets. To save his new wife from prison and deportation, Shannon devises a risky plan in this 1957 drama.

Jet Pilot

1957

She's Having a Baby poster
5.9

Jake and Kristy Briggs are newlyweds. Being young, they are perhaps a bit unprepared for the full reality of marriage and all that it (and their parents) expect from them. Do they want babies? Their parents certainly want them to. Is married life all that there is? Things certainly aren't helped by Jake's friend Davis, who always seems to turn up just in time to put a spanner in the works.

She's Having a Baby

1988

Counterpoint poster
6.2

In December of 1944, Lionel Evans, an internationally renowned American conductor, is on a USO tour with his 70-piece symphony orchestra in newly-liberated Belgium. While fleeing from a German counterattack, Evans and his orchestra members are captured by a Panzer division and taken to an old chateau in Luxembourg. Despite orders to execute every prisoner, General Schiller, an avid music lover, commands Evans to give a private concert for him.

Counterpoint

1967

The Magic Bubble poster
3.1

A middle-aged woman frees herself from the spirit-crushing influence of her husband by refusing to remember what her age is.

The Magic Bubble

1993

Elvis poster
6.9

This biopic traces Elvis Presley’s life from his impoverished childhood to his meteoric rise to stardom to his triumphant conquering of Las Vegas.

Elvis

1979

The Willies poster
5.7

Two brothers camping with their cousin try to frighten each other by telling stories. They start with urban legends, but then there are two main narrations: one involves strange happenings at an elementary school; the other, a teenage boy with a peculiar interest.

The Willies

1990

Quest poster
6.8

On a distant planet, descendants of a crashed spaceship are subjected to mysterious forces that cause them to age and die in just eight days. They must also live in caves to escape the bitter cold of night and the killing heat of day. One young boy is determined to find his way back to the ship that brought them there. But how will he accomplish this in the short time left to him?

Quest

1984

Drop-Out Father poster
4.2

Successful advertising executive decides to get out of the rat race but the family rebels at the new lifestyle he outlines. He and his youngest daughter leave the suburbs for a Manhattan loft apartment while the rest of the brood -- wife and three kids -- re-evaluate the situation. For his engaging score, Peter Matz won an Emmy Award nomination.

Drop-Out Father

1982

No artwork available
6.0

Farm widow Sarah Bowman has been impoverished by the siphoning of her water supply. A nearby big-city aqueduct has priority over water rights, leaving the rural outskirts virtually dry. Attempting to bring her cause to the forefront, Sarah dynamites the reservoir, half-hoping that she'll be "martyred" in the process. When she fails to arouse public support, she targets the local power plant for her next blast. Assistant DA Anne Greyfeather, who as an orphaned Indian girl was virtually raised by Sarah, decides to challenge the water-department bureaucracy on McGuire's behalf.

Ghost Dancing

1983

Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo poster
5.0

An airplane carrying coffee beans from South America has some unpleasant stowaways: a hoard of tarantulas which overcome the pilots as the airplane is flying over an orange-producing town in California. The airplane crashes, and the unlucky inhabitants of the town release the venomous spiders into their midst. Once the town's officials discover that the tarantulas are responsible for several deaths, the tarantulas have already descended upon the town's only orange-processing factory. The town's citizens risk their lives to remove the tarantulas from the factory while the venomous pests are rendered motionless by the transmitted sound of buzzing bees

Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo

1977

Boycott poster
6.7

This made-for-TV movie dramatizes the historic boycott of public buses in the 1950s, led by civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Boycott

2001

Home Alone poster
7.5

Eight-year-old Kevin McCallister makes the most of the situation after his family unwittingly leaves him behind when they go on Christmas vacation. When thieves try to break into his home, he puts up a fight like no other.

Home Alone

1990

Claire poster
7.0

A doctor's second wife is tormented by the presence of his pet cat, which reminds her of the fact that she was involved in her husband's first wife's drowning.

Claire

1956

Chairman of the Board poster
3.6

Surfer Edison isn't able to make ends meet with his inventions or his lifestyle. But then he meets billionaire Armand McMillian, who takes a shine to the young bum — so much so that he leaves his invention company to him upon his death. Unfortunately, Armand's nephew, Bradford, only gets a surfboard. While Edison manages to run the company successfully, with the help of pretty Natalie, Bradford conspires to take him down.

Chairman of the Board

1998

A Crack in the Floor poster
3.6

After witnessing his mother's brutal rape and murder at a young age, Jeremiah Hill turns to a life of seclusion in a small mountain town. Six friends enter the town for a weekend camping trip and stumble upon Jeremiah's lonely cabin in the woods, which shatters his 33 years of solitude and turns their trip into a nightmare of survival.

A Crack in the Floor

2001