William Hardy (actor)
| William Hardy | |
|---|---|
| Born |
January 19, 1933 Houston, Texas, U.S. |
| Died | October 14, 2008 (aged 75) |
| Education | University of Houston |
| Occupation | Actor, director |
William Hardy was an American actor and theatre director with a lifelong career on both the stage and screen.
William Hardy's first professional job was at Bob Bartel's Houston Melodrama Theatre while still in college. He graduated from the University of Houston with a double major in theater and languages and joined Houston's then-new Alley Theatre. He was a company member for twenty years, appearing in a diversity of roles in such plays as Camino Real, A Flea in Her Ear, Hadrian VII, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Hostage, along with roles at other Texas venues, including the musical Camelot where he played King Arthur. In 1970 he appeared in the Emmy Award-winning My Sweet Charlie, which filmed on location in Port Bolivar, Texas. A director as well as a performer, Hardy spent six summers as the artistic director of the Point Summer Theater in Ingram, Texas, and he "came, saw and conquered like two Caesars" when he took on the resident director's position at Alberta's Civic Theater in 1961, acting in his premier directorial production, the British Farce See How They Run and going on to direct Shakespeare's As You Like It with the Players at Rice University. Hardy was part of over 90 productions during this time. Decades later, when planning the repertoire for his own Houston theater, he credited his time spent at the Alley, as well as the Alley's founder, Nina Vance, for shaping his own eclectic tastes. "Nina did plays that she thought Houston needed to see, but she also did whatever was necessary to keep the doors open."
In January 1979, with Hardy in the role of Sheriff Ed Earl Dodd, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas opened in Houston at the Tower Theatre. This was the first Broadway musical to have an open-ended, run in Texas, and it was Co-author and co-director Peter Masterson who wanted Hardy to play the part. When the Broadway producers launched the show's National Tour starring Alexis Smith, Hardy was the choice for co-star. He stayed with the production for more than three years, his performance praised for making "a poignant as well as comic figure of Sheriff Ed Earl Dodd". It was during this tour that he met and married fellow company member Susan Shofner.
In 1982 Hardy and Shofner moved to New York City and lived there for a decade. Hardy worked in television, in films and on stage, including on Broadway as understudy for John Cullum opposite George C Scott in the two-man play The Boys in Autumn, and Off-Broadway in the musical To Whom it May Concern by Best Little Whorehouse songwriter Carol Hall and directed by Geraldine Fitzgerald in which he again appeared with Shofner. He was also seen on regional stages, in 1983 in Arthur Miller's The Price at Pittsburg Public Theater and in 1987 as John Hancock in the musical 1776 at Massachusetts' North Shore Music Theatre. and in 1990 in Arthur, the musical at Connecticut's Goodspeed Opera House. In 1991 he joined Sidney Poitier and Burt Lancaster in the cast of the Emmy winning mini-series Separate But Equal, playing Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark, one of his favorite assignments.
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