In a Hollywood career spanning more than 79 years, he appeared in almost three hundred feature films and television productions in a wide variety of character roles, often villainous or brutal, accumulating over 980 total credits,[2] with his best known role being the menacing Anthony Falconetti in the 1970s television mini-series Rich Man, Poor Man.
[1] His family later moved to Southern California, where he began his acting career at the age of eight in 1942, entering show business as a child actor in such films as The Ghost of Frankenstein,[3] The Song of Bernadette and Meet Me in St.
Although often typecast as an anti-social personality, he sporadically got the opportunity to prove his effectiveness in other kinds of roles as a law enforcement officer or an anti-heroic protagonist.
One of his earliest leading roles was Joe Riley, a good-natured Texas Ranger with arms of steel on the NBC western series Laredo (1965–1967).
Smith guest starred as Jude Bonner on James Arness's long-lived western Gunsmoke[6] in a 1972 episode, "Hostage!
He also appeared in the 1979 miniseries The Rebels as John Waverly; in an episode of The Dukes of Hazzard as Jason Steele, a bounty hunter hired by Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane to frame the Duke Boys into jail; and an episode of Knight Rider as Harold Turner, the manipulative leader of a hellish biker gang whom Michael Knight (David Hasselhoff) has to outsmart.
[9] Also in 1970, Smith featured in two biker flicks Nam's Angels (originally released under the title "The Losers") co-starring Bernie Hamilton and C.C.
After that, he appeared as a vindictive sergeant in Twilight's Last Gleaming (1977), as a drag-racing legend in Fast Company (1979), as the title character's father in Conan the Barbarian (1982) (a movie in which he was also briefly considered for the lead role), as bad guy Matt Diggs in The Frisco Kid (1979), as Clint Eastwood's bare-knuckle opponent Jack Wilson in 1980's Any Which Way You Can and had the top villainous role as a Soviet Spetsnaz commander in 1984's Red Dawn.
In 1983, Smith appeared in two films from Francis Ford Coppola in The Outsiders as a store clerk and in Rumble Fish as a police officer.
Such names include Robert Z'Dar, Joe Estevez, Tim Thomerson, James Drury, Lloyd Kaufman, Gary Graver, Wolf Larson and Jürgen Prochnow.