page_title: Albert Salmi
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Albert Salmi / Career
caption_attribution_description: Photo of Julie Newmar (Miss Devlin AKA The Devil) and Albert Salmi as William Feathersmith from the television program The Twlight Zone. The episode is "Of Late I Think of Cliffordsville".
context_page_description: Albert Salmi was an American actor of stage, film, and television. Best known for his work as a character actor, he appeared in over 150 film and television productions.
context_section_description: In 1955, Salmi starred as Bo Decker in the play Bus Stop on Broadway, and also performed in the touring production of the play. His performance was praised by critics and Salmi was offered the chance to reprise the role in the film Bus Stop (1956) starring Marilyn Monroe. Salmi turned down the offer because he did not enjoy film work. (Don Murray was later cast as Bo and earned an Academy Award nomination for his performance.) Salmi turned down several other offers to make films before he finally accepted a role as Smerdjakov in the film The Brothers Karamazov (1958), with Yul Brynner, Lee J. Cobb, William Shatner, and Richard Basehart.  Salmi's next film was The Bravados (1958), in which he played one of the villains who is hunted down by hero Gregory Peck. The National Board of Review presented Salmi with the NBR Award for Best Supporting Actor for his work in both of these films.
  Despite his numerous appearances in the medium, Salmi shared the opinion of many Actors Studio alumni that roles in film and television were "inferior" to stage work. One of his first television appearances was in the live, televised adaptation of the novel Bang the Drum Slowly (1956), featured on the anthology series The United States Steel Hour opposite Paul Newman and George Peppard. He also had several memorable roles on CBS's The Twilight Zone, including "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville", "A Quality of Mercy", and "Execution". In 1963, he portrayed John Day and Rivers in the episode "Incident of the Pale Rider" on the CBS series Rawhide. In 1964–65, he appeared with Fess Parker as "Yadkin" in the first season of the Daniel Boone TV series. He later appeared twice as the incorrigible pirate "Alonzo P. Tucker" on Lost in Space. He appeared in a 1967 episode of Gunsmoke as a killer who comes to an ironic end. For that performance, Salmi was awarded a Western Heritage Award.
  Salmi also had guest starring roles in numerous television series including The Virginian, Have Gun — Will Travel, Naked City, The Investigators, Combat!, Stoney Burke, Bonanza, The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters, Redigo, The Big Valley, Twelve O'clock High, The Legend of Jesse James, Custer, The Eleventh Hour,  Hawaii Five O, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Road West, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Route 66, Lost in Space, "That Girl", Land of the Giants, The Fugitive, Night Gallery, Kung Fu, The A-Team, and Knight Rider, as well as TV miniseries such as Once an Eagle and 79 Park Avenue. From 1974 to 1976, Salmi co-starred in the NBC legal drama Petrocelli as local investigator Pete Ritter. A high point of Salmi's career came in 1968, when he was cast in the Arthur Miller play The Price. He played the lead on Broadway and in London.
  Salmi's film career included roles in The Unforgiven (1960), The Outrage (1964), Lawman (1971), Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), Viva Knievel! (1977), Empire of the Ants (1977), Love and Bullets (1979), Caddyshack (1980), and the Robert Redford prison film Brubaker (1980). He played Greil in Dragonslayer (1981), Geraldine Page's husband in I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can (1982), and the hard drinking but loving father of character Diana Lawson in Hard to Hold (1984). His final role in a theatrical film was in Breaking In (1989), starring Burt Reynolds.
caption: Julie Newmar and Albert Salmi (age 35) in "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville", a 1963 episode of The Twilight Zone.
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