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Warren William is so closely identified with sleek, lusty, roguish roles in melodramas made in the early 1930s, before the film industry's Production Code went into effect, that the title of biographer John Stangeland's 2010 book is Warren William: Magnificent Scoundrel of Pre-Code Hollywood. Often cast as a borderline villain, William played his fast-talking, opportunistic characters with such style and dash that Depression-era audiences often found themselves rooting for him.

William also was noted for his detective roles including "The Lone Wolf" (which he played in nine films) and Philo Vance (two films), and he had the distinction of being the first actor to play attorney Perry Mason (four films). He originated several roles in films that are probably better remembered for their remakes: "Dave the Dude" in Lady for a Day (1933), remade in 1961 as Pocketful of Miracles, with Glenn Ford in the role; Steve Archer in Imitation of Life (1934), played by John Gavin in the 1959 remake; and Ted Shane in Satan Met a Lady (1936), renamed Sam Spade when Humphrey Bogart played the role in The Maltese Falcon (1941). William also played Julius Caesar to Claudette Colbert's Queen of the Nile in Cecil B. DeMille's Cleopatra (1934).

He was born Warren William Krech in 1894 in Aitkin, Minn., the son of a newspaper publisher. He attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and, after military service during World War I, made minor appearances in a few silent films beginning with The Town That Forgot God (1922). He made his Broadway debut in 1924 in a play by H.G. Wells, The Wonderful Visit, and continued to work on the New York stage through 1930.

William signed with Warner Bros. and made his first sound film, Honor of the Family, in 1931. With his resonant voice, crisp diction and a sculpted handsomeness suggesting John Barrymore's, he was a natural for talkies.

1932 was William's breakthrough year, with highlights at his own studio including The Mouthpiece, in which he plays a fast-talking attorney who works for the mob; Three on a Match, in which he's a more sympathetic lawyer with a thrill-seeking wife (Ann Dvorak); and The Match King, in which he's an unscrupulous janitor who gains control of a match factory. He was lent to MGM for Skyscraper Souls (1932) to play a power-hungry, womanizing banker.

The pattern was set, and Williams' portrayals of ruthless characters continued into 1933 with Employees' Entrance (as a tyrannical manager of a department store), The Mind Reader (a carnival con man), Gold Diggers of 1933 (a millionaire snob who's the spider on this musical valentine) and Lady for a Day (a mobster with a sentimental streak). He was top-billed in all of these.

1934 was another busy period for William, who appeared in nine films that year. In addition to his turns with Claudette Colbert in Cleopatra and Imitation of Life, he played a drug-dealing medical student in Bedside and originated the Perry Mason role in The Case of the Howling Dog. But '34 was also the year that new measures of the Production Code were enforced, meaning that William's amoral, often predatory type of leading man had suddenly become obsolete.

Among William's final films under his Warners contract were Times Square Playboy (1936), a comedy based on a play by George M. Cohan in which a scene-stealing Gene Lockhart plays a rube who interrupts William's wedding; and Stage Struck (1936), a musical with William playing a producer and getting third billing under Dick Powell and Joan Blondell.

After leaving Warners, William tried his luck at Paramount and then MGM, where he found a good role in the sequel Arsène Lupin Returns (1938), as an American investigator on the trail of the French thief played by Melvyn Douglas. But at the same studio he was reduced to supporting status in The First Hundred Years (1938), a romantic comedy with Robert Montgomery in the leading role.

At Universal, William landed a lead in Wives Under Suspicion (1938), playing a ruthless District Attorney who entertains thoughts of murdering his wife. He began his "Lone Wolf" detective series at Columbia, in which he plays ex-safecracker Michael Lanyard, with The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt (1939). This kept him busy off and on through the early 1940s, when he also played Dr. Lloyd in the definitive werewolf movie, Universal's The Wolf Man (1941).

William's final film appearance was in the supporting role of Laroche-Mathieu in The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (1947). He died the following year at age 53.

Despite his aggressive ways onscreen, William was known by his friends to be shy and retiring. Joan Blondell, who made five films with him, remembered her costar as "an old man even when he was a young man." And, although he often played a heartless seducer, in real life he was happily married to the same woman (Helen Barbara Nelson) for all his adult life. Away from the cameras he was an inventor whose many patents included one for the first lawn vacuum.

by Roger Fristoe

* Films in bold type will air on TCM