William Steele(1888-1966)
- Actor
- Additional Crew
American actor of small roles in Westerns, particularly those of
John Ford. Although his screen credits
and many records indicate a wide variety of names and spellings,
Steele's own signatures on his military documents indicate that he was
born William Anton Gittinger on March 28, 1888 (not 1889) in San
Antonio, Texas. Little is known of his life prior to his arrival in Los
Angeles around 1910. As the film industry in Hollywood was just
blossoming, and as he apparently had great experience with horses,
Steele easily obtained work in quickie Westerns. He fought in Europe in
World War I, then returned to Hollywood. While he was extremely
inconsistent in the names he used, he worked consistently in Westerns
throughout the silent era and up until the 1950s. His final appearance
was as the wounded posse member Nesby in Ford's
The Searchers (1956), his tenth
film for Ford. He died ten years later, not quite 78 years old. He was
survived by his wife Josephine, an actress. He is buried under his
birth name at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio, Texas.
