William Katt, the 75-year-old star of the 1980s cult series The Greatest American Hero, was spotted this week making a coffee run in sweltering Los Angeles. He stepped out in a t-shirt, shorts, open-toed slippers and sunglasses.
Katt, born to two TV stars of the 1950s, built his own career in the 1970s, landing a pivotal role in Brian De Palma's horror classic Carrie. He also came close to landing the lead in Star Wars before Mark Hamill won the part.
Fans of the late Hayden Panettiere may also recognize Katt from a 2008 guest turn as a meddlesome journalist on her show Heroes.
The Greatest American Hero
Katt is best remembered as Ralph Hinkley, also known as Hanley, on The Greatest American Hero, a sci-fi comedy in which a special education teacher gains superpowers from a unitard given to him by space aliens.
Connie Sellecca, later of Hotel fame, played his attorney sidekick, while Robert Culp of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice played an FBI agent, rounding out a crime-fighting trio in which the bumbling Ralph learns to master his new abilities. The show was canceled after three seasons, but its theme song, "Believe It Or Not," climbed to number two on the Billboard Hot 100.
Falling out and friendship with Robert Culp
Katt has said he and Culp "truly did not like each other when we first met. I mean, there was some real friction there," according to Pioneers of Television. He said the tension between them actually "worked" onscreen, since it echoed the animosity between their characters.
The pair mended fences during what Katt called a "come to Jesus meeting" three weeks into the shoot, reasoning that "we're going to be working together for a long time and we should have some sort of a detente and rapprochement so that we could work together and be in the same space at the same time without getting into a fight." The cordiality grew into a genuine friendship that lasted until Culp died in 2010 at age 79, after suffering a fatal head injury in a fall brought on by a heart attack.
Katt has said he "wasn't really too interested in doing television" when the show was first brought to him, as he was acting off-Broadway with Dianne Wiest at the time, but the script "made me laugh a lot," he told Sidewalks TV. Rewatching it decades later on DVD, he said he "thought it was very funny," adding, "I don't know that I really appreciated it at the time, but I have in the subsequent years."
Losing Star Wars to Mark Hamill
William Theodore Katt was born two days after Valentine's Day in 1951 to two parents who both became TV stars in the 1950s. His father, Herman Katt, was known under the screen name Bill Williams as the title character on the Western series The Adventures of Kit Carson. His mother, Barbara Hale, won an Emmy for playing Della Street, secretary to Raymond Burr's title character on Perry Mason.
Katt has described himself as "a little bit of a rascal" and a "free spirit" growing up in the San Fernando Valley, saying he had "no rules" except that he had to be "home by dark," according to What's Under the Bed?. In the early 1970s he worked on shows including M*A*S*H, Emergency., Gunsmoke, Kojak and Ironside.
Katt also auditioned for the lead role in George Lucas's 1977 blockbuster Star Wars, trying out alongside Kurt Russell, with the two switching back and forth between the roles of Luke Skywalker and Han Solo. "I think I blew it for" Russell, Katt joked, saying Russell "could've been a great Han Solo" if not for the fact that "my hair was too long then. It's too long now. And we didn't get the part. But I thought that we did a pretty good job in looking back at it."
Carrie and John Travolta
Lucas happened to be holding his Star Wars auditions jointly with Brian De Palma, who was casting his 1976 adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie. Katt's "booby prize" for missing out on Star Wars was landing the role of popular athlete Tommy Ross in the De Palma film. As a favor to his girlfriend, Tommy takes Sissy Spacek's telekinetic title character to the prom, where both are doused in pig blood in a public humiliation that triggers Carrie's grisly revenge.
"Well, it was great," Katt recalled of the shoot. "I mean, we were all in our early 20s at the time. I think I was 23, 24. We were all just young guys and girls and we were getting paid to go and just have fun. And obviously do the work." He had particularly warm words for co-star John Travolta, calling him "very gracious and lovely" and telling Cemetery Dance that years before Grease, "I remember him trying to teach a bunch of us a soft shoe dance one day."
Family ties to Perry Mason
Later in the 1980s, Katt co-starred with his mother in nine TV movies spun off from Perry Mason, with Hale reprising her role as Della Street. Katt played Paul Drake Jr., a private investigator following in the footsteps of his father, Paul Drake, a character originally played by William Hopper, son of Hedda Hopper.
It was Raymond Burr, whom Katt had known since childhood as "Uncle Raymond," who called him while he was on tour in Gilbert & Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance to ask if he wanted to join the Perry Mason revival. "So I did and I spent the next five years doing those shows, and that was just wonderful, working with my mom," Katt told Missouri radio station KIX 105-7.
Later career
Through the late 1980s and 1990s, Katt made guest appearances on shows including Cybill, Animaniacs, Batman: The Animated Series, Burke's Law and Walker, Texas Ranger. Viewers of Heroes may also recall his turn as reporter Jim McCann in the season three episode "The Butterfly Effect."
Katt is still acting. This year he appeared in the independent dramedy When We Get There, in a cast that includes Alfred Molina.
