American actor William “Biff” McGuire, who in later years used the name William Biff McGuire professionally and was nominated for Tony Awards two times during his carrier, has died at the age of 94. His death is declared by Doug Hughes.
Biff was born on 25th October, 1926 in New Haven, Connecticut, U.S. He studied agricultural engineering from the University of Massachusetts but left the university in order to join the U.S. Army. His acting experience during his study in England helped him to play a role in a play in London later. He started his carrier through “Bright Boy” in 1944 on Broadway. McGuire was seen in the episode “Number seven, Hangman’s Row” of the CBS anthology series, Appoinment with Adventure on 19th October, 1955. He also acted in the Alfred Hitchcook Presents episodes “The Gentleman From America” (1956), “Crackpot” (1957), and “Don’t Interrupt” (1958). He starred the television series of “The Secret Storm” and “All My Children”.
His carrier span is 50 years long when he was praised for his reel character Woody in the revival of the musical Finian’s Rainbow in 1960 & he played the character King Arthur in one of the final national tours of Camelot. The works, for which he was nominated for Tony Awards two times, are “The Young Man From Atlanta”(1997) and “Morning’s at Seven” (2002). His characters Pete Davenport and Theodore Swanson in the respective Broadway gigs are highly acclaimed.
He said in an interview of 2004, “My mother was what you would call an elocutionist when she was quite young. She always had me memorizing poems. We had all of these big gatherings of the whole family on Saturday nights, and everybody had to do something, so that was my theater. I shared it with a very large family.”
His spouse is Jeanmie Carson whose life span is 1960-2021 and he has two children.
In 1949, under the direction of Josh Logan, he became a radio operator in the original Broadway production of South Pacific and made realized Oscar Hammerstein to change a line of his song “There is nothing like a Dame.”
Former Seattle Rep associate artistic director Doug Hughes said, “Reserved, even shy in real life, Biff gained a nearly scary confidence once he stepped on a stage. He was one of the most relaxed actors in performance that I have ever worked with. He had a special gift for repose, for a commanding stillness in the midst of a play’s action that magnetized an audience.”
