I went to an event for The Rockford Files last weekend. It was celebrating the 50 year anniversary of the start of the series.
William Smith had a memorable scene as a bad guy in the pilot episode. Even though he wasn't in the series again, that one appearance was well regarded by fans. He would have been invited to the Rockford event, but of course he passed away in 2021, so that was impossible. My guess is that he would have gone.
Anyway, his wife was at the event. She lived fairly close to the Ventura County location of the event, so it was easy for her to show up. She was William's makeup artist in the '80s, and they fell in love and got married in 1989. At the time, she was just 28, and Smith was 56.
When I spoke with her, I asked if William had commented to her about his time on Five-O, and I got a surprising answer.
At first she said what I expected -- that William enjoyed working on Five-O, and he also enjoyed living in Hawaii. I mentioned that it was "too bad he came in so late in the series, otherwise he could have been on there longer."
That seemed to trigger a bad memory in her, and she suddenly lost her smile and said, "The fans didn't like him. They didn't like his character. He wasn't invited to the convention in the 90s, and he was very hurt by it."
This shocked me, because I attended this convention (as did Mr. Mike), and there was not any kind of anti-William-Smith sentiment at all. While fans did mostly dislike the 12th season, nobody hated the actors for it. Additionally, note that Sharon Farrell was there, who was also a 12th-season-only actress, and she got a very warm reception from everyone. I assume William Smith would have also been treated very well at the convention.
I was perplexed by this. Did the organizers of MahaloCon really intentionally leave out William Smith's invitation? Or was it just a matter of not being able to track him down, or perhaps his invite getting lost in the mail?
I posted this on a Five-O Facebook group, and Karen Rhodes (one of the MahaloCon organizers) did not have any recollection of leaving out Smith. However, it seemed from Karen's response that she wasn't the one in charge of doing the invites.
It's too bad, because Smith lived the next 25 years believing he was hated by Five-O fans and deliberately left out of the convention. It sounds like he would have definitely shown up, had he been invited!
If Smith had lived just a few years longer, he likely would have been at this Rockford convention, and I would have told him myself that there must have been some kind of error in communication, that the fans had absolutely no problem with him, and in fact we would have wanted him there. Unfortunately he died believing Five-O fandom hated him.
Is it possible that his wife was incorrect about this? Maybe. But keep in mind that she vividly remembered the fact that Five-O had a convention, and her husband's feelings about it. She even stated to me that the convention was "in the mid 90s", which was correct. It is very likely that William made a big deal about this at the time, to where his wife took note and remembered it for all these years.
Pretty strange, huh?
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