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William (Beauty and the Beast)
| Character | |
|---|---|
| Name: | William |
| Occupation: | cook |
| Relationships: | |
| Fandom: | Beauty and the Beast (TV) |
| Other: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
William is the cook who lives Below in Beauty and the Beast (TV).
The character was portrayed by Ritch Brinkley.
Con Attendee
Brinkley was a con attendee at:
- Celebration of Life Cruise (1991)
- Fan-Out (1991)
- Great Expectations (1993)
- TunnelCon (1991, 1992)
He was an invited guest at MasqueCon in 1991, but shortly before that event took place, the invitation was rescinded due the con's lack of funds.
Proposal and Marriage to a Fan
In November 1992, Brinkley married a Beauty and the Beast fan.
Kathi Edrington a B&B fan on a B&B USA cruise, entered a "writing a story on a post card" competition, and won. Her prize was to have guest Ritch Brinkley who played William the cook, to read her story. He fell for her, and they started dating and married. Ritch proposed to her at a B&B convention even! [1]
from issue #3, "An Immodest Proposal," poem by Ritch Brinkley, about the courtship, printed in TunnelCon III (1994)
from issue #3, Ritch Brinkely and his wife, art by Sandy Chandler Shelton, printed in TunnelCon III (1994)
The Actor and the Character, Crossing Boundaries
Ritch Brinkley was a delightful surprise for most of us — we were thinking of the often-gruff William — a warm, outgoing man with a knack for storytelling that charms your socks right off. At the banquet, he read aloud the poem... and was dressed in as close an approximation of his costume on the show as he could devise (he had said earlier in the day that he felt he owed that to us—what a doll!) [2]
From an article about Brinkley:
While working on Beauty & the Beast, Dotrice spoke to Brinkley about the show’s fans and conventions. Dotrice wanted Brinkley to accompany him to Tunnelcon I in Las Vegas. Not knowing quite what to expect, Brinkley went even though Dotrice was unable to attend due to last-minute scheduling conflicts. "Perhaps I learned my concept of ’fandom’ from Dolly Parton,” says Brinkley. "She knows that without here fans, there wouldn’t be any Dolly Parton. That’s who makes you somebody other than a fan yourself. So, no matter how busy she was, she would stop [to sign an autograph].”Thinking that he should bring something with him, Brinkley wrote a poem to read at the banquet. ”I thought, ’These people are flying me in and putting me in this room. I really ought to have something with me.’ That’s why I made a costume the week before out of my own resources and why I wrote the poem. It had a much better reaction than I dreamed! There was a tremendous amount of sharing and warmth in that room -- like what they call the 'fourth wall' in theater -- everybody stood up and cheered. You could have killed me and sent me to heaven and I would have been happy. Victor [Lobl, director of many episodes of Beauty & the Beast] leaned over and said, 'You can have the whole country right now.' Brinkley pauses, savoring the memory, and adds, "I've accepted several invitations for conventions because of that experience. I've been invited to Berlin. If I'm not doing a Murphy Brown, I would be tempted."
While Brinkley thoroughly adored the fans' eagerness, "sometimes, I would be overwhelmed [by fans at Tunnelcon] and couldn't get away. I told Candice [Bergen] the next week, 'If you ever need help sneaking out of somewhere or someone to run a detour, I'm your man. I now know how you feel 24 hours a day'."
[...]
Bringing home the point that fans are fans, whether they’re in the entertainment industry or not, Ritch Brinkley ways that with Beauty & the Beast fans, "you’re dealing here with mature, professional, highly creative people. To me, it feels like meeting a group of pen pals for the first time."
The actor believes that being a fan of Beauty & the Beast "is a great creative outlet for many people. All of the intentions, points-of-view of the show are good. It's for an alternative society where basic values of goodness, selflessness, are the values that we wished existed in our own society. "We desperately need people to keep that kind of dream alive, especially without a show. Unless people do keep that interest alive, those values will certainly die and be forgotten." [3]
Sample Fanart
1991
from Crystal Carver #3, Carole Stevenson
from Within the Crystal Rose #3, artist is Paula Ollie
from Within the Crystal Rose #3, artist is Phyllis Berwick
1994
from What Light Through Yonder Window #1, artist Lynette Combs
References
- ^ from Chatterbox (June 1998)
- ^ from a con report by Barbara Storey in Tunneltalk (August 1990)
- ^ from Starlog #163 (February 1991), an article by Desire Gonzales, titled "Cooking for a Beast: When Vincent Gets Hungry, Ritch Brinkley Races to His Recipe Book, retyped and printed in Dancing Lights v.2 n.1 (February 1991)