Entertainment

Daniels Wins SAG Presidency

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

November 7, 1999 / 1:42 PM EST / CBS

Maybe John Adams wasn't liked by his colleagues in the Continental Congress and early United States government, but apparently the actor known for playing him in a variety of stage, movie and television productions is.

Actor William Daniels defeated the incumbent Screen Actors Guild president in a victory that divided the union of film and TV actors.

Daniels, 72, got 10,008 of the 21,068 ballots cast while incumbent Richard Masur, 50, got 8,972 votes. Actress Angeltompkins was third with 2,015 votes.

The vote was announced Friday.

Masur was running for his third, two-year term. He had the support of top stars, including Billy Crystal, Michelle Pfeiffer, Dennis Franz and Michael J. Fox.

An anti-Masur group called Performers Alliance drafted Daniels to run in September even though he had not been active in SAG before becoming a candidate.

It is expected Daniels will seek a tougher stance during negotiations with the entertainment industry. Hollywood talent guilds believe they have not received their fair share of revenues from cable television and foreign markets.

Daniels also has criticized SAG for having too many staff members.

Daniels won an Emmy for Best Actor twice for his role as Dr. Mark Craig on St. Elsewhere. He currently plays Mr. Feeny on the ABC sitcom Boy Meets World and was the voice of the car on Knight Rider with David Hasselhoff.

Daniels played John Adams in 1776 on Broadway and the film version, as well as the television mini-series The Rebels. He also played Adams' son John Quincy Adams in another television mini-series, The Adams Chronicles and cousin Sam Adams in The Bastard.

Daniels was nominated for a Tony as Supporting Actor in a Musical for 1776 in 1969, according to the Internet Movie Database. However, he could not be nominated for lead actor because he did not then have "star billing." Adams is clearly the lead role in 1776, so Daniels declined the nomination.

Besides appearing in films such as Black Sunday, Oh, God! and Reds, Daniels also uttered one of the signature lines in The Graduate, giving this advice to Dustin Hoffman's character: "Plastics!"

More than 99,000 ballots were mailed to eligible union voters nationwide, but only 21.9 percent were returned and counted.

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1927, as a child he was part of "The Daniels Family" song and dance troupe that traveled in and around the state of New York. His entire family appeared on one of the first experimental TV broadcasts in 1941.