One of my favorite topics. I used to actually call him James Gak Hall since I despised his portrayal of Willie and felt he was a rotten actor (not to mention just very unattractive). I was asked on my group who I felt was uglier, James Hall's Willie or Harry Johnson. I picked Harry but James Hall was a close second.
Then I was chastized a bit for calling him James Gak Hall. I had to rethink my position on this a bit because after all the guy was hired to play an obnoxious creep and he did so. He was believable in the role. In his stint as Willie, Willie hit on the young ladies and made them hate him. He picked a fight with the men over things that were clearly his fault like [spoiler]parking himself at a table uninvited and refusing to move his carcass.[/spoiler] It's no wonder everyone hated him and wanted him to leave town. The only ones who could tolerate him at all were Mrs. Johnson and David.
Enter John Karlen. Cute John Karlen. He only had a few episodes as the creep Willie but he managed to play them very well, and though his portrayal was much different from Hall's, he made the role a bit more sinister. It was JK's Willie that [spoiler]asked Sam nearly point blank if he painted his daughter in the nude. It was he who picked a fight with Burke Devlin and got his clock cleaned for his trouble. And when he told Jason outside that he was gonna kill Burke, he meant it.[/spoiler]
Then came the change of life for Willie, [spoiler]that night at the mausoleum that forever changed him.[/spoiler] Could James Hall have pulled this off? I don't think so. We will never know, we can only speculate, but I just don't think so. At any rate, even if he could, he was not cute. JK was cute. He was beyond cute. He portrayed Willie in such a way that I fell in love with him. No matter how well Hall played Willie as the beleaguered slave of the vampire, he could never have done it in such a way that I could fall in love with him.
Alondra
