---
name: "William Alland"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/william-alland"
roles: ["Actor"]
born: "4 March 1916"
died: "11 November 1997"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 1
updated: "2026-09-16T21:15:13.314679+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# William Alland

Actor. Born 4 March 1916 in Delmar, Delaware, USA. Died 11 November 1997.

## Details

- **Work:** Actor
- **Born:** 4 March 1916, Delmar, Delaware, USA
- **Died:** 11 November 1997

## Biography

William Alland was an American actor, producer and writer. He began his career in the theatre and radio with Orson Welles’s Mercury Theatre, appearing in the 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast before playing the reporter Jerry Thompson (and providing the uncredited voice of the News on the March narrator) in Welles’s *Citizen Kane* (1941).

After wartime service as a combat pilot, Alland produced radio drama, winning a Peabody Award for *Doorway to Life*. He later became a prolific film producer at Universal-International, specialising in science-fiction and monster films directed by Jack Arnold, including *It Came from Outer Space* (1953), *Creature from the Black Lagoon* (1954) and its sequels, *Tarantula* (1955), *This Island Earth* (1955) and *The Deadly Mantis* (1957). His later credits included the Western *The Rare Breed* (1966). He also directed *Look in Any Window* (1961).

*Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com, latimes.com.*

## On Fi1m (1)

- *Citizen Kane* (1941), Fi1m 93, as Jerry Thompson/Narrator — [page](https://film.one/film/citizen-kane.md)

## Also known for

- *Creature from the Black Lagoon* (1954), Producer, Idea
- *Tarantula* (1955), Producer
- *It Came from Outer Space* (1953), Producer
- *This Island Earth* (1955), Producer
- *Revenge of the Creature* (1955), Story, Producer
- *The Creature Walks Among Us* (1956), Producer
- *The Rare Breed* (1966), Producer
- *The Deadly Mantis* (1957), Story, Producer

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/william-alland