Aron Kincaid(1940-2011)

Beach stud movie and TV actor Aron Kincaid started life out as Norman Neale Williams III on June 15, 1940, in Hollywood, California. While still a toddler, his father, serving as a Second Lieutenant with the Army Air Force, died at age 27 after his plane was shot down by the Nazis during the last year of World War II. Aron was sent to Big Bear Lake, high in the San Bernardino Mountains, to live with his paternal grandparents. His early interest in drawing and painting saw the young lad going from cabin to cabin selling his artwork for 10 cents apiece. At age 12, he won his first important art award, taking first place in a national contest sponsored by Eutectic Welding Alloy. Following two years at Ridgewood Military Academy, his mother remarried, and the three resided in Oakland, California. While still in high school, Aron enrolled at the famous California College of Art but quit after two sessions when his professor grabbed Aron's brush and began to make "corrections and additions" to his art work. That was the end of any formal art training.

Aron grew into a tall, riveting-looking hairy-chested teen with blond hair and a deep tan, qualities he perceived could possibly be his fortune. He soon started to lean towards acting. As a senior at Oakland High School, the ambitious highschooler wrote, produced, directed and starred in his first amateur film. The hour-long 8mm color/sound production entitled The Fall of Nineveh (1957), in which he also designed the sets and costumes, included a cast of around 400. Upon graduation, he returned to Southern California and enrolled at UCLA where he made several small student films. While a sophomore, he was introduced to Roger Corman who handed him his very first (unbilled) professional acting job as a beekeeper in the cult horror flick The Wasp Woman (1959). His second unbilled film appearance came as Laurence Olivier's standard bearer in the epic-scale classic Spartacus (1960). While accompanying an actress friend to an Equity stage audition for support, he wound up auditioning himself and won the role of the young suitor in "The Loud, Red Patrick". After a casting agent witnessed his performance, he ended up with a Universal contract. Producer Leonard Freeman caught sight of the handsome UCLA college student and, following a screen test, was signed for a regular role on the last season of the popular TV series Bachelor Father (1957) as John Forsythe's law partner and subsequent fiancé to young Noreen Corcoran, who played Forsythe's niece on the show. This, in turn, led to work on a number of Universal series including Channing (1963), Alcoa Premiere (1961), and Boris Karloff's Thriller (1960).

Following graduation from UCLA in 1962, Aron enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserves. He eventually returned to Hollywood and resumed where he left off. By that time, the beach party flicks were all the rage and Aron fell easily in with the anything-for-fun crowd. With the help of actor Bart Patton, he won a starring role in Paramount's The Girls on the Beach (1965), which reunited him with TV girlfriend Noreen Corcoran and featured The Beach Boys and The Crickets (post-Buddy Holly) as musical guests. This, in turn, led to Paramount's Beach Ball (1965), which top-lined Edd Byrnes and Chris Noel and provided The Supremes and The Righteous Brothers with singing showcases; Ski Party (1965) starring Beach Party "king", himself, Frankie Avalon and featured vocalists Lesley Gore and James Brown; and The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966), the seventh and last installment of the by-now waning "Beach Party" series. Of all his "party" pictures at American International Pictures (AIP), his all-time favorite role was Ski Party (1965) and playing the obnoxious athlete-lover "Freddy Carter". Contractual problems with AIP led to an unfortunate lawsuit (his first and only) in which he sued and won a large settlement. Obligated to star in two more films of the studio's choosing as part of his settlement, he was handed a role in the dreadful sci-fi horror Creature of Destruction (1968), an inferior remake of The She-Creature (1956). The second film was never made.

Now freelancing on his own, he made a quick return to film. He played an amusingly arrogant Freddy-like character in Disney's The Happiest Millionaire (1967); received second billing to 'Chuck Connors (I) in the adventure The Proud and Damned (1972) (made in 1968); and co-starred in the underwater saga Black Water Gold (1970), which was filmed almost entirely in Nassau, Grand Bahamas, with a company that included Keir Dullea, Bradford Dillman, Ricardo Montalban, France Nuyen and Lana Wood. On Catalina Island, he went on to shoot Joseph Conrad's famous short story The Secret Sharer (1973) with David Soul of Starsky and Hutch (1975). Aron gained added exposure in a number of the popular TV shows of the day, including The Beverly Hillbillies (1962), Get Smart (1965), The F.B.I. (1965), Family Affair (1966), Lassie (1954) and Love, American Style (1969). On stage, he worked in a couple of local Equity productions and appeared with Virginia Mayo in a production of "Cactus Flower". In the meantime, his face became familiar in scores of TV commercials. Disappointed in the long run by a decade of work that seemed to amount to very little and the steady decline of quality filming altogether, Aron decided to remove himself from the Hollywood rat race, lease his home and move to San Francisco in 1972 to refocus on painting. After a brief bartending job, he was spotted by a top West Coast female modeling agency, Sabina Models, and became their only male client, appearing in hosts of billboards, newspaper ads and magazines. Within two years time, he was working with the famed Nina Blanchard Agency, the best modeling firm in Southern California, and found significant representation in several large cities. His modeling peak, however, came with his signing with Wilhelmina and her New York agency, landing his first interview with them on the New Year's cover of New York magazine. For the next 20 years, Aron worked as one of the top photography and runway models. An on-camera spokesman, he pitched everything from after-shave lotion to Cadillac automobiles. Movie and TV acting assignments began to come his way again with parts in Gable and Lombard (1976), Cannonball! (1976), Planet Earth (1974) and Brave New World (1980). In the early 1980, he extended his talents into animation and lent his voice to such projects as The Smurfs (1981), The New Adventures of Jonny Quest (1986), Batman Returns (1992) The Animated Series, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) and Walt Disney's DuckTales (1987).

In 1995, on his 55th birthday, Aron completely dropped out of the limelight, opting for early retirement and recommitting himself to art. He resides, as he has for quite some time, at his 1917 Benedict Canyon hunting lodge where he specializes in old Hollywood portraits and caricatures and in landscapes and seascapes of California and Italy.