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After accumulating experience at the Pasadena Playhouse, William Wright launched his film career in the late '30s. Signed to a Columbia contract in 1942, Wright showed up in roles of varying sizes in the studio's crime melodramas and Ann Miller musicals. Drafted into the army in 1945, Wright had trouble re-establishing himself upon his return to Hollywood a year later. He played detective Philo Vance in one PRC production of 1947, but was replaced by Alan Curtis in the studio's next two Vance mysteries. William Wright died of cancer at the age of 47.