Dr. William Meyer Wanamaker

WANAMAKER, Dr. William Meyer (1917- 2006)
Dr. William Meyer Wanamaker 89; brother of actor-director Sam Wanamaker of he London, England and Globe Shakespeare Centre. Dr. William Meyer Wanamaker, who was a long time internist/cardiologist affiliated with Cedars Sinai Hospital and practiced medicine in Beverly Hills-West Hollywood and was a board member of the Western Region Globe Shakespeare Center, died Tuesday night, August 29th at Century City Hospital in Los Angeles California. He was 89. Wanamaker had been battling heart disease and other complications for several months. Born in Chicago Illinois on January 21, 1917, William Wanamaker, the brother of famed actor-director Sam Wanamaker grew up there in the 1920s and 1930s during the turbulent times of depression and prohibition. In 1932 at the age of 15 Wanamaker got a job doing errands for the corner pharmacy. There he was fascinated with the drugs and began to learn their Latin names. He was soon elevated to apprentice pharmacist leading him to a future interest in medicine. Later on the brothers took on vastly different careers. One studied to become a doctor and the other an actor. ´Bill´ as he liked to be called went to the University of Illinois College of Medicine and Sam went to the famed Goodman Theatre of the Art Institute of Chicago. William graduated from the University of Illinois College of Medicine in 1943 and was inducted into the Navy. At this time he was immediately accepted at the Los Angeles County General Hospital and after the war continued his Residency training there before going to the USC and UCLA studying internal medicine and cardiology between 1947 and 1948. "Bill" Wanamaker interrupted his medical studies and started as a Lieutenant in a Navy medical unit to serve abroad. Before he left for sea he was married to actress Edith Slobodkin in 1944 He was a doctor-trainee on an armed troop ship in the Atlantic Ocean and by 1945 he found himself on a hospital ship in the Pacific Theater near the Philippine Islands. Wanamaker was honorably discharged from the U.S. Navy on July 13, 1954 having spent eleven years as a Naval officer. Dr. William Wanamaker went into private practice in Beverly Hills in 1952 and continued to practice until December of 2005. When his brother Sam Wanamaker came to Hollywood throughout the late 1950s and sixties, Bill Wanamaker was introduced into the Hollywood community and acted as technical advisor on several television shows and motion pictures such as "Playhouse 90", "Twilight Zone", "Outer Limits" among others. He cultivated a patient clientele and social life among the Hollywood elite such as Gene Barry, Elsa Lanchester, Ray Crash Corrigan, Col. Tim McCoy, Esther Williams among others. Dr. Wanamaker was the school doctor at Los Angeles City College for over twenty years and specialized in football injuries as well as for the theater arts department at the school. At the time of Sam´s death in 1993 William or ´Will´ as he then liked to be called, became a Board member of the Western Region of the International Shakespeare Center LA. Dr. William Meyer Wanamaker was on the American Board of Internal Medicine, American College of Physicians, UCLA, assistant clinical professor of medicine, United States Department of Health and Human Services, State of California Medical Board, Diplomate American Board of Internal Medicine, Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine. Will was instrumental in organizing a 3-day seminar at the Globe Theatre in London in 2002 on the topic of "Shakespeare and Medicine." Dr. William Wanamaker is survived by his wife of 62 years, two children, Marc Wanamaker and Lisa Wanamaker Lebowski and two grandchildren, Adam and Michelle.