William Arthur Smith (Bill Smith) attended the Art Students League and the Grand Central Art School in New York, as well as the Ecole des Beaux Arts and the Academie de la Grande Chaumerie in Paris. He was a writer for the animation studios of Walter Lantz in the late 1930s. He did comic book art during the late 1930s, early 1940s. He contributed to features like 'Captain Cook of Scotland Yard', 'Race Keane', 'Yankee Eagle' and 'Navy Section' for Quality Comics titles, and also 'The King' and 'Red, White and Blue' for National/DC and 'Doc Savage' and 'The Shadow' for Street & Smith Comics. During the 1940s he was a regular artist for magazines like Boy's Life, the Saturday Evening Post, Good Housekeeping and McCall's. Later on, he focused on water color painting.