William Joseph Bell (March 6, 1927 – April 29, 2005) was the creator and executive producer of the extremely successful soap operas The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful.

He started out as a comedy writer at WBBM-TV in Chicago, and one day he made a call to Irna Phillips' secretary Rose Cooperman asking her "Does Irna have an opening?" Rose said Irna did have an opening. By the time he got there it turned out the guy who was leaving decided to stay. About two years later William J. Bell was in advertising business and he ran into Irna's niece. She mentioned him to Irna and Ms. Phillips remembered who he was; she also knew his wife, who was a celebrity in Chicago at that time. He started out at $75 a week and ended up living in what once was Howard Hawkes' villa. His mother regularly listened to radio soap operas: Life Can Be Beautiful, The Romance of Helen Trent, Our Gal Sunday and Guiding Light. He started his writing career on Guiding Light and then moved over to As the World Turns, working under the legendary "Queen of Soaps," Irna Phillips; Phillips' other protegee at the time was Agnes Nixon. Bell co-created Another World with Phillips in 1964. In 1965 he co-created the primetime ATWT spinoff Our Private World.

In 1966, he was hired as head writer of the then-struggling soap Days of our Lives. Bell was credited with the show's initial surge of popularity. He stayed as head writer until 1975. He intended to leave several years earlier but the show sued him and he agreed to write long-term story projections for them.