Vic Morrow

Vic Morrow was an American actor. He first gained attention for the role of juvenile delinquent Artie West in his debut film Blackboard Jungle. He later came to prominence as one of the leads of the ABC drama series Combat!, which earned him an Emmy Awards|Emmy] nomination for Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actor in a Series. Active on screen for over three decades, his film roles include Blackboard Jungle, King Creole, God's Little Acre, Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, and The Bad News Bears. Morrow continued acting up to his death during filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie when he and two child actors were killed in a helicopter crash on set.

Early life

Morrow was born in the Bronx, New York City, the son of Harry Morrow, an electrical engineer, and Eugenia "Jean". Harry and Eugenia were Russian Jewish immigrants. Morrow dropped out of high school when he was 17 and enlisted in the United States Navy. Morrow and his family lived in Asbury Park, New Jersey for many years.

Career

After his military service, Morrow earned his diploma through attending night school and enrolled at Florida Southern College on the G.I. Bill, intending to study pre-law. While there, he became interested in acting after appearing in a student production of I Remember Mama. He dropped pre-law to study at Mexico City College, where he acted in bilingual performances of plays by writers including Shakespeare and Moliere. He then relocated to New York City, where he worked in theater before joining Paul Mann's acting workshop for two years. Per his instructor's request, he did not act professionally during this time, instead driving a taxi to make money.
Morrow attracted attention playing Stanley Kowalski in a touring production of A Streetcar Named Desire.

''Blackboard Jungle'' and typecasting

His first movie role was in Blackboard Jungle, playing a thug student who torments teacher Glenn Ford. He signed a contract with MGM in 1955 due to the success of the film, and his breakout performance as Artie West. However, according to Morrow, many of the roles offered to him by MGM after Blackboard Jungle were "switch blade parts." Morrow parted with MGM in 1956 due to this reason, adding that to "be typed isn't good for an actor like me." Morrow said that independent studios offered him similar tough guy and juvenile delinquent roles; "I turned them down until I ran out of money."
MGM afterward put Morrow in Tribute to a Bad Man. Morrow appeared on television, guest starring on shows like The Millionaire, Matinee Theatre, Climax!, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Restless Gun, Trackdown, Richard Diamond, Private Detective, Magnum P.I. and Telephone Time.
Morrow had supporting roles in Men in War, directed by Anthony Mann, and was third billed in Hell's Five Hours. He starred alongside Elvis Presley and an all-star supporting cast including Walter Matthau and Carolyn Jones in the movie King Creole, directed by Michael Curtiz. Mann asked him back for God's Little Acre.
A Man Called Sledge is a 1970 Italian spaghetti Western film starring James Garner in an extremely offbeat role as a grimly hardened thief, and featuring Dennis Weaver, Claude Akins and Wayde Preston. The film was written by Vic Morrow and Frank Kowalski, and directed by Morrow in Techniscope.
However, Morrow remained mostly a television actor, appearing in Naked City, Wichita Town, The Rifleman, The Lineup, Johnny Ringo, The Brothers Brannagan, The Law and Mr. Jones, The Lawless Years, The Barbara Stanwyck Show, General Electric Theatre, Target: The Corruptors, The Tall Man, Outlaws, Bonanza, and The Untouchables.
He was cast in the early Bonanza episode "The Avenger" as a mysterious figure known only as "Lassiter" – named after his town of origin – who arrives in Virginia City. He helps save Ben and Adam Cartwright from an unjust hanging, while eventually gunning down one sought-after man, revealing himself as the hunter of a lynch mob who killed his father. Having so far killed about half the mob, he rides off into the night, in an episode that resembles the later Clint Eastwood film High Plains Drifter. Morrow later appeared in the third season Bonanza episode "The Tin Badge".
Mann used Morrow a third time in Cimarron, again tormenting Glenn Ford. He took on Audie Murphy in Posse from Hell.
Morrow was cast as soldier-engineer Lt. Robert Benson in the 1962 episode "A Matter of Honor" on the syndicated anthology series Death Valley Days, hosted by Stanley Andrews. The story focuses on Benson's fiancée, Indiana, who tries to persuade him to boost their income by selling inside Army information to criminal real estate moguls like Joseph Hooker. Trevor Bardette and Meg Wyllie were cast in the roles of Captain and Mrs. Warner.
Morrow had his first leading role in Portrait of a Mobster playing Dutch Schultz.
He continued as mostly a television actor, appearing in Death Valley Days, Alcoa Premiere, and Suspense.

''Combat!''

Morrow was cast in the lead role of Sergeant "Chip" Saunders in ABC's Combat!, a World War II drama, which aired from 1962 to 1967. Pop culture scholar Gene Santoro has written:
His friend and fellow actor on Combat!, Rick Jason, described Morrow as "a master director" who directed "one of the greatest anti-war films I've ever seen". He was referring to the two-part episode of Combat! entitled "Hills Are for Heroes", which was written by Gene L. Coon.

''Deathwatch'' and ''A Man Called Sledge''

Morrow also worked as a television director. Together with Leonard Nimoy, he produced the 1965 film Deathwatch, an English-language film version of Jean Genet's play Deathwatch, adapted by Morrow and Barbara Turner, directed by Morrow, and starring Nimoy.
After Combat! ended, Morrow played the lead in Target: Harry, the pilot for a proposed series that was not picked up; Roger Corman directed.
In 1969, he set up his own company, Carleigh, which was named after his daughters Carrie Ann and Jennifer Leigh.
Morrow wrote and directed a spaghetti Western, produced by Dino DeLaurentiis, titled A Man Called Sledge and starring James Garner, Dennis Weaver and Claude Akins. After Deathwatch, it was Morrow's first and only big screen outing behind the camera. Sledge was filmed in Italy with desert-like settings that were highly evocative of the Southwestern United States.
Morrow guest starred in The Immortal, Dan August, Hawaii Five-O, Mannix, Sarge, McCloud, and Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law.

TV movies

In the 1970s, Morrow starred in some television movies including A Step Out of Line, Travis Logan, D.A. , River of Mystery, The Glass House, The Weekend Nun, Tom Sawyer, and Nightmare.
He guest starred in Ironside, The Bold Ones: The New Doctors, Mission: Impossible, The FBI, Love Story, The Streets of San Francisco, and Police Story.
Morrow appeared in two episodes of Australian-produced anthology series The Evil Touch, one of which he also directed.
He played the wily local sheriff in director John Hough's road classic Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, as well as the homicidal sheriff, alongside Martin Sheen, in the television film The California Kid, and The Take.
Morrow had the lead in Funeral for an Assassin. He had key roles in Death Stalk, Wanted: Babysitter, The Night That Panicked America, Treasure of Matecumbe and had a key role as aggressive, competitive baseball coach Roy Turner, in the comedy The Bad News Bears. Morrow said he took the role in The Bad News Bears "because of the ending when my character asks Walter Matthau why the kids don't like him. The scene really worked for me and felt good. Then it was taken out of the final film."
In the late 1970s, Morrow worked increasingly in miniseries such as Captains and the Kings, Roots and The Last Convertible, as well as guest starring on shows like Bronc, Hunter, The Littlest Hobo, and Charlie's Angels.
He returned to directing, helming episodes of Quincy, M.E. as well as Lucan and Walt [Disney's Wonderful World of Color].

Final roles

Morrow had the lead in The Ghost of Cypress Swamp, the Japanese film Message from Space and The Evictors. He was in TV movies The Man with the Power, The Hostage Heart, Curse of the Black Widow, Wild and Wooly, Stone, and Paris
Morrow made Humanoids from the Deep for Roger Corman and The Last Shark ; and had a regular role in the series, B.A.D. Cats.
Morrow's last roles included guest roles in Charlie's Angels, Magnum, P.I., and the films 1990: The Bronx Warriors and Abenko Green Berets.

Personal life

From 1957 to 1964, Morrow was married to actress and screenwriter Barbara Turner. They had two daughters, Carrie Ann Morrow and actress Jennifer Jason Leigh. He married Gale Lester in 1975; they separated just prior to Morrow's death in July 1982.
Morrow fell out with his daughter Jennifer after his divorce from her mother. She changed her last name to Leigh and they were still estranged at the time of his death. Leigh stated in a 2018 interview: "my father was very difficult... We were not close. It's hard. I don't really talk about my father publicly, because there are a lot of people that really love him very, very much – his work as an actor. I don't want to disabuse them their admiration." Leigh named a desire to understand her father as well as her sister Carrie, who she described as a "drug addict", as inspirations for her to pursue acting.
Morrow had a much closer relationship to his other daughter Carrie; according to her widow Kathy Lopez, Carrie had encouraged Morrow to continue to pursue different acting opportunities and take the role in The Twilight Zone during filming of which he was killed. Lopez stated that Carrie "felt responsible for encouraging him. Survivor's guilt. They were best friends. They were really, really close."
While living in New York, Morrow befriended fellow actor Louis Gossett Jr., who later worked with him in Roots. Gossett Jr., who played Fiddler in the series, would later describe Morrow as his "good friend" and "one of the greatest actors ever". He recounted that before filming a scene in Roots in which Morrow's character whips Kunta Kinte, Morrow apologized to both Gossett Jr. and Burton for the scene's nature. Though the whip was in reality made of felt, Gossett Jr. was so moved by the scene, which he described as the most emotional scene of his career, that he improvised Fiddler's famous next line, "there's gonna be another day", as he comforted Kunta.
Rick Jason, co-star of Combat!, wrote in his memoirs that Morrow "had an absolute dislike of firearms. He used a Thompson submachine gun in our series, but that was work. In any other respect he'd have nothing to do with them."

Death

In 1982, Morrow was cast in a feature role in Twilight Zone: The Movie in a segment directed by John Landis. Morrow was playing the role of Bill Connor, a racist who is taken back in time and placed in various situations where he would be a persecuted victim: as a Jewish man in Vichy France, a Black man about to be lynched by the Ku Klux Klan and a Vietnamese man about to be killed by U.S. soldiers.
In the early hours of July 23, 1982, Morrow and two child actors, seven-year-old Myca Dinh Le and six-year-old Renee Shin-Yi Chen, were filming on location in California in an area that was known as Indian Dunes near Santa Clarita. They were performing a scene for the Vietnam sequence, in which their characters attempt to escape out of a deserted Vietnamese village from a pursuing U.S. Army helicopter. The helicopter was hovering about above them when a fireball from special effect pyrotechnic explosions reportedly caused damage to the helicopter rotor and caused the tail rotors to separate from the aircraft causing the helicopter to plummet and crash on top of them, killing all three instantly. Morrow and Le were decapitated and mutilated by the helicopter rotor blades, while Chen was crushed by a helicopter skid.
Morrow's daughters sued several parties for negligence and wrongful death and were each awarded an out-of-court settlement of $850,000 by Warner Bros. Studios. Landis and four other defendants, including the helicopter pilot Dorcey Wingo, were charged with involuntary manslaughter but were ultimately acquitted after a ten-month trial. The parents of Le and Chen also sued and settled out of court for $2 million each.
Morrow's remains are interred in Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California. The epitaph for his grave, written by Carrie Ann Morrow, reads "I loved him as 'Dad'; to everyone else he was 'Vic.