Eight Surprising War Heroes

A lot of celebrity résumés include military service of one kind or another. In many cases, actors have used their military experience to help them play roles. For example, it will surprise precisely nobody to learn that R. Lee Ermey was a former Marine Corps drill sergeant. Even some less obvious veterans aren’t big surprises. If you’ve seen Henry Fonda’s excellent work in the title role of Mister Roberts, you have no problem imagining him deliberately avoiding service behind the lines (or not serving at all) and opting for combat duty. Which is exactly what he did in real life. Saying “I don’t want to be in a fake war in a studio,” he volunteered for duty aboard a destroyer, which eventually earned him the Bronze Star.

However, wartime service calls people from all walks of life, even folks who don’t seem like the military type. Such as these eight:

Julia Child – After being declared too tall to serve in the WACs or WAVES, Child signed up to work for the OSS. At first she was stuck with typing duty, but thanks to her intelligence and education she was swiftly promoted to top secret research. She worked directly for William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan for awhile, then aided in the development of repellent to keep sharks from setting off mines designed to deter U-boats. Eventually she was sent into the field, serving in Ceylon and China. She earned an Emblem of Meritorious Civilian Service for her efforts to coordinate secret communications.

Dr. Ruth Westheimer – The teeny (four feet seven inches) lady who makes a living dispensing sex advice in books and on talk shows? Well, everyone has a past. Hers includes losing both parents in the Holocaust. After the war she emigrated to Palestine, where she joined the Haganah, the paramilitary force that would become the Israel Defense Forces after the country gained independence. Because of her height, she was trained as a sniper and scout. She was seriously injured by an explosion during the War of Independence in 1948, and after she recovered she emigrated to France and later to the United States.

Russell Johnson – The Professor from Gilligan’s Island was a war hero? Yep. During World War Two he served as a bombardier in B-25s. In March 1945 his plane was shot down during a low-level bombing run against Japanese targets in the Philippines. Johnson broke both ankles, and the radioman next to him was killed. He received the Purple Heart and several other medals. After the war he enlisted in the Army Reserve and used the G.I. Bill to help pay for acting school.

Alan Alda – The star of M*A*S*H, the most stridently anti-war show in broadcast television history, got his start after college in the Army Reserve. His enlistment included a six-month tour of duty as a gunnery officer during the Korean War.

Mel Brooks – As a comedic actor, writer and director, Brooks comes across as one of the world’s most harmless individuals. But during World War Two he was a corporal in the Army. He saw combat during the Battle of the Bulge and for awhile specialized in defusing land mines (which no doubt contributed to his sharp sense of humor).

Ted Knight – Sitcom fans everywhere remember Knight as semi-lovable doofus Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (or possibly as the grouchy dad on Too Close for Comfort). But before his acting career got underway, he dropped out of high school to enlist in the Army. Serving in the Combat Engineers, he saw enough action in Europe to earn five battle stars.

Donald Pleasance – He’s famous as nervous, non-macho Dr. Loomis in a handful of the Halloween movies, or perhaps for playing creepy bad guys ranging from Heinrich Himmler to Bond nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Though he started World War Two as a conscientious objector, he later changed his mind and enlisted in the RAF. He served as a tail gunner for a Lancaster bomber until his plane was shot down and the Germans took him prisoner. Rumor has it that during the shooting of The Great Escape (in which he played Flight Lt. Colin Blythe), Pleasance made a remark to director John Sturges about how one of his scenes should be played. Sturges was in the process of giving him a lecture about actors knowing their places when someone in the crew broke in and mentioned that Pleasance might know what he was talking about because he’d actually been in a POW camp.

Christopher Lee – Though he’s best known today for playing Dracula and other horror roles in Hammer movies, Lee did some scary duty in the Second World War. He enlisted early on and was part of a British force sent to help Finland defend against Soviet invasion in 1939. He went on to serve in several intelligence jobs, including the Long Range Desert Group in North Africa and the Special Operations Executive. In general he’s been reluctant to say much about the experience in interviews.

And here’s a bit of behind-the-scenes trivia about putting this list together. One of the leads I followed up was an old rumor that beloved, mild-mannered kiddie show host Fred Rogers was a sniper in Vietnam and always wore long-sleeved shirts or sweaters on his show to hide his military tattoos. No truth to it. Rogers was a lifelong pacifist, vegetarian and Presbyterian minister. However, rumors often prove to be facts confused in the retelling. So I checked into the backgrounds of some other well-known kids' show personalities to see if any of them were secret combat veterans.

The most logical place to start was Captain Kangaroo, what with his rank and all. This led to another rumor: supposedly Lee Marvin claimed in a Tonight Show interview that he served alongside Bob Keeshan at Iwo Jima. Wrong on both counts (or all three, as Marvin never made the claim). Keeshan was in the Army during World War Two, but he enlisted too late to see service overseas. For Marvin’s part, he couldn’t have been on Iwo Jima because he was in the hospital after being wounded in fighting on Saipan. Hugh “Mr. Greenjeans” Brannum was in the Marine Corps, but he served in the band rather than on the front lines.

I kinda hoped that one of the “gentle souls” on Sesame Street was secretly the rumored sniper. But again no. The closest any of the cast ever came to combat was Will “Mr. Hooper” Lee, who served in the Army’s entertainment division during the Second World War putting on plays and teaching acting in Manila and Australia. On the other hand, later he stood up to the House Un-American Activities Committee and was blacklisted for his trouble, not bravery under gunfire but bravery nonetheless.

The closest anyone in the kiddie show business comes to “war hero” is Bob Bell, who played Bozo the Clown for more than two decades. He couldn’t have been a sniper, at least in part because of vision loss in his right eye. Indeed, he faked his way through the USMC entrance testing in 1941 by memorizing the eye chart. When the Marines found out they gave him a medical discharge. But he turned around and joined the Navy, serving in the Pacific until 1946.