Wayne Morris

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Wayne Morris, Hero and Movie Star.


Born in Pasadena in 1914, he played football in high school.  His acting debut was the movie China Clipper.  His breakthrough film was Kid Galahad, with Bette Davis, Eddie G. and Humphrey Bogart.  While filming Flight Angels in 1940 he became interested in flying and joined the Naval Reserve.  He put his career on hold for the war, shot down seven (7) Jap fighters, probably Zeros, and earned four (4) Distinguished Flying Crosses.  Considered too big for fighters, he went to his uncle in law, Commander David McCampbell, and got in.  He flew with the V-15, the famed McCampbell Heroes.  He continued his film career and dropped dead on the bridge of the USS Bon Homme Richard in 1959.

(An aside. As a Navy flyer he would not have gotten the DSC but rather the Navy Cross.  I ain't gonna go to the mat on this one, quien sabe?  Maybe he did, but I think it would have been the Navy version).




Kid Galahad.





He was in quite a few oaters.




Plunder Road, top notch noir.  And it has Elisha Cook Jr. in it.  Bonus!





Elisha Cook Jr.  does his thing.  But the best role of Wayne's life was that of a cowardly French officer who gets men killed by fucking up a simple patrol.




Lt. Roget.  Paths of Glory. D. Stanley Kubrick.




Timothy Carey, scapegoat.

https://youtu.be/KJDkLgwJopQ




His C.O. knows that Roget is lying and so he puts the pusillanimous officer in charge of the firing squad.  Roget tries to beg off but Col. Dax. tells him "Denied. Congratulations.  The job's yours".





Joseph Turkel, Timothy Carey and Ralph Meeker are executed to save the face of a vicious fool of a
 general, ably played by George Macready.






My acting teacher, the good one, used to say you don't get a drunk to play a drunk.  Well, Kubrick doubled down on that.  Morris was a real stud.





Adieu, M. Wayne.  Bon Voyage!
 



Kirk Douglas, George Macready, and Richard Anderson.  Macready and Anderson turn in stunning performances as the two most despicable officers ever put on the screen.  Oh, and George's scar is real, he got that in a model T accident in college.
Paths of Glory was based on an incident known as The Four Corporals of Suippes.

 

 Monument to the Four Corporals, Sartilly cemetery.
 

              The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r, 

                   And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
 
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour. 

            The paths of glory lead but to the grave. 
 
          Elegy Written In A Country Graveyard, Thomas Gray.  1750.
 
Rabbit infantry picture from Poilus, Isart Digital.  2016.  A poilu is a hairy person.
 

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