Victor "Vic" Morrow (February 14, 1929 – July 23, 1982) was an American actor whose credits include a starring role in the 1960s television series Combat!, prominent roles in a handful of other television and cinema dramas, and numerous guest roles on television. He and two children died when a stunt helicopter crashed on them during the filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie.

Early life

Morrow was born in the Bronx, (New York) to a middle class Jewish family,^[1] the son of Jean (née Kress) and Harry Morrow, an electrical engineer.^[2] When he was 17, Morrow dropped out of high school and joined the U.S. Navy.

Career

Morrow's first movie role was in Blackboard Jungle (1955), after which he went into television. Later, he guest starred on John Payne's NBC western series, The Restless Gun. On April 16, 1959, he appeared in the premiere of NBC's 1920s crime drama The Lawless Years in the episode "The Nick Joseph Story". Morrow then appeared from 1960–1961 as Joe Cannon in three episodes of NBC's The Outlaws with Barton MacLane. On October 6, 1961, he appeared in an episode of the ABC drama series Target: The Corruptors! with Stephen McNally and Robert Harland. He appeared in two episodes of both The Untouchables and Bonanza. (He was memorably cast in the early Bonanza episode The Avenger as a mysterious figure known only as 'Lassiter' - named after his origin town - who arrives in Virginia City, and helps save Ben and Adam Cartwright from an unjust hanging, while eventually gunning down one sought-after man revealing himself as a hunter of a lynch mob who killed his father; having so far got about half the mob, he rides off into the night,^[3] an episode that resembles the later Clint Eastwood film High Plains Drifter). Morrow later appeared in the third season Bonanza episode The Tin Badge.^[4]

Morrow also appeared in Hawaii Five-O, The Streets of San Francisco, McCloud, and Sarge, among many other TV guest roles.

He was cast in the lead role of Sergeant "Chip" Saunders in ABC's Combat!, a World War II drama, which aired from 1962–1967. Pop culture scholar Gene Santoro has written, "TV's longest-running World War II drama (1962-67) was really a collection of complex 50-minute movies. Salted with battle sequences, they follow a squad's travails from D-Day on--a gritty ground-eye view of men trying to salvage their humanity and survive. Melodrama, comedy, and satire come into play as Lieutenant Hanley (Rick Jason) and Sergeant Saunders (Vic Morrow) lead their men toward Paris... The relentlessness hollows antihero Saunders out: at times, you can see the tombstones in his eyes."^[5]

He also worked as a television director. Together with Leonard Nimoy, he produced a 1966 version of Deathwatch, an English language film version of Jean Genet's play Haute Surveillance, adapted by Morrow and Barbara Turner, directed by Morrow, and starring Nimoy. After Combat! ended, he worked in several films. Morrow appeared in two episodes of Australian-produced anthology series The Evil Touch (1973), one of which he also directed. He memorably 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 1974 TV film The California Kid, and had a key role in the 1976 comedy The Bad News Bears. He also played Injun Joe in 1973 telefilm Tom Sawyer, which was filmed in Upper Canada Village. A musical version was released in theaters that same year.

Morrow wrote and directed a 1970 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^[6] with desert-like settings that were highly evocative of the Southwestern United States.

Personal life

Family

Vic Morrow married actress and screenwriter Barbara Turner, with whom he had two daughters: actress Jennifer Jason Leigh and Carrie Ann Morrow. Morrow's marriage to Barbara lasted seven years and ended in divorce in 1964. He did not remarry until 1975, over a decade later, when he courted Gale Lester (currently Gale Morrow Butler). They were married for five years and were separated just prior to Morrow's death.

Morrow had a falling out with his daughter Jennifer Jason Leigh following his divorce from her mother; Leigh changed her last name as a teenager to avoid being publicly associated with Morrow. They remained estranged at the time of his death.^[7]

Relationships with other actors

His friend and fellow actor on Combat!, Rick Jason, wrote in his memoirs,

Vic 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. On one of the few days we got off early while there were still several hours of daylight left, I said to him, "I've got a couple of shotguns in the back of my station wagon. You want to shoot some skeet?"
Without so much as a pause he responded, "No, thanks. I can't stand to kill clay."
He knew he could always break me up and during our five years together he did it quite a bit. His sense of humor happened to tickle my funny bone and he knew he had my number."^[8]

In his memoirs, Jason also 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.

Death

In the early morning hours of July 23, 1982, Morrow and two children, Myca Dinh Le (age 7), and Renee Shin-Yi Chen (age 6), died in an accident while filming on location for the Twilight Zone: The Movie in Ventura County, California, between Santa Clarita and Piru. 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 Holocaust victim, a black man about to be lynched by the Ku Klux Klan, and a Vietnamese man about to be killed by U.S. soldiers. Morrow, Le, and Chen were filming a scene for the Vietnam sequence in which their characters attempt to escape from a pursuing U.S. Army helicopter out of a deserted Vietnamese village. The helicopter was hovering at about 24 feet above them when pyrotechnic explosions damaged it and caused it to crash on top of them, killing all three instantly. Morrow and Dinh were decapitated by the helicopter rotor. Chen was crushed by a helicopter strut.^[9][10]

Morrow is interred in Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California.^[11]

Director John Landis and four other defendants, including pilot Dorsey Wingo, were ultimately acquitted of involuntary manslaughter after a nearly nine-month trial. The parents of Le and Chen sued and settled out of court for an undisclosed amount. Morrow's children also sued and settled for an undisclosed amount.^[12][10]

Partial filmography

Award nominations