Don Adams U.S.M.C. Who knew?

[Chuck Dye]

I used the term SATC in the company of some teens and got blank stares, then challenges on a reference to Sex And The City.  I had to explain Maxwell Smart and "Sorry about that, Chief."  A little later, I was told to check Adams's bio.

"Born Donald James Yarmy on April 13, 1923 [correct, despite frequently reported erroneous dates] in New York City to Irish-Hungarian parents, Adams prepared for a career as a commercial artist. He joined the U.S. Marines in the early days of World War II. He saw combat in the invasion of Guadalcanal and was the only survivor of his platoon. He contracted blackwater fever and nearly died, remaining hospitalized for more than a year. After his recovery he served as a drill instructor."

So much for the comedy!

[RocketMan]

I had no idea.  Semper Fi and RIP Marine.

[T.O.M.]

So many celebrities and athletes set aside their careers to serve during WWII, and not just in stateside roles, but in the combat theaters.  Wonder if there are any like that in Hollywood anymore? 

[Chuck Dye]

So many celebrities and athletes set aside their careers to serve during WWII, and not just in stateside roles, but in the combat theaters.  Wonder if there are any like that in Hollywood anymore? 

I suspect that, given a clear cut cause such as WWII, we might find our resources stronger than the "kids-these-days..." geezers guess, even among the entertainers.  Just don't ask me to name names.

[230RN]

Oh, just off the top of my head...

Sterling Hayden served behind the lines as an OSS operator.

Charlie Callas was in the service and did well with the .45.  Somewhere there's a pic of him with a 1911.

David Niven was a graduate of Sandhurst (roughly equivalent to West Point) and gave up his movie career for a while to serve with the British Armed Forces.

Bea Arthur ("Maude") was a Marine.

Drew Carey was a Marine.  (I'm told there's no such thing as a "former Marine."  Once you're a Marine, you're always a Marine, but never a "soldier.")

Ted Williams, of course, was a Marine fighter pilot.

I think Lee Marvin was wounded on one of those Iwos in the Pacific.

Others, of course.

Many of those in show biz served in entertainment groups in WWII, but there were many of them in the actual battlegrounds.

Terry

[vaskidmark]

I suspect that, given a clear cut cause such as WWII, we might find our resources stronger than the "kids-these-days..." geezers guess, even among the entertainers.  Just don't ask me to name names.

Respectfully, I disagree - and I blame the very heroes we are talking about.  They were double survivors - The Great Depression and WWII.  They had tremendous incentive to want their children to not have to go through what they had gone through.  Baby Boomers were possibly the first generation  of Americans where, in general, it was not necessary to send at least one child out to work to help support the family - including farming families.  Boomers had the leisure to become hippies, and the influence that had on American society was/is immense.  There is a string leading directly from Haight-Ashbury to Milie Cyrus.

This is not to say that most American kids are as bad as she and her ilk.  It is to say that there is a lot of what makes her that has to be overcome in the "kids".  We have seen a bit of that with those who stood up and joined up after 9/11/01 because there was nothing else that offered any opportunity to defend their country from a second attack.  Their hearts and minds were in the right place - it was their country that was unable to step up and provide them some way of actually accomplishing what they wanted to.  But OBL and al Qida and the Taliban are not Hitler and Tojo who held territory we could battle over and would agree that when their territory was taken away from them they had lost.  (For the sake of remaining polite we will sort of gloss over the whole politics of the Vietnam War.)

Which, I think, brings be finally to my point - that the distance between the fringe and the mainstream is getting smaller.  At one time Milie Cyrus and Justin Beiber and such would have had to join a freak show to sustain themselves.  Some of the hipper-hoppier would just be gunned down as so much trash without kids ever wanting to grow up to be just like them.  As I sit here typing this the thought has flashed across what passes for my brain - was Ed Sullivan the one who caused all of today's ills by bringing Elvis and The Beatles into otherwise innocent livingrooms?

(OK, that's a clear sign I need to quit.  But everything up to that point remains pretty valid.)

stay safe.

[Chuck Dye]

If you want to take that path then you might blame those very same "double survivors" for abdicating their parental duties in favor of the media (does the phrase "great one-eyed babysitter" strike a familiar note?), the government, or almost anyone raising the kids.  Given the need for a "a clear cut cause such as WWII" to test my hypothesis, I'll forgo a real test.

[tokugawa]

If you want to take that path then you might blame those very same "double survivors" for abdicating their parental duties in favor of the media (does the phrase "great one-eyed babysitter" strike a familiar note?), the government, or almost anyone raising the kids.  Given the need for a "a clear cut cause such as WWII" to test my hypothesis, I'll forgo a real test.

 I have heard that- and there is a tiny bit of truth there-but they also did not realize the trusted institutions that were educating their children had been taken over by the enemy and turned into leftist indoctrination camps.

[Tallpine]

I have heard that- and there is a tiny bit of truth there-but they also did not realize the trusted institutions that were educating their children had been taken over by the enemy and turned into leftist indoctrination camps.

Some of us thought something didn't smell right even way back then, but finally twisted free of the propaganda.

[Chuck Dye]

...but they also did not realize...

Could that be because they weren't doing their jobs as parents?   

Forgive me, in such a discussion it is all too easy to come up with such slams.  For an overdose demonstration, tune in to almost any commercial talk radio program.

[Chuck Dye]

A better writer than I pointed out a major part of the problem:

"...all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

Thomas Jefferson recognized that slope, slippery or otherwise.

[K Frame]

Eddie Albert was a Navy veteran and was at the Battle of Tarawa, for which he was awarded the Bronze Star.

Jimmy Stewart few 20 millions in Europe as a bomber pilot, and was later a Brigadier General in the Air National Guard.

Charles Durning was in the Normandy Invasion and was later wounded at the Battle of the Bulge, and was almost killed when the SS massacred US troops at Malmedy.

James Arness was wounded at Anzio and was awarded the Bronze Star.

Mel Brooks was a combat engineer in Europe.

Jack Palance flew bomber missions in Europe and was almost killed when his plane crashed in Britain.

[White Horseradish]

Patrick Macnee (John Steed in the Avengers) was a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy and was awarded the Atlantic Star

Mel Brooks was a forward observer and was at the Battle of the Bulge.

Alan Alda really served in Korea (Army, I think)

Rod Serling was awarded a Bronze Star

James Doohan got his finger blown off on D-Day, and was also known as "the craziest pilot in Canadian AF".



There is also this interesting tendency amongst British entertainers to have served in intelligence...

[Scout26]

While Tokaguwa and Chuck Day make somewhat valid points, the real reason is "coddling".  

The "Greatest Generation" had to struggle to survive both the Great Depression and WWII  (Quite a few did not make it through either.)  I sit back in amazement of what my father went through just growing up in the Great Depression as one of three children to a widowed mother.

Human beings have to go through hardship, struggles, and deprivation to come out the other side better people.   The parents of the 50's, 60's and into the 70's had been through Hell growing up.  They didn't want their kids to have to suffer the way they did.  So we ended up with Spoiled Brat Generation of the 60's and 70's and the Even Worse Spoiled Brats of the 80's and 90's.  Followed by the Millennials, who simply take the cake.

American kids (for the most part) have had everything handed to them on a platter (Silver in most cases.)  There is no hardship, there is no suffering.  Anyone who is the parent of teenage girls understands this.  In the absence of real struggle and hardship, teenage girls create "Drama", in 99.999999999% of the instances, the reason for tears, screaming, etc. is over perceived slights, and suo shee (there are nuances of meaning) incidents.  

As an example, I coached my daughters softball teams, each year we had a draft.  Her Sophomore year, I drafted her team and when I got home she asked to see the list.  There was much screaming and gnashing of teeth (a garment might have been rendered also) and she went flying to her room in tears.  I followed and asked what the problem was.  She pointed to a name of my draft list and said "She said something mean about me in 4th grade."  I said "Really?!?!  Seriously?!?!  THAT WAS 6 YEARS AGO, LET IT GO !!!!" But all that season, there was an unresolved hostility between the two that did nothing but damage team morale.  What a bunch of gosa.

My son has the opportunity to spend a week on a working farm next summer.  While I don't expect them to hook him up to a breadboard plow and have him plow the back forty, I do expect them to put him to work with typical farm chores so that he gains an appreciation of the daily work involved that supplies him his food.  

Struggle and hardship, overcoming real challenges.  That's what made America great.

[Tallpine]

The original hippies/beatniks would have been born in the depression and war years.

[vaskidmark]

The original hippies/beatniks would have been born in the depression and war years.

They were.  And generally did not become beatnicks or hippies until after the war ended.  Both lifestyles were responses to what humankind had just emerged from and the reasons they thought had created the situations they had suffered and survived.

To carry things back a generation, the parents of beatnicks and hippies belonged to the flapper generation, which was in great part in response to the horrors of The Great War.

Which in great part was in response to anarchists and labor unions and the beginnings of woman's sufferage (didn't think I had the guts to bring that up, did you?) tearing apart empires and principalities.

Which in great part developed in response to .....

If you carry it back far enough, it is all Eve's fault.   (If you are not derived from Judeo-Christian thought, insert your own fall from grace story here.  If you are not Eurocentric in origin, insert your own world history here.)

Certain theories of chaos and organizations suggest that we are presently nearing a tipping point where the world can no llonger sustain doing your own thing.  Only the perversely curious part of me wants to see what comes up to save us from our long line of drifting from whatever ideal we may have drifted from.  The rest of me too easily recalls the most recent iterations of Europe and Asia and South America and Africa, and wonders why the USA and Canada seem to have avoided most of that tsuris.

stay safe.

[Tallpine]

it is all Eve's fault

She had a fistful of apples 

[lee n. field]

There is also this interesting tendency amongst British entertainers to have served in intelligence...

Christopher Lee

[White Horseradish]

Christopher Lee

Also Jon Pertwee (third Doctor).  He was in Naval Intelligence, together with Ian Fleming. 

Patrick Troughton, the second Doctor, was a Navy Lt., awarded the Atlantic Star.

[K Frame]

"Alan Alda really served in Korea (Army, I think)"

Nope, at least not that I can find. He was in ROTC, spent a year in service at Ft. Benning, and spent 6 months in the Army Reserve. He was born in 1936, and would have been on the edge of military service at the end of the Korean War.

[White Horseradish]

"Alan Alda really served in Korea (Army, I think)"

Nope, at least not that I can find. He was in ROTC, spent a year in service at Ft. Benning, and spent 6 months in the Army Reserve. He was born in 1936, and would have been on the edge of military service at the end of the Korean War.

Heh. Chalk another one up to rumors...

[Levant]

Boomers had the leisure to become hippies, and the influence that had on American society was/is immense.  There is a string leading directly from Haight-Ashbury to Milie Cyrus.

I hung out at the corner of Haight and Ashbury in 1969, 1970, 1971 but I had nothing to do with creating Miley Cyrus, I swear it.

[230RN]

Thanks to those who added others to the list of the famous folks who served.  As I said, it was just off the top of my head.

[JN01]

His is a remarkable story of survival. As a 21-year-old infantryman, Private Charles Durning was in the first wave of soldiers to land on Omaha Beach during the D-Day invasion of Normandy. He was the only man to survive a machine-gun ambush. Despite suffering serious machine gun and shrapnel wounds, Durning killed seven German gunners to survive D-Day.

Several months later, in Belgium, Durning was stabbed eight times by a bayonet-wielding teenage German soldier. That day, he survived by killing the German with a rock in hand-to-hand combat. Durning recovered from those wounds and was released from the hospital just in time to fight in the Battle of the Bulge, where he was taken prisoner.

Charles Durning was one of only three men to survive the infamous massacre of American POWs at Malmedy, Belgium. He and two others escaped, and the rest were murdered. Durning was obliged to return with American troops to identify the bodies of his fellow prisoners.

He was one tough SOB.

Dale Dye (who has been in a zillion movies cast as an officer, currently plays Porter on Falling Skies)was a career Marine who spent 4 or 5 years in Vietnam in numerous combat operations. 13 years as enlisted before becoming an officer.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

Iirc james coburn survived 3 island attacks in the pacific where caualties ran about 30% on each one

damn phone