Victor "Vic" Morrow

Victor "Vic" Morrow (February 14, 1929 – July 23, 1982) died at the age of 53. 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 film dramas, and numerous guest roles on television. Morrow and two child actors were killed in 1982 when a stunt helicopter crashed on them during the filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie.

Morrow 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 top-billed 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."

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.

Morrow 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, as aggressive, competitive baseball coach Roy Turner, in the 1976 comedy The Bad News Bears. He also played Injun Joe in the 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[9] with desert-like settings that were highly evocative of the Southwestern United States.

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

In 1971 Vic Morrow starred in a T.V. movie, produced by QM Productions for CBS entitled Travis Logan, D.A.. This movie was a pilot for a proposed weekly legal series in which he was to star. While many critics liked the show, ratings were low, and the pilot was never sold as a series. It has never released to home video.

In 1982, Morrow was cast in a feature role in Twilight Zone: The Movie, 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 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.

In the early morning hours of July 23, 1982, Morrow and two children, 7-year-old Myca Dinh Le, and 6-year-old Renee Shin-Yi Chen, were filming on location in California in what had been known as Indian Dunes, which is between Santa Clarita and Piru. They were performing in 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 (7.3 m) 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.

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.