Combat! (1962)

 

The most successful World War II drama TV series (an important distinction, as the comedy Hogan's Heroes ran 1 season longer), Combat! was the brainchild of screenwriter Robert Pirosh, who had broken into feature films in the 1930s writing for Marx Brothers comedies A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races (he also reportedly made uncredited contributions to The Wizard of Oz). He continued working on comedies until serving in the U.S. Army as a sergeant during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. When he returned to Hollywood, he began writing screenplays based on his experiences, which were critically acclaimed for their authenticity. He won the 1950 Oscar for best screenplay as well as a Golden Globe for his 1949 feature Battleground, then followed that up with another Oscar nomination for his 1951 screenplay Go for Broke! about Japanese-American soldiers fighting for the U.S. in World War II. Pirosh then alternated between comedy and drama feature screenplays through the 1950s while also making his first foray into television with a script for a 1956 episode of Lux Video Theatre. In 1959 he wrote the pilot episode as well as another early Season 1 episode for the western series Laramie. In 1961 Pirosh crossed paths with TV producer Selig Seligman and proposed the idea of a World War II drama told from the perspective of the men on the ground, from the D-Day invasion of Normandy until the liberation of Paris.

Seligman also had a military background. After graduating at the top of his class from Harvard University Law School, Seligman had served as an attorney in the U.S. Army and was directly involved in the Nazi war crime trials at Nuremberg after the war. According to author Jo Davidsmeyer, Seligman was a cousin of ABC-TV president Leonard Goldenson, which might explain how he moved from law into TV. But according to Rick Jason, the two had been friends at Harvard Law. At some point Seligman worked as a buyer for a company that supplied movies to theaters in the mid-west, and Goldenson recruited him when ABC had decided it wanted to produce its own shows. His first television production was the legal drama Accused in 1958, which was noted for its authenticity with episodes based on real-life cases and real-life attorneys playing the lawyers on the program along with a UCLA law professor playing the judge. This desire for authenticity carried over to Combat!  Besides hiring actors with a military background (except for Pierre Jalbert, who was a former Olympic skier from Canada), Seligman got the U.S. Army to assign Major Homer Jones as a technical advisor and used actual Army equipment and vehicles to supplement whatever his prop department did not already have. Much was also made of the move to send the principle actors to basic training at Fort Ord in Northern California so that they would know how to behave, move, and act like real soldiers. Co-star Rick Jason even said in his autobiography that his training at Fort Ord was more rigorous than the real-life training he underwent as a member of the Army Air Corps in World War II. However, the basic training idea was not original to Combat! According to an October 6, 1962 TV Guide feature story, the idea came from the producers of The Gallant Men, which was being produced simultaneously at Warner Brothers. Both World War II dramas would debut on ABC in the fall of 1962, with Combat! airing on Tuesday night and The Gallant Men on Friday. Essentially ABC was pitting the two war dramas against each to see which one would survive. When they heard about The Gallant Men sending their actors to basic training, Combat! had to match the move.

Of course, Combat! proved the more successful series of the two, lasting 5 seasons while The Gallant Men was canceled halfway through its first season. But things did not start out so smoothly for Combat! The pilot episode, "A Day in June," shot in December 1961, sold ABC on the series, but star actors Jason and Vic Morrow thought Pirosh's script was terrible, and Jason clashed with Pirosh during filming. Apparently Jason and Morrow weren't the only ones who didn't like the script because Pirosh had no further involvement with the series after the pilot, and "A Day in June" was not the episode used to launch the series--it was moved to episode 11 and recast as a flashback of how the men of K Company were first sent into battle together on D-Day. Coincidentally, though Pirosh was booted from Combat!, he and Seligman worked together on another TV series pilot that was not picked up for production--Alexander the Great starring William Shatner and Adam West in 1963.

With Pirosh out of the picture, the series initially struggled to establish its identity, according to Davidsmeyer in a featurette included in the DVD release, hampered in part by different visions of what it should be--an anthology series that highlighted individual characters in each episode, a view championed by director Robert Altman and producer Robert Blees, or an ensemble series focused on the squad, a view preferred by Seligman and director Burt Kennedy. The 1962 episodes demonstrate this difference of opinion: the Altman episodes often center around a single character faced with a conflict, such as Jason's Lt. Hanley in the bomb-defusing thriller "Any Second Now" (October 23, 1962) and aiding a Nazi defector in "Escape to Nowhere" (November 20, 1962), Vic Morrow's Sgt. Saunders assigned to a patrol led by another sergeant who doesn't like him in "Cat and Mouse" (December 4, 1962), and Shecky Greene's bumbling Pvt. Braddock who gets captured by the Nazis and comically tries to impersonate a commanding officer in "The Prisoner" (December 25, 1962). Even the Altman episodes with more of a squad feel, like "Forgotten Front" (October 2, 1962) and "I Swear by Apollo" (December 11, 1962) climax with a weighty decision by Pierre Jalbert's Caje in the former and Morrow's Saunders in the latter. The episodes Kennedy directed that aired in 1962 focus on a character outside the squad with whom all the other members have to interact: in "Lost Sheep, Lost Shepherd" (October 16, 1962) K Company winds up hitching a ride from troubled tank commander Sgt. Dane, whom they eventually learn was rejected in his attempt to join the priesthood. In "Far From the Brave" (October 30, 1962) the Company gets a replacement for their dead Browning Automatic Rifle man, who it turns out is more of a cook than a marksman and who crumbles when he finally faces live gunfire. And "The Celebrity" (November 27, 1962) centers around a star baseball player pressed into service who fails to live up to his heroic reputation. But any conflict between these opposing views was eliminated when Blees was fired during Season 1, and, according to Jason, Altman got himself fired soon thereafter by drunkenly proclaiming to Seligman that he would now be the producer of the series. Gene Levitt would be tabbed as producer late in Season 1 in 1963 and remain in that role through the end of Season 4.

As a result of the early uncertainty and personnel shifts at the beginning of the series, it is hard to definitively assess the program's strengths and weaknesses so early in its tenure. Some of these early episodes seem to elongate and unrealistically complicate the decisions that soldiers are faced with in wartime in order to heighten tension and fill out the show's 1-hour run-time. The first episode to air, "Forgotten Front," demonstrates this tendency as the men discover a Nazi soldier hiding in a bobby-trapped building recently occupied by other Americans, who have all died from the booby-trap explosions. Short-fused Pvt. Kirby thinks they should just kill him and assume he had something to do with their compatriots' deaths. But Saunders instead delays any decision while he gets a read on enemy positions in the area, allowing the Nazi to portray himself as a sympathetic character, an unwilling soldier who was merely a vaudeville performer forced to join the Army at the beginning of the war. When the men's position is later threatened by the advancement of first a Nazi patrol and then a Nazi tank, the captured soldier does not betray the Americans, further suggesting that perhaps he can be trusted. And when Saunders and his men finally have to escape the building as the Nazi tank approaches, the plan is to take the captured Nazi with them, but this proves too dangerous, and it falls to Caje to decide whether to shoot him or leave him. Caje later explains to Saunders that he chose to leave him because if you are going to play God you had better be damn sure you are making the right decision. However, in an actual war, it would seem unlikely that you would have the leisure to weigh all the odds before deciding. Still, the fact that the series attempted to depict these sorts of weighty decisions in the face of crisis earned it considerable acclaim and elevated it above the typical wartime procedural drama that focused more on tactics and strategy rather than moral choices. The series also deserves considerable credit for depicting the many men pressed into service who are ill prepared for the trauma they are going to experience, as shown in the aforementioned "Far From the Brave" and "The Celebrity," as well as "Rear Echelon Commandos" (October 9, 1962).

On the other hand, the ticking time bomb episode, "Any Second Now," seems unnecessarily drawn out to give Hanley, pinned beneath a wooden beam in a church destroyed by the force of a large bomb that has yet to explode, the chance to talk a British bomb disposal officer through dismantling the time bomb, something the Brit has only done in training before, to make sure he doesn't panic or chicken out. "Escape to Nowhere" has a lengthy attempted escape by Hanley and a defecting Nazi officer that seems to go on forever. Likewise, the attempted comedy afforded Shecky Greene's Pvt. Braddock in "The Prisoner," in which he impersonates Keenan Wynn's brusque Colonel Clyde in order to get other American prisoners better treatment and a favorable exchange of prisoners from his Nazi captors, is a one-joke premise that goes on much too long and must have convinced the improvisational Greene that he was in the wrong business. The French Resistance damsel Marcelle in "A Day in June" who seems to have all the equipment Hanley and Saunders could ever need is likewise unbelievable, as is her decision to reject their advances in favor of Caje only because he speaks French, and offers us but one glimpse of why Jason and Morrow thought Pirosh's script for this episode was a stinker. Despite these early missteps, the series obviously connected with viewers, even though it made it into the top 30 of the ratings only once, in Season 3, outlasting all the other World War II dramas and finally being killed off more for economic reasons than for its content.

The complete series has been released on DVD by Image Entertainment (now known as RLJ Entertainment), though it should be noted  that the episodes are the truncated versions shown in syndication.

The Actors

Vic Morrow

Born Victor Morozoff in the Bronx, New York on February 14, 1929, Morrow was the son of an electrical engineer who grew restless as a teenager and dropped out of high school to join the Navy at age 17. After completing his service, he earned his high school diploma by attending night school and then enrolled at Florida Southern College to study law but decided to pursue a career in acting after performing in a school play. He took the unconventional route of enrolling at Mexico City College, where he performed in bilingual productions of the classics by Shakespeare, Moliere, and Shaw, before relocating to New York and eventually spending 2 years in training at the Actors Studio under Paul Mann while driving a cab to support himself. After playing the lead in a summer stock production of Death of a Salesman, he went to Hollywood and without an appointment auditioned for the part of juvenile tough guy Artie West in Blackboard Jungle, released in 1955, reportedly beating out young Steve McQueen and John Cassavetes for the part. The role led to a contract with MGM but also type cast him as a heavy in subsequent roles, which he soon tired of. He balanced TV guest spots and feature film roles over the remainder of the 1950s, most notably King Creole, God's Little Acre, and Cimarron. In 1958 he married actor and screenwriter Barbara Turner, and the couple had two daughters--Carrie Ann and future actress Jennifer Jason Leigh. After a stint studying directing at USC, Morrow hired Harry Bloom as his personal manager, and Bloom was able to reshape Morrow's image as a sex symbol and leading man, which eventually led to his being cast as Sgt. Chip Saunders in Combat! in the fall of 1962.

While the show initially tried to balance the star turns for both its male leads--Morrow and Rick Jason--Morrow's Emmy nomination for Best Lead Actor in Season 1 provided the leverage to not only force improvements in the production of the series but to also steer more of the lead roles to himself. From the very beginning Morrow was also interested in directing on the series, and by 1964 this demand was also accepted in the episode "The Pillbox." At the same time he was also exploring other outside interests, as he and his wife adapted the Jean Genet play Haute surveillance into the feature film Deathwatch starring Leonard Nimoy in 1965. But during this time, his marriage to Turner began to dissolve, in part because of an affair she had with director Robert Altman, with the couple finally divorcing also in 1965. Morrow became estranged from younger daughter Jennifer Jason Leigh, who reportedly championed her mother's side in the rift, and the two never reconciled. When Combat! was finally canceled, Morrow began to feel adrift, particularly after a second directorial effort, the spaghetti western A Man Called Sledge, failed to find an audience. Despite positive reviews for his performance as Walter Matthau's nemesis in The Bad News Bears in 1976, a second failed marriage to Gail Lester which ended in 1979 and the death of his mother as well as the lack of substantial work continued his slide into heavy drinking and despair. When he was chosen for one of the three lead roles in the 1983 feature film The Twilight Zone: The Movie, Morrow felt it could be just the jolt his career needed, but tragically he and two child actors were killed by a helicopter crash on July 23, 1982 that led to a manslaughter trial against director John Landis and surviving helicopter pilot Dorcey Wingo, both of whom were acquitted. While Morrow's life and career were cut short at age 53, the backlash from the helicopter crash led to wholesale changes in safety regulations on film sets thereafter.

Rick Jason

Rick Jacobson was born May 21, 1923 in New York City. His father had been a stockbroker but got out of the business before the Great Depression and formed a hat-making business with his brother which landed the contract for promotional Texaco Oil fire chief hats just before the company launched its popular radio program hosted by comedian Ed Wynn. Jason was a poor student, which he attributed to boredom, getting kicked out of various prep schools before finally graduating from Rhodes, where he performed in school theatrical productions and there decided to become an actor. But when he told his parents of his ambition and desire to enroll in the drama program at the University of North Carolina, his father tried to dissuade him, telling him he would wind up destitute if he ever suffered a stroke or heart attack, both of which his father had survived by this time. Instead, the elder Jacobson wanted young Jason to pursue a career on Wall Street and had already purchased him a seat on the Stock Exchange, arranged with a friend to give him a job upon certification, and wanted him to attend New York University. Jason acceded to his father's wishes but again did poorly in school and was eventually kicked out of NYU just after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Even though he was underage to enlist on his own, he got his parents to approve his joining the Army Air Corps in 1943. Due to failing the math portion of the cadet entrance exam, Jason was assigned to a public relations department in Nashville, where he got involved in community theatre and was advised to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts after the war. But by 1944 the Nashville office was shut down and Jason was assigned to a rehabilitation hospital in Plattsburg, New York, where he ran afoul of his commanding officer and was accused of striking him, when all he had really done was slide a chair across the floor at him. Jason was advised by a lawyer friend to act as if he were mentally disturbed so that he would be sent to a psychiatric hospital instead of prison, while the lawyer worked behind the scenes pulling strings to arrange a deal to give the commanding officer a promotion if he agreed to drop the charges against Jason. After getting a medical discharge in the fall of 1945, he auditioned for and was admitted to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and was able to support himself via the G.I. Bill. After one semester, Jason then worked in summer stock but decided not to return to the Academy and instead spent the next year taking private Shakespeare lessons with Eddy Goodman. But he struggled to find work, other than summer stock, where he got to appear in productions with established Hollywood stars like Dane Clark and Glenda Farrell, and wound up drawing unemployment and living with his parents. Working in summer stock he met producer Aria Allen, who took a liking to him, and soon the two were a couple living in a New York apartment. Though she connected him with agent Irving Smith in Hollywood, who got him a screen test at 20th Century Fox, Jason turned down their 7-year offer that offered no more than the terms MCA had offered him a year before. Jason grew discouraged and was ready to give up acting and go to work at his father's hat factory, where he started in the shipping room and then worked his way up to traveling salesman. But one evening when he went to a theatrical production with Allen and their apartment mate Lindsey Taylor, Allen introduced him to established Broadway actor Hume Cronyn, seated behind them. Cronyn was looking for someone to appear in a play he was producing, Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, starring Frederic March. Jason passed the audition and was given the part due to an incredible streak of luck after 4½ years of failure. When Cronyn mentioned hiring Jason to columnist Mike Connolly, word got around to Columbia Studios in Hollywood, who flew Jason out west for a screen test and ended up signing him to a lucrative contract. Around this time in 1950, Jason decided to propose to and marry Aria Allen, though he later wrote it was more out of a sense of indebtedness for her helping his career along rather than for love. He began regretting the marriage immediately, as he had assumed she would be moving with him to California, while she was determined to continue her career as a producer in stock theater back east, though she eventually went with him. But he never appeared in anything at Columbia, as he was being used as a kind of pawn in a power struggle between two producers. After fizzling out in his first try at Hollywood, Jason returned to New York and worked on live TV shows before being summoned back west to co-star in the MGM musical Sombrero playing opposite Cyd Charisse after Fernando Lamas backed out of the role. While his appearance in the film generated lots of fan mail, it also convinced Hollywood producers that he was genuinely Mexican, making it nearly impossible for his agent to find him more work, which is what forced him to appear in the Columbia Pictures Crusades-themed The Saracen Blade in 1954, just to get something else on film that could be used in future negotiations. Though he was a highly sought-after property for such a short resume, Jason's earlier experience with Columbia made him insist on getting a non-exclusive contract, which studios like MGM were unwilling to give. After a fine performance in the 1956 comedy The Lieutenant Wore Skirts, Jason was finally able to negotiate the contract he wanted with 20th Century Fox, only to find himself once again stuck in the middle of a turf war between head of production Buddy Adler and head of talent Lew Schreiber, who had wanted somebody other than Jason for  The Lieutenant Wore Skirts. Schreiber was determined that despite his contract, Jason would not appear in any 20th Century Fox films. However, when the head of Jason's agency, Charles Feldman, ran into the president of 20th, Spiro Skouras, in New York, he managed to talk Skouras into having Jason cast in an upcoming adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel The Wayward Bus, which finally appeared in theaters in 1957. Though he most wanted to become a leading man in feature films, Jason eventually agreed to star in his own TV series from syndicated series factory Ziv Productions (who also produced Sea Hunt among many others) called The Dangerous Robin in which he played insurance investigator Robin Scott, though Jason insisted that instead of carrying a gun, his character would defend himself using karate--the first time the Chinese-based form of martial arts had been depicted on television. Despite the popularity of the series, Jason developed sciatica the last two weeks of filming Season 1, which landed him in bed, in traction, for two months once the season wrapped, and though Ziv wanted to do a second season, he had to decline for health reasons. It took a then-experimental drug called Norflex to finally get the sciatica to subside and allow him to walk again. After not working for 6 months, Jason's agent got a call from ABC, who were about to produce their first show that they would own completely themselves--Combat! Jason had been chosen for the role of Hanley, supposedly both by pilot director Boris Sagal, whose sons had been huge Dangerous Robin fans, and producer Selig Seligman's wife Muriel, who had seen him in Sombrero. When the series was picked up and Jason was assured a co-starring role, he felt it was finally time to divorce his wife Aria, finally admitting that their marriage had merely been one of convenience for many years.

During the five years he spent on Combat! Jason would marry two more times, first to former Miss Germany Jutta Parr, whom he had met and started an affair with while still married to Aria Allen. After splitting with Allen, and after Parr's husband died, allowing her and Jason to remarry each other, Jason discovered that she was an alcoholic, and he says the marriage lasted only 4 months (though imdb.com says it lasted 2 years). He then married real estate agent Shirley Johnston, who sold him the house he bought after moving out on Allen. After spending many months remodeling the house, Jason realized the marriage was a mistake and filed for divorce. He met Pat Nelson while doing an appearance for a 4th of July fireworks exhibition, before his divorce from Johnston was finalized, and the two began dating, eventually marrying a year after Combat! went off the air. One of his first jobs after Combat! was the leading role in a feature made in Japan, Teppo denraiki, which is where he and Nelson were married in a lavish traditional Japanese ceremony. During this time, Jason has said that he could get all the TV guest spots he wanted but not feature films worth being involved in, so he took more assignments overseas. One of them shot in Israel, Eagles Attack at Dawn, which co-starred Peter Brown of Lawman fame, was a complete disaster. And back at home, his marriage to Pat faltered because, he has said, she seemed unable to assume any of the responsibilities of running a house together and eventually said they should divorce before they started hating each other. Career-wise Jason said that he worked as much as he wanted to during these post-Combat! years while also leaving plenty of time for his other interests like hunting and fishing. He had guest spots on an average of 1 or 2 TV series per year plus an occasional feature film, but in his autobiography never mentions that he landed a regular role as Warner Wilson on the then-new soap opera The Young and the Restless in 1973. Around 1974, he said that he began to run short of money, so much so that he wound up selling his home in Benedict Canyon and moved into a condo. He did a series of successful Japanese commercials for Toyota, and when he found himself with a closet full of French wine that he no longer had space for in his smaller condo, he founded a business called The Wine Locker to store wine for customers who could not afford to have their own wine cellars in their homes. In 1983 after appearing in another Japanese feature film in which he played Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Jason took a side trip to Hong Kong, where he met the woman who would become the fifth Mrs. Jason. The couple were married the following year. He continued doing guest spots through the 1980s on programs such as Matt Houston, Airwolf, Dallas, Moonlighting, and Murder, She Wrote. After appearing in three episodes of the 1989 mini-series Around the World in 80 Days, he retired from live acting the following year after being asked to read for a guest spot on a new series Over My Dead Body, which he considered an insult, though he continued to do voiceover work for a few years thereafter. Though he ended his autobiography on a decidedly upbeat note in 2000, describing how lucky he felt and how happy he was in his marriage, now in its 16th year, about a week after he attended a Combat! convention and cast reunion in Las Vegas from October 6-8, 2000, Jason returned home and committed suicide on October 16 at the age of 77. His wife Cindy found him dead at 5 a.m. that morning. There was no note explaining his decision, and he was said to have been in good health, though the medical examiner stated that he had been despondent over unspecified personal matters.

Jason's entire autobiography can be read at scrapbooksofmymind.com.

Pierre Jalbert

Born Pierre-Paul Jalbert in Quebec City, Canada on January 9, 1925, Jalbert was the son of a newspaperman and excelled at competitive skiing, winning the Canadian Junior National Championship, followed by the Senior Championship. He was the top seeded ski racer in Canada heading into the 1944 Olympics but contracted rheumatic fever and was advised he may never ski again. After making a complete recovery, he made the Canadian team for the 1948 Olympics and was even chosen captain of the team only to once again miss out when he broke his leg during a practice run 2 days before the Games were to open. Rather than returning to Canada immediately, he traveled to Paris and wound up studying art appreciation at the Sorbonne for a year before finally returning home to work as an editor and associate producer for the Canadian National Film Board. During this time he also continued to compete in ski racing, attending events in Sun Valley and Aspen with side trips to Hollywood, where he hoped to one day become an actor. But first he returned to Paris to work as an assistant producer for a French film company. There he dined frequently with Canadian actress Norma Shearer and her husband, whom he had met through skiing, and they encouraged him to return to America with them, so he landed a job as a ski instructor in Sun Valley. In the spring of 1952 he finally took the plunge and moved to Hollywood, finding work as an assistant editor at Universal. He also commented in a 1965 interview on Dick Clark's American Bandstand that he worked pumping gas and as a short-order cook in Los Angeles while trying to break into the film industry. His first appearance in front of the camera came in the 1955 skiing promotional feature Ski Crazy! in which he played a psychiatrist. After being laid off at Universal, he eventually found work as a film and dialogue editor at MGM, where he worked on feature films such as Blackboard Jungle, An American in Paris, Bad Day at Black Rock, and Mutiny on the Bounty. While working on the last film, the agent of his wife, actress and ballerina Joy Lee, suggested he audition for the part of Caje on Combat! since the producers were looking for someone who could speak English and French. After roughly 15 years trying to break into the acting business, Jalbert had finally made it.

However, continuing his acting career after the series ended in 1967 was not so easy. He picked up occasional guest spots on series such as Mission: Impossible, The Virginian, and Night Gallery, but by 1972 he had returned to film editing at Paramount, although he would also occasionally find an acting part here and there. On the editing side, he worked on The Godfather, Bloodline, and North Dallas Forty and received an Emmy nomination for his sound editing work on the mini-series Shogun in 1980. His last appearance as an actor came in a 1989 episode of the soap opera Santa Barbara and his last credited role in editing came in the 1988 feature film Earth Girls Are Easy. Like Rick Jason, he retired from the film business in 1990. He had many pursuits outside of the film business, particularly wood working and home remodeling. He died from complications of a heart attack on January 22, 2014 at age 89.

Shecky Greene

Fred Sheldon Greenfield was born April 8, 1926 in Chicago, Illinois, growing up on the North Side, where he attended Sullivan High School and enjoyed performing as a singer and in dramatic productions. After serving in the U.S. Navy for 3 years during World War II, Greene enrolled at Wright Junior College, where he planned to study to become a gym teacher, but during the summer he took a job as a comedian at the Oakton Manor resort near Milwaukee where the owner teamed him with the social director and fellow comedian Sammy Shore (both Greene and Shore have said that they were the social director that summer). The two eventually attracted the attention of a wealthy female patron, who got them a gig in New York, where they bombed and the duo folded. When Greene returned to college in Chicago, he began getting gigs at local nightclubs. At a time when most comedians bought their material from gag writers, Greene refused to follow the herd and developed his own, often unhinged performances which consisted of largely wild improvisation, though he says he had certain fallback routines that he could go to if he saw a particular performance wasn't working. But his wild antics continued off-stage as well--he would drink heavily and get into fights, often with nightclub owners, sabotaging many of his engagements. It would be years before he would be diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression. Thanks to Sammy Shore, who had been a big hit at the Prevue Lounge in New Orleans booked alongside young trumpeter Al Hirt, Greene was hired in the late 1940s as a temporary replacement when the owner felt the club needed to change things up after three months of Shore's routine. Greene became so popular that he wound up staying three years, eventually becoming part owner of the Prevue and planning to settle permanently in New Orleans until the club burned down, at which point he moved back to Chicago and returned to school at Wright. One evening in his dorm room he got a call from Martha Raye to come perform at her Five O'Clock Club in Miami, then the premier nightlife scene in the days before Las Vegas took preeminence. In 1953 he returned to Chicago to open for Ann Sothern at the famous Chez Paree nightclub, which eventually led to a gig at the Golden Hotel in Reno for $1000 per week. In 1954 Greene moved on again to the now burgeoning Vegas strip, at first opening for Dorothy Shay and later becoming the first comic to perform in casino lounges, which up to that time had been reserved for musical acts like Julie London or Louis Prima and Keely Smith. He helped save the Tropicana at a time when it was in danger of folding; he headlined the Vegas debut of Elvis Presley at the Riviera in 1956, a disaster for Presley because his music did not fit the Vegas vibe at that time. But during it all Greene suffered from extreme anxiety and depression, not helped by excessive drinking. As one of the hottest comedians in Vegas, Greene got many opportunities to appear on television, but as Kliph Nesteroff explains in his profile of Greene on WFMU's Beware of the Blog, TV was too small and prescribed to effectively depict Greene's brand of expansive, sprawling comedy. One particularly disastrous appearance came on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1958 when Greene reprised one of his popular nightclub bits in which he pretended to talk to miners in a coal mine, suggesting that their work was really not that hard, not realizing that in the real world there had just been a terrible mine disaster in Nova Scotia that Greene knew nothing about. The highly irascible Sullivan assumed that Greene had done his schtick on purpose and accused him of losing his entire Canadian audience with his ill-timed routine. The following year he made his first guest appearance in a scripted drama series in an episode of the helicopter-themed Whirlybirds. When the producers were pulling together the cast for Combat! they chose Greene to appeal to younger viewers by providing comic relief.

But as with many other gigs in his long and turbulent career, Greene did not stay long with Combat!, appearing in only 8 Season 1 episodes, though at least 2 of those were centered around his Pvt. Braddock character--the pilot "A Day in June," which was aired as the 11th episode, and the episode that aired after that, "The Prisoner" (December 25, 1962). By the time these episodes aired, Greene was long gone. Greene was actually losing money by spending time on TV because he was then making $150,000 per week in Vegas. Things came to a head during the filming of the episode "Far From the Brave" (October 30, 1962) filmed outdoors on a particularly hot day when Greene and the other supporting actors had to sit around in the back of a personnel carrier while Vic Morrow did 20 takes of the final scene, which Greene later told Charles Grodin was because Morrow was a method actor. Greene stormed off the set and into producer Selig Seligman's office and told him he was quitting, even though Seligman promised that he would eventually get his own show. Greene had decided that TV was not for him, at least not as a regular job, though he would make several more guest appearances on other series over the years. In fact, Greene became a favorite of Johnny Carson and was not only a frequent guest on The Tonight Show but also guest hosted many times until the two had a falling out some time in 1979. He also appeared often and several times co-hosted on The Mike Douglas Show in the mid-1970s. Additionally, he did one-off acting guest spots on shows such as Love, American Style, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Laverne & Shirley, The Fall Guy, and The A-Team, on which he played himself. Frank Sinatra recruited him to make his feature film debut in Sinatra's 1967 crime drama Tony Rome, but like the 1958 Ed Sullivan Show debacle, that one ended in disaster, though it did give Greene one of his most famous one-liners. According to Greene, Sinatra was such a big fan of his that he was constantly inviting Greene to join the Rat Pack, but Greene had no interest. While filming the movie in Miami, Greene one evening in a drunken rage said or did something that put Sinatra over the edge, sending a group of his goons to beat Greene bloody. The joke that Greene told about the incident: "Frank Sinatra saved my life once. He said, 'OK, boys, that's enough.'" He would go on to appear in more feature films, such as The Love Machine, History of the World: Part I, and Splash, and his TV guest spots continued into the 1990s on programs such as Northern Exposure, Roseanne, and Mad About You. But in 2003 he had to stop performing due to panic attacks and stage fright as well as operations to his throat and to treat cancer. He returned to performing in 2009 and is still living in Palm Springs at the age of 96.

Jack Hogan

Born Richard Roland Benson, Jr. in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on November 25, 1929, Hogan originally attended the University of North Carolina to study architecture but became bored with college life and joined the Air Force in 1948, serving 4 years. During his service he was briefly stationed in Southern California and decided it would be a nice place to live and that acting would be an "easy-buck business," so when he was discharged from the military in 1952, he enrolled at the Pasadena Playhouse to learn the craft. He says he chose the stage name of Jack Hogan in part to create a new identity for himself and because everyone loves the Irish. In 1955 he moved to New York to study at the American Theatre Wing but years later said that he did not find New York as exciting as other actors have, so he returned to California a year later and landed his first uncredited role in the 1956 western Man From Del Rio, which starred Anthony Quinn under whom Hogan studied acting and credits with getting that first role. That same year he began landing guest supporting roles on TV series such as Dr. Christian followed by spots on State Trooper, The Sheriff of Cochise, and Official Detective in 1957. Though he continued appearing in a half dozen TV shows per year, he also supported himself by working part time as a lifeguard at the Beverly Hills Hotel. There he was spotted in 1958 by former actor turned agent Alex Brewis, and he began landing higher profile feature film roles in movies such as The Bonnie Parker Story, Paratroop Command, and The Legend of Tom Dooley. He began appearing in so many television westerns, such as Have Gun--Will Travel, Bonanza, and Tombstone Territory, that he went out and bought himself western clothing, spurs, and a gun to feel more in tune with the characters he was playing. He came to the attention of director Robert Altman when he appeared in an episode of U.S. Marshal that was directed by Altman in 1960. Since Altman was a co-producer, director, and writer on Combat! he hired Hogan to appear as a guest star on the first episode to air, "Forgotten Front" (October 2, 1962). He would appear in 4 more episodes as the constantly complaining Pvt. Kirby in 1962 before being signed to a 5-year contract as a permanent member of the cast. As of 1964 he was married to former drama student Barbara Bates (not to be confused with the All About Eve actress of the same name).

After Combat! was canceled in 1967, Hogan resumed his frequent guest spots on shows such as Custer, Tarzan, and Ironside as well as a semi-recurring role as Sgt. Jerry Miller on Adam-12. In 1967 he also remarried to former Playboy Playmate and occasional actress Joyce Nizzari, and the couple had a son and daughter before divorcing in 1980. His filmography has a gap from 1969-73 unexplained by any of his other biographical sources, but in 1973 he resumed guest spots on Hawaii Five-O, and in 1974 landed a regular role on the national park-themed series Sierra, which ran only 11 episodes before being canceled. He continued to find steady work guesting on TV throughout the 1970s, but after his divorce from Nizzari in 1980 he moved to Hawaii to start his own construction business. However, he also stayed connected to television by becoming the casting director for Magnum, P.I. in 1981. Occasional TV appearances continued through the 1980s on Riptide, Berrenger's, and The A-Team, and he closed out the decade with a recurring role as Judge Smithwood on another Hawaii-based program, Jake and the Fatman. His last two film credits came in yet another Hawaii-based show, the ninja-themed Raven in 1992-93. In 1994 he moved back to Chapel Hill to help a brother remodel his house, and apparently is still living there at age 92.

Dick Peabody

Richard Peabody was born in Kansas City, Missouri on April 6, 1925. Both of his parents were teachers, and his father additionally wrote for Box Office, a magazine devoted to the film industry. At age 17, young Peabody enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served 4 years. Upon discharge, he took advantage of the G.I. Bill to attend Kansas City Junior College to study electrical engineering, but after a year he transferred to the University of Kansas City because, in his words, he wanted fame and knew he wouldn't find it as an engineer. After graduation, Peabody found work primarily producing and writing commercials for TV and other promotional films, as well as a stint as a radio announcer in Leavenworth, Kansas. In a 1965 interview with Dick Clark on American Bandstand, Peabody said he decided to move to acting because of claustrophobia from standing in tight control booths, particularly given his large 6'6" frame, but his biography in the 1996 Combat! souvenir booklet says he was advised to pursue a performing career by director Nick Grinde. During this period Peabody also crossed paths with director Robert Altman, who recommended him for a job at The Calvin Company producing educational and industrial films. He stepped into performing when he was hired as a news anchor at the NBC affiliate in Kansas City. Next, he moved to Denver, where he hosted a jazz radio program and supplemented his income with freelance work in writing advertising copy as well as a weekly column in a Denver nightlife magazine. He formed a production company that swept the top 6 spots for advertising copy awarded by the Denver Advertising Club in 1960, but despite this success, he grew bored and yearned for greater fame, which prompted his move to Hollywood. Peabody commented to Dick Clark and others that he figured that at 6'6" he could have a career playing villains in westerns since two of the biggest stars on television at that time were James Arness and Clint Walker, who would look petty beating up smaller adversaries. Within 2 days of arriving in Hollywood he had been hired to host an all-night segment on KMPC Radio and was tabbed by Altman to appear in Combat!, just then starting production, though initially Peabody was a guest star rather than a regular cast member.

Like Jack Hogan, Peabody was signed to a 5-year contract on Combat! after the first 13 episodes had proven that the series was a hit. At the height of Combat! popularity, he released a spoken-word single backed by music on Liberty Records titled "Young Sarge," which was written by his wife Tina. As he had hoped, Peabody began getting guest spots on westerns such as Gunsmoke and Bonanza while Combat! was still on the air, and when it was canceled in 1967 he continued on The Big Valley, Here Come the Brides, and Daniel Boone while also landing a few supporting roles in western feature films such as Mackenna's Gold, Support Your Local Sheriff!, and The Good Guys and the Bad Guys, the last two directed by Combat! director Burt Kennedy. Though he never landed another recurring role on television, Peabody managed to average one or two guest spots a year into the mid-1970s in addition to a few TV movies. Beginning in 1971 he hosted a talk show radio program on KFI in Los Angeles, on which he interviewed a number of big-name movie stars. After appearances on Airwolf and Knight Rider in 1984, Peabody retired from acting the following year due to back pain. He continued to work doing voiceover for movie trailers and Paramount Video in-flight coming attractions, and he wrote a newspaper column for his local paper, the Placerville, California Mountain Democrat. In 1996 he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, from which he eventually died on December 27, 1999 at age 74.

Tom Lowell

Born Lowell W. Thomas in Philadelphia on January 17, 1941, Lowell had to change his name when he got into acting because there already was a Lowell J. Thomas who was a member of the Screen Actors Guild, whose regulations require that there be only one member per given name. At some point his family moved to California, and his father was head of the Speech and Drama Department at Cal State Sacramento. Lowell made his first appearances on film in June of 1962, appearing in an uncredited part of the Jimmy Stewart and Maureen O'Hara comedy feature Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation and in the Season 3-ending episode "Changing of the Guard" of The Twilight Zone. In the fall of 1962, Lowell appeared in a number of new TV series, including It's a Man's World, The Eleventh Hour, Combat!, and The Lucy Show, on which he appeared 3 times as Alan Harper, boyfriend of Lucy's TV daughter Candy Moore. Though Lowell's Combat! character Pvt. Billy Nelson was killed off in the first episode he filmed, "The Celebrity," that episode did not air until November 27, 1962, by which time director Burt Kennedy, who enjoyed the somewhat comic dialogues between Nelson and Dick Peabody's character Pvt. Littlejohn, had convinced the producers that Lowell's Nelson character was integral to the show. Consequently he was retained, and he appeared in the episode "Far From the Brave" (October 30, 1962) before "The Celebrity" aired. He would appear in another 29 episodes over the first two seasons. That fall, Lowell also made a memorable, though uncredited, appearance in the cold war espionage thriller The Manchurian Candidate, and during his tenure on Combat! he would also guest star on Perry Mason, Gunsmoke, Mr. Novak, and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.

According to film critic and author Jackie K. Cooper in his memoir Chances and Choices, Lowell's tenure on Combat! came to an end because his agent prodded him to ask for a raise, and the producers of the show didn't think he was valuable enough to the show to warrant the additional pay, so his character was killed off. While Cooper may be right, his chronology in describing Lowell's career is mixed up--he says that Lowell starred in Walt Disney feature films before starring on Combat!, which is completely backwards. In any event, Lowell continued to find quite a bit of work after leaving Combat!, both on television shows such as The Addams Family, Bonanza, The Long, Hot Summer, Death Valley Days, and Gomer Pyle, USMC and in the previously alluded to Disney feature films That Darn Cat!, The Gnome-Mobile, and The Boatniks. His acting roles dwindled after the early 1970s because, Lowell says, he had become typecast as a youngster, always playing fresh-faced, somewhat naive characters even into his 30s. When the acting roles dried up, Lowell was offered a chance to move into production and he took it. In 1972 he became a producer for The Petersen Company and worked on commercials for 7-Up, Toyota, and Hills Brothers Coffee. In 1975 he accepted a position as a production executive at VCI Studios, where he stayed until 1979, at which point he became a production manager at KCET-TV in Los Angeles. In 1983 he was hired as a producer and production executive at The Production Service until 1986, when he became associate producer on The New Gidget Show for Columbia Television. During this time he also appeared as Dr. John Bennett on Days of Our Lives. In 1987 he returned to school, attending California State University, Northridge, from which he graduated with a B.A. in Theater and an M.A. in Screenwriting in 1989. During the same period he also served as head soccer coach at Occidental College. Upon graduation he accepted a position as Director of Theater Arts at Bishop Alemany High School in Mission Hills, California, where he was still working as of June 2014 according to the web site zacharymule.com. His last acting credit came in the 1999 feature film Love and Action in Chicago. He is still living today at age 81.

Steven Rogers

Richard Alan Rogers was born in Chicago on April 18, 1937. His mother's family owned American Linen Products, making the family independently wealthy. His father was a salesman who had also been a radio announcer in Salt Lake City. When Rogers was a child, the family moved to the Northridge suburb of Los Angeles. Rogers told gossip columnist Rona Barrett that he had an unhappy childhood as an only child and fed his feelings through food, weighing at one point 230 pounds though only 5'9" tall. He attended Notre Dame High School in Van Nuys, then transferred to Menlo School in Menlo Park. He attended college at Nevada Southern (now the University of Nevada at Las Vegas) from 1958-59, when he left to take private acting lessons from Estelle Harman in Hollywood. He studied with her for 3 years, including via correspondence during the six months he served in the U.S. Army. During this time he also married for the first time and had two children. In 1961 he auditioned for the part of Doc Walton on Combat! and was surprised that he was given the part the same day. He attended a simulated basic training at Fort Ord in May 1962 along with the other series regulars and changed his first name to Steven to avoid confusion with co-star Rick Jason. By the time Combat! debuted in the fall of 1962, Rogers also appeared in an episode of Lawman and in an uncredited part in the feature film 13 West Street.

But Rogers only stayed with the series for its first season. Rogers has said he left the show to pursue other opportunities since his character was given little to do during that first season, but author Jo Davidsmeyer reports in her Combat! A Viewer's Companion to the Classic WWII TV Series that other sources indicate he may have displeased producer Selig Seligman. Any opportunities he may have envisioned did not materialize, though he did return to acting in a couple of years after befriending director Roger Corman and actor Bart Patton, leading to roles in their series of teen exploitation features like The Girls on the Beach, Ski Party, and Wild Wild Winter. These were followed by later 1960s exploitation B movies such as Move Star, American Style or; LSD, I Hate You and Angels From Hell. He then formed a production company with actor Don Edmonds, who had also appeared in Wild Wild Winter, but after producing their 1972 B movie Wild Honey, the partnership was dissolved due to the usual creative differences. For a time he followed this by studying sewing and custom design at UCLA, eventually landing clients like Cher and Sammy Davis, Jr. By the early 1980s Rogers and second wife Carmen settled in Park City, Utah, where he was remained ever since. There he and his wife have devoted themselves to a number of philanthropic causes, including animal welfare, domestic abuse victims, and environmental issues. He also became involved in theatrical projects, helping to save the historic Egyptian Theater as well as occasionally appearing in local theatrical productions. He also become a noted collector of vintage pool cues. Though he suffered a stroke in 2000, which required therapy, he is still living today at age 85.

Notable Guest Stars

Season 1, Episode 1, "Forgotten Front": Albert Paulsen  (shown on the left, appeared in All Fall Down, The Manchurian Candidate, and Gunn and played Dr. Janos Vargas on Doctors' Hospital, Anthony Korf on Stop Susan Williams, and Gen. Gastineau on General Hospital) plays captured German soldier Carl Dorfmann. Tom Skerritt (starred in MASH, Big Bad Mama, The Turning Point, The Dead Zone, Steel Magnolias, and A River Runs Through It and played Dr. Thomas Ryan on Ryan's Four, Evan Drake on Cheers, Sheriff Jimmy Brock on Picket Fences, and William Walker on Brothers & Sisters) plays a GI sitting in a chair.

Season 1, Episode 2, "Rear Echelon Commandos": John Considine  (shown on the right, brother of Tim Considine, played Grant Capwell on Santa Barbara and Reginald Love on Another World) plays replacement soldier Pvt. Wayne Temple, Jr.

Season 1, Episode 3, "Lost Shepherd, Lost Sheep": Jeffrey Hunter (shown on the left, starred in The Searchers, Hell to Eternity, and King of Kings, played Temple Houston on Temple Houston, and turned down the lead role on the original Star Trek after filming the series' first pilot) plays tank commander Sgt. Dane. Tony Mordente (directed multiple episodes of Rhoda, Benson, Family Ties, Hardcastle and McCormick, The A-Team, Matlock, Hunter, Walker, Texas Ranger, and 7th Heaven amongst many others) plays tank operator Pvt. Morello. Joby Baker (David Lewis on Good Morning, World and Col. Harvey Mann on The Six O'Clock Follies) plays K Company soldier Pvt. Kelly.

Season 1, Episode 4, "Any Second Now": Alexander Davion (shown on the right, appeared in Paranoiac, The Plague of the Zombies, and Valley of the Dolls and played Phoebus de Chateaupers on The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Det. Chief Insp. David Keen on Gideon C.I.D.) plays British bomb disposal officer Lt. David Woodman. Emile Genest (Napoleon Plouffe on La famille Plouffe and Charles Gougier on Monsieur le ministre) plays French bar owner Emile. Donald May (appeared in The Crowded Sky, A Tiger Walks, Kisses for My President, Follow Me, Boys!, and O.C. and Stiggs and played Charles C. Thompson on West Point, Sam Colt, Jr. on Colt .45, Pat Garrison on The Roaring 20's, Adam Drake on The Edge of Night, Grant Wheeler on Texas, and Earl Foster on All My Children) plays American commander Maj. Thompson. Ned Wynn (son of Keenan Wynn) plays an American MP.

Season 1, Episode 5, "Far From the Brave": Joe Mantell (shown on the left, appeared in Marty, The Sad Sack, Onionhead, and Chinatown and played Ernie Briggs on Pete and Gladys and Albie Loos on Mannix) plays replacement soldier Pvt. Delaney. Dennis Robertson (Cletus Tarleton on Tammy and Charles McKee on General Hospital) plays his replacement Pvt. Albert Baker.

Season 1, Episode 6, "Missing in Action": Howard Duff (shown on the right, played Howard Adams on Mr. Adams and Eve, Willie Dante on Dante, Det. Sgt. Sam Stone on Felony Squad, Sheriff Titus Semple on Flamingo Road, and Paul Galveston on Knots Landing) plays U.S. Air Force wing commander Col. Hobey Jabko. Glenn Cannon (Manicote on Hawaii Five-O and Dr. Ibold on Magnum, P.I.) plays one of his flyers Lt. Tafe. Barton Heyman (appeared in Valdez Is Coming, Bang the Drum Slowly, The Exorcist, and The Happy Hooker and played Dr. Paul Cain on Ben Casey) plays K Company soldier Pvt. Fergus. Maria Machado (appeared in Rosebud, A Fine Romance, and An American Werewolf in Paris) plays French farmer's niece Maria. John Davis Chandler (appeared in Mad Dog Coll, The Young Savages, Ride the High Country, and The Good Guys and the Bad Guys) plays an American sergeant. Stephen Joyce (Bubba Wadsworth on Texas, Admiral Walter Strichen on Wiseguy, and George Connor on All My Children) plays Jabko adjutant Lt. Perry.

Season 1, Episode 7, "Escape to Nowhere": Albert Paulsen (see "Forgotten Front" above) plays Nazi commander Gen. Von Strelitz. Joyce Vanderveen (shown on the left, played Marie de Gravien on The Adventures of Jim Bowie) plays his daughter Maria. Leslie Fletcher (Mr. Divine on Down to Earth) plays a Nazi interrogator.

Season 1, Episode 8, "The Celebrity": Tab Hunter (shown on the right, starred in Track of the Cat, Damn Yankees, They Came to Cordura, Ride the Wild Surf, and Polyester and played Paul Morgan on The Tab Hunter Show and George Shumway on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman) plays star baseball pitcher Del Packer. Virginia Stefan (Eva Philbrick in I Led 3 Lives) plays a hospital nurse. Tony Mordente (see "Lost Sheep, Lost Shepherd" above) plays supply Sgt. Kurawicz.

Season 1, Episode 9, "Cat and Mouse": Albert Salmi (shown on the left, played Yadkin on Daniel Boone and Pete Ritter on Petrocelli) plays reconnaissance mission leader Sgt. Jenkins. William Bryant (later played McCall on Combat!, President Ulysses S. Grant on Branded, Col. Crook on Hondo, Lt. Shilton on Switch, and the Director on The Fall Guy) plays unit commander Maj. O'Connors. Frank Behrens (husband of actor Amzie Strickland) plays his subordinate Capt. Reed. John A. Alonzo (cinematographer on Vanishing Point, Harold and Maude, Lady Sings the Blues, Chinatown, Scarface, Steel Magnolias, and Star Trek: Generations) plays his runner Pvt. Bialos. Ted Knight (Phil Buckley on The Young Marrieds, Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Roger Dennis on The Ted Knight Show, and Henry Rush on Too Close for Comfort) plays a Nazi captain.

Season 1, Episode 10, "I Swear by Apollo": Gunnar Hellstrom (shown on the right, played Rolf Brundin on Dallas and directed multiple episodes of Gunsmoke, The Wild Wild West, and Dallas) plays Nazi army Dr. Belzer. John Considine (see "Rear Echelon Commandos" above) returns as K Company soldier Pvt. Wayne Temple, Jr. Eugene Borden (appeared in The Slacker, The Liar, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1928), Charlie Chan in Rio, All About Eve, and The Last of the Buccaneers) plays French surveyor Bresson. Philip Abbott (starred in Sweet Bird of Youth and played Arthur Ward on The F.B.I., Dr. Alex Baker on General Hospital, and Grant Stevens on The Young and the Restless) plays U.S. Army surgeon Capt. Correlli.

Season 1, Episode 11, "A Day in June": Harry Dean Stanton (shown on the left, appeared in Kelly's Heroes, Dillinger, Cool Hand Luke, Repo Man, Pretty in Pink, Alien, Paris, Texas and played Jake Walters on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Roman Grant on Big Love, and Carl Rodd on Twin Peaks) plays stressed-out U.S. Army private Beecham. Pat Dahl (popular vocalist who released one LP in 1966 with arrangements from top-shelf talent like Shorty Rogers, Pete Rugolo, Billy May, and Benny Carter) plays Hanley's British girlfriend Hazel. Henry Daniell (appeared in The Philadelphia Story, Jane Eyre, Song of Love, Lust for Life, and Witness for the Prosecution) plays a British preacher. Lisa Montell (appeared in Escape to Burma, Pearl of the South Pacific, World Without End, Naked Paradise, and Ten Thousand Bedrooms) plays French resistance agent Marcelle.

Season 1, Episode 12, "The Prisoner": Keenan Wynn (shown on the right, starred in Annie Get Your Gun, Royal Wedding, Angels in the Outfield, The Absent-Minded Professor, Son of Flubber, Dr. Strangelove, The Great Race, and Point Blank and played Kodiak on Troubleshooters, Williard "Digger" Barnes on Dallas, Carl Sarnac on Call to Glory, and Butch on The Last Precinct) plays abrasive commander Col. Clyde. Richard Bakalyan (starred in The Delicate Delinquent, The Cool and the Crazy, Juvenile Jungle, Hot Car Girl, Paratroop Command, and The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes) plays his aide Sgt. Wolfson. Adam Williams (appeared in Flying Leathernecks, The Big Heat, Fear Strikes Out, and North by Northwest) plays Clyde's second-in-command Lt. Col. Nash. Tom Skerritt (see "Forgotten Front" above) plays released prisoner Pvt. Glinski. John A. Alonzo (see "Cat and Mouse" above) returns as runner Pvt. Bialos. Walter Koenig (Charlie Turner on General Hospital, Pavel Chekov on Star Trek: The Original Series and in all the Star Trek feature films, and Alfred Bester on Babylon 5) plays an inexperienced U.S. army sentry.