COMBAT!

I remember it, but it’s been many years since I’ve seen it, probably since I was a kid. It’s real unfortunate about the fate of Vic Morrow. I wonder if his death resulted in sort of resurge of interest in this series. It was real popular if I recall.

Loved the show. It avoided heroic looks at the war and showed the day-to-day grind. I saw an early episode that had a comedic side provided by Shecky Greene. Also, Hanley was a sergeant.

When I was overseas in the army not long after the show went off the air, I occasionally said into the radio, "Checkmate King Two, this is White Rook, over". Most guys got it.

A very good series, I could never warm to Combat! as a TV show. Something in its drab look, the same sets used over and over, the grimness of it all, the lack of real humor, drags it down for me. Yet I've seen some excellent episodes and I like the regular players. It was popular with boys back when it was in its first run, had a kind of Rifleman-like following. Girls, as a general rule, never watched Combat!, though my younger sister did!

Definitely a guy show but I've known a few women who were in love with Rick Jason.

taylorfirst1
telegonus

Jason was clearly added to draw female viewers, sort of the show's Vince Edwards. Which strikes me as odd today since RJ's looks had already sort of hardened into middle age. Perhaps females of that time preferred more mature matinee idols.

Even in Orson Welles' classic "Fountain of Youth" (1956) RJ was ironically starting to lose his youthful looks. One Welles historian described RJ's unique quality as having a "cruelly handsome" face, but his youthful Wikipedia photo has little hint of cruelty



Jason always seems out of place to me in Combat. Maybe b/c he's a 40 year old 2nd Lt. His manner is more that of a major at least.

Combat! was a gritty show from an era of glossy television. Few series at the time were so unrelenting unglamorous (sic). Naked City and Route 66 are two others that come to mind. Even on the doctor and lawyer shows everyone and everything looked spiffy.

As to Mr. Kimble's suggesting I write an essay on Nick Adams and Vic Morrow, I can't say that I'll go that far but WTF, I'll go for the bait a little. Okay, Nick and Vic began in films around the same time. Both were poor boys, very ambitious, had their greatest success on television. In feature films they were often cast as punks, victims or losers.

Nick hit big first but for various personal reasons his career didn't last and he died young from drug abuse a few years later. He's practically forgotten now, which is a little odd to me as he was a familiar TV face when I was growing up, and not just because of his western series The Rebel. For a few years there the guy had a career. As an actor, well, he's an acquired taste. Sometimes he works for me, at other times he over-emotes.

Morrow lasted a lot longer, also died young, as most of us now, in a freak accident on the set of the movie The Twilight Zone. He's better remembered these days than Adams, has a much larger body of work, was moving comfortably into character actor mode when he died. His work holds up better for me than Nick Adams'. Both were sort of in the shadow of Brando and Dean early on, and in some respects that shadow never wholly went away.

To stick with Combat! players, a few words on Rick Jason seem in order: he was a good actor on that series. In other shows I've seen really sub-par work from him. I like him better with that mature look he had in uniform. He reminds me a little of Robert Taylor in his World War II period, notably in Bataan!. Post-Combat! Jason seemed to fall off the face of the earth. A cultured, educated guy, from what I've read.

Pre-Combat! Jason was in that netherworld of near stars, minor stars, lesser leading men, B listers, call them what you will. He was at the low end of the list, too, but younger than most of them: Rory Calhoun, Dale Robertson, John Bromfield, Ben Cooper, Scott Brady. Steve Cochran's maybe a notch higher, though in those years, the Fifties, he didn't have much of a draw. Neither did Frank Lovejoy, also borderline, due to his radio work, his becoming a name thanks to Home Of The Brave, then a Warners contract player for a while.

Oookay, that's all for now, folks!