"Unknown" Stars in Military Movies

[Tommymonkey192]

I get a big kick out of movies and TV shows that have big name stars in them back when they were still unknowns. It seems that military/war movies and TV shows have been a vehicle for the earliest screen appearances of many a big star. Here's a few of them:

 

1941: Mickey Rourke (he was one of Dan Aykroyd's tank crewmen)

A Bridge Too Far: John Ratzenberger (he played a radio operator)

Amazing Stories (TV show): Kevin Costner (B-17 pilot), Kiefer Sutherland (B-17 crewman) in "The Mission" episode.

Apocalypse Now: R. Lee Ermey (helicopter pilot in Air Cav scene). Lawrence Fishburne

Don't Cry, It's Only Thunder: Robert Englund before he achieved screen notoriety as Freddie Krueger

Good Morning, Vietnam: Forrest Whitaker

Hamburger Hill: Don Cheadle (Hotel Rwanda)

Mission of the Shark: The Saga of the USS Indianapolis: David Caruso

Platoon: Johnny Depp, Forrest Whitaker

Raid on Entebbe: James Wood as an Israeli commando

Red Dawn: Jennifer Gray (Dirty Dancing), C. Thomas Howell, Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, Lea Thompson (Back to the Future)

Saving Private Ryan: Vin Diesel

Strategic Air Command: Harry Morgan of later Dragnet and M*A*S*H* fame played Jimmy Stewart's B-36 flight engineer

Top Gun: Anthony Edwards, Val Kilmer, Meg Ryan

 

Can anybody think of any others?

[Francis Marion]

Apocalypse Now: Harrison Ford (Intel officer)

[M1Marksman]

In Rambo, a very young David Caruso was a Sheriff's Deputy.

 

Halls Of Montezuma, another very young actor, Martin Milner (of Adam-12 fame) was a Marine (along with long-time pal Jack Webb of Dragnet fame).

 

I think most of your Red Dawn cast appeared in The Outsiders before Red Dawn.

[J_Andrews]

James Earl Jones, voice of Darth Vader and many on-camera roles, was the navigator on the B-52 in Dr. Strangelove.

 

Pork Chop Hill had Robert Blake (Baretta), George Peppard and Harry Guardino.

 

Jack Lord, Francis X. Slattery, Jack Warden and others got their start in Army training films.

 

If Francis the Talking Mule counts as a military film series, look for Clint Eastwood, David Janssen and Dennis Weaver in them.

[gwb123]

Ronald Reagan also did AAF training films, but he had already achieved name recognition in Hollywood.

[usmcski]

Simon Pegg of Shaun of the Dead fame was 1st Sgt William Evans in Band of Brothers......

 

Ski

[Jim Baker]

Robert Blake was a child actor. He's been around a long time.

[61henry]

How about Tom Sellek in

Midway or Ricardo Montalbon in Battleground.

[FNG]

Sailor Beware with James Dean

[Tommymonkey192]

How about Tom Sellek in

Midway

 

So was Erik Estrada. I don't remember what Tom Selleck's role was but I do remember that Erik Estrada was a navy pilot in the film.

 

Halls Of Montezuma, another very young actor, Martin Milner (of Adam-12 fame) was a Marine (along with long-time pal Jack Webb of Dragnet fame).

 

Martin Milner was also in Mr. Roberts where he played a Shore Patrol officer.

 

G.D. Spradlin, the general in Apocalypse Now had an uncredited role in Tora! Tora! Tora! as one of Admiral Kimmel's staff officers. And Richard Anderson of Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman fame was a WWI French staff officer in Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory.

 

And the cast of the TV show Gomer Pyle included Alan Melville (Sam the Butcher from The Brady Bunch) and William Christopher (Father Mulcahy in M*A*S*H*)

[M1Marksman]

Robert Blake was a child actor. He's been around a long time.

 

 

A VERY long time! He was Mickey on The Little Rascals.

[USMC_GAU-21]

Tom Selleck, was a Marine on Midway in the film "Midway"

[J_Andrews]

Robert Blake (Bobby Gubitosi) played Little Beaver in the Red Ryder serials, later run on TV.

 

On a tangent, I knew a WWII OSS veteran (1LT in Paris area with FFI, May-Aug 44) named Ralph Tabakin. After the war he became a producer at the Long Island City (Brooklyn) NY Army Pictorial Center where training films were made.

 

Part of his job was to find actors. He tried to help starving young actors, especially those with military background (better at playing GIs), in theater school on the GI Bill. He was the guy who hired Jack Warden, Jack Lord and the rest. Sometimes, actors being unreliable sorts, Ralph would have to fill in as an on-screen actor. He could show up as the 1st Sgt, a cook, a tanker, a battalion commander or whatever. Later, as TV shows proliferated, he did various bit parts in NY-based shows. He later moved to Washington DC and continued his acting sideline there (local stage and TV and movie gigs).

 

Many of you have seen him -- he had a continuing role on the series HOMICIDE as the curmudgeonly coroner. He also played the reform school warden in a movie in which Kevin Bacon was the Bad Guard (title not recalled), and the CHAPLAIN in Good Morning, Vietnam! He was a pal and mentor to director Barry Levinson and appeared in many of his projects. He died maybe 10 yrs ago.

 

I met him because my wife was a cashier at a supermarket and he was a regular customer; she espied miniature jump wings on his lapel and commented on them and asked which unit he was with. He said " Oh, nothing you ever heard of -- it was called OSS", to which she replied "Oh, Wild Bill Donovan's Oh So Secret guys! Were you in the ETO or CBI or Med? Maybe a Jedburgh?" He was shocked and held up the line asking how she (SHE) knew that!

[CNY Militaria]

I once saw Clint Eastwood in a 2 second scene with a one-liner in Away All Boats. I had to rewind and see if it was really him. Checked the cast and there he was, uncredited.

 

Away All Boats (1956) (uncredited) .... Marine (Medic)

[Linedoggie]

Harry Dean Stanton was in Pork Chop Hill

 

Michael Caine was in "A Hill in Korea" (and as Fuslier Maurice Joseph Micklewhite, Jr. Royal Fusiliers- Actually served in Combat in Korea)

 

Robert Duval played a Battlefatigued Officer in Captain Newman, M.D. with Tony Curtiss & Gregory Peck

 

Robert Redford, John Saxon & Gavin Mcleod were in War Hunt together

[Tommymonkey192]

I once saw Clint Eastwood in a 2 second scene with a one-liner in Away All Boats. I had to rewind and see if it was really him. Checked the cast and there he was, uncredited.

 

Away All Boats (1956) (uncredited) .... Marine (Medic)

 

Clint Eastwood was also in one of the sci fi movies from the '50s. I forget the title but it was about a giant spider. He was the jet pilot who destroys the giant spider at the end of the movie. Similarly in the original King Kong in the now-iconic scene of King Kong's last stand on the Empire State Building one of the biplane pilots was played by director Merian C. Cooper who was also a WWI flier and founding member of the American volunteer Koszciusko Squadron in the 1919-20 Russo-Polish War.

[gunbarrel]

Apocalypse Now: Harrison Ford (Intel officer)

 

Afraid not. From http://www.nndb.com/people/812/000022746/

 

He made his first screen appearance with one line as the bellhop in the 1966 heist adventure Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round with James Coburn. His first substantial speaking part came in the Civil War western A Time for Killing with Glenn Ford (no relation).

 

He sidestepped the military draft -- and the Vietnam war -- by filing as a conscientious objector. When he was required to appear before the draft board and explain his stance, he instead feigned general nuttiness in a performance that convinced his interrogators he was not military material.

[gunbarrel]

How about Tom Sellek in

Midway or Ricardo Montalbon in Battleground.

 

Ricardo Montalban made a dozen more films in Mexico before MGM signed him to play the bullfighter brother of Esther Williams in "Fiesta" in 1947.

[gunbarrel]

"Hell is for Heroes," with Steve McQueen, Bobby Darin, Fess Parker, Harry Guardino, James Coburn, and introducing Bob Newhart.

[Fixbayonets!]

Charlie Sheen at age 9 in The execution of Private Slovik.

 

Rob

[rmoore456]

So was Erik Estrada. I don't remember what Tom Selleck's role was but I do remember that Erik Estrada was a navy pilot in the film.

Martin Milner was also in Mr. Roberts where he played a Shore Patrol officer.

 

G.D. Spradlin, the general in Apocalypse Now had an uncredited role in Tora! Tora! Tora! as one of Admiral Kimmel's staff officers. And Richard Anderson of Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman fame was a WWI French staff officer in Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory.

 

And the cast of the TV show Gomer Pyle included Alan Melville (Sam the Butcher from The Brady Bunch) and William Christopher (Father Mulcahy in M*A*S*H*)

 

Martin Milner was also in the Sands of Iwo Jima along with Richard Jaeckal.

 

Ray

[hbtcoveralls]

In Top Gun you forgot Cuba Gooding Jr, (Maverick's one time RIO with the mirrored shades and the "sundowner's" helmet)

 

Robert Mitchum's first big role was in "the story of GI Joe" with Burgess Meridith (also in his first breakthrough) as Ernie Pyle, sort of.

Tom Bowers

[Tommymonkey192]

Another movie that featured some "unknowns" (at least they were unknown in this country at the time) was Soldier of Orange starring Rutger Hauer and Jeroen Krabbe which was directed by an unknown (again, in this country) Paul Verhoeven who went on to direct such movies as Robo Cop, Showgirls and many of the Arnold Schwarzenegger movies.

 

Soldier of Orange follows a group of college friends in wartime Holland. First they are called up in the Dutch Army when the Germans invade, then several of them join the Resistance while one joins the Waffen-SS and is subsequently killed in Russia*. The Rutger Hauer character makes his way to England where he eventually becomes an RAF pilot.

 

My favorite scene in the movie is where Rutger Hauer is sent back to occupied Holland on a secret mission. He lands by submarine near a German naval base disguised in a Royal Navy officer's uniform (to avoid being executed as a spy if captured and also because naval uniforms the world over are vaguely similiar). He walks through the base, goes out the front gate where he is saluted by the sentries and then commandeers, "in the name of the German Navy," a bicycle from a Dutch civilian. As he pedals away the German sentries are debating whether he's a marine or a U-boat officer!

 

 

*on a side note the Eastern Front scenes are notable for the Dutch Army Leopard 1 tanks disguised as Pz IVs!

[Cobrahistorian]

In Top Gun you forgot Cuba Gooding Jr, (Maverick's one time RIO with the mirrored shades and the "sundowner's" helmet)

 

Robert Mitchum's first big role was in "the story of GI Joe" with Burgess Meridith (also in his first breakthrough) as Ernie Pyle, sort of.

Tom Bowers

 

 

That wasn't Cuba Gooding, jr. It was Clarence Gilyard, jr., the dude from "Walker, Texas Ranger"

[TAMU97]

Clint Eastwood was also in one of the sci fi movies from the '50s. I forget the title but it was about a giant spider. He was the jet pilot who destroys the giant spider at the end of the movie. Similarly in the original King Kong in the now-iconic scene of King Kong's last stand on the Empire State Building one of the biplane pilots was played by director Merian C. Cooper who was also a WWI flier and founding member of the American volunteer Koszciusko Squadron in the 1919-20 Russo-Polish War.

 

How about Clint Eastwood in a bit part in "Francis [the talking mule] in the Navy"? Probably came out in the mid-50s. HAD to be one of his first roles. He looks like a teenager in it. Never heard of Francis the Talking Mule? Well, he pre-dated Mr. Ed by about 15 years.

 

And to go way, way, way back, Gary Cooper had a brief part in Wings ("Cadet White").