Watching Kelly’s Heroes tonight that had several actual WWII vets in the cast (Savalas, Rickles, O’Connor, etc.), and earlier Stalag 13 (Holden, etc.), just wondering if anyone recalls any anecdotes about vets acting in movies about their own wars, funny, controversial or other.
Not an anecdote, but one of the more famous appearances of a WWII vet in a film is Audie Murphy portraying himself in To Hell And Back.
Richard Todd - from Wikipedia:
Donald Pleasance, who had a major role in The Great Escape had spent about a year in a German POW camp. This is from IMDB.
I love Kelly’s Heroes, but you missed the prison film by four. Try Stalag 17.
Speaking of Stalag 13, Robert Clary was in a concentration camp during WWII.
Is that surprising though? A very large percentage of men born between say 1916 and 1924 were in the military during World War II. So, you had a generation of actors who had served in the war taking roles in movies about the war. But you also had a high percentage of WWII vets who were bus drivers, engineers, lawyers, and every other profession.
While the war was actively going on, not being in the military hurt the careers of stars like Cary Grant, John Wayne, and Frank Sinatra. Those guys spent a lot of time doing damage control because they weren’t in uniform. After the war was over audiences seemed to grow more fogiving, but by then you also had a lot of fresh faces who came to Hollywood fresh from their military discharge - Burt Lancaster, Steve McQueen, et. al.
That being said, it was kind of a disconnect for a kid growing up in the 60’s to see movies where World War II seemed to be fought by men in their 40’s, while teenagers were being drafted to fight the then current war.
The 3 surviving Iwo Jima flag raisers reprised their roles in Sands of Iwo Jima.
Harold Russell, a vet who had lost both hands in the war, played a vet who had lost both hands in the war in The Best Years of Our Lives.
Kampen om tungtvannet, the 1948 (I think) Norwegian movie about the sabotage of the heavy water factory at Rjukan in Telemark, starred three of the commandos from the raid as themselves.
The real actors in the better-known American movie Heroes of Telemark may have appeared more polished and professional, but how can you compete with the real deal?
Anthony Quayle, who appeared in The Guns of Navarone had been a real SOE agent in Yugoslavia
Apologies to the board, my earlier post was off topic regarding anecdotes about WWII vets in WWII movies. I think it’s interesting to see the names who enlisted in the war when they were at the top of their game in Hollywood and then resumed their careers once the war was over.
Tyrone Power was one of the top box office stars of the 40’s after “Mark of Zorro” and enlisted in 1942 as a Marine Corps aviator. They sent him back to Hollywood to complete one more film, “Crash Dive” in 1943. In the credits he was listed as Tyrone Power, U.S.M.C.R. He later made “An American Guerrilla in the Philippines” and “Seven Waves Away.”
Jimmy Stewart, another top star who interrupted his career for military service, enlisted before Pearl Harbor. He petitioned hard to get out of the Motion Picture Services Unit. By the time the war ended, he had flown 20 combat missions, twice won the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Croix de Guerre and the Air Medal. During the war he rose from Private to Colonel. After the war he stayed in the Reserves and eventually because a Brigadeer General. In 1955 he made “Strategic Air Command.”
Clark Gable enlisted in the war after his wife, Carole Lombard, was killed in a plane crash during a war bond drive. He joined the Army Air Force and flew missions while making flight training films. He also won a Distuished Flying Cross. Gable ended his military career with the rank of Major. His post war work included “Command Decision” and “Run Silent, Run Deep.”
Robert Montgomery was a Navy commander with combat experience who came back and starred in *They Were Expendable * before the war was over.
And David Niven reached the rank of Lt. Col in the Commandoes.
Audie Murphy’s performance as Audie Murphy in “To Hell and Back” was not entirely convincing, IMHO.
He couldn’t act very well, but he could sure stand on a burning weapons carrier and machine gun Nazis. 
Audie Murphy was much more convincing in “The Red Badge of Courage” than he was in “To Hell and Back.”
“To Hell and Back” was an excellent book. It’s too bad they watered it down so much for the movie, but not surprising for the time it was made.
Many members of the cast of Hogan’s Heroes had personal experience with WWII. Most of the Germans were played by Jews who’d fled Nazi Germany during the war. The guy who played Col. Klink told the producers that if Klink ever won, he would leave the show. Richard Dawson fought in WW II, IIRC.
Jimmy Doohan lost part of a finger during the D-Day landings.
My dad and I were watching “Strategic Air Command”, and got to wondering if he just wore his own uniforms with his own old brass. Seemed kind of silly to us for the movie to go to all the trouble to make a Colonel’s uniform for him, considering that he probably had the real thing in his closet.
From Wikipedia re: Lee Marvin
And Sam Fuller