Is anyone out there old enough to remember a doctor who went to French Indochina in the fifties I think his name was Doolittle. He tried to set up a clinic to help people but died of cancer.Was the book Ugly American about him? He was very well known during the early sixties… I am getting this all mixed up with the Ugly American and the Quiet American…When i do a search all i get is Jimmy Doolittle and his bombing mission…Wrong war…Help!
You’re thinking of Dr. Tom Dooley. William Lederer and Eugene Burdick wrote the novel The Ugly American (actually a series of short stories); its pretty much pot-boiler stuff.
A google search on Tom Dooley will turn up a lot of stuff. He was a 1950s hero. A young, earnest Catholic physician helping to take care of Godless Communists and all that.
There was a big PR machine behind him.
He is not the Tom Dooley from the folk song however.
The Ugly American was inspired by Edward Lansdale. He was a CIA operative intimately connected to the creation of South Vietnam. The character in the novel was named Colonel Hillandale.
Wow! Thanks for the tip…CIA…Vietnam…Homosexuality…Catholic Church…Kennedy…Must be a movie in there somewhere…