Wayne Morris

Wayne Morris, born Bert DeWayne Morris Jr. on February 17, 1914, in Los Angeles County, California, was an American film, television, and stage actor, as well as a decorated World War II naval aviator. He died on September 14, 1959, at the age of 45, of a coronary occlusion aboard the attack aircraft carrier USS Bon Homme Richard.

Morris attended Los Angeles City College, where he played fullback on the varsity football team, and developed his acting skills through work at the Pasadena Playhouse. His screen debut came in China Clipper in 1936, and the following year he took the title role in Kid Galahad, a prizefighting story that also featured Bette Davis, Edward G. Robinson, and Humphrey Bogart. He went on to appear in Brother Rat, which starred Ronald Reagan, and The Return of Doctor X in 1939, Bogart's only horror film.

While working on Flight Angels in 1940, Morris developed an interest in flying and subsequently joined the United States Naval Reserve, becoming a Navy aviator in 1942. The Navy initially considered him physically too large to fly fighters, and he was turned down multiple times before appealing to his uncle-in-law, Commander David McCampbell, who granted him the opportunity. Morris flew the F6F Hellcat off the USS Essex with Fighter Squadron 15, known as the McCampbell Heroes. A December 15, 1944, Associated Press report credited him with 57 aerial sorties, seven Japanese Zeros shot down, the sinking of an escort vessel and an antiaircraft gunboat, and a role in sinking a submarine and damaging a heavy cruiser and a minelayer. He received four Distinguished Flying Crosses and two Air Medals for his service.

Morris returned to film after nearly four years away, though his absence had diminished his earlier momentum. He spent much of the 1950s in low-budget westerns, but also appeared as the cowardly Lieutenant Roget in Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory in 1957. That same year, Morris made his Broadway debut in William Saroyan's comedy The Cave Dwellers, playing a washed-up boxing champion. On television, he starred in a 1956 episode of Science Fiction Theater titled Beam of Fire, appeared in a 1958 episode of Gunsmoke as a groom named Nat who is nearly shot to death, and played Captain Hathaway in a 1959 episode of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. He appeared posthumously as Sheriff Sam Cloggett in the 1960 New Comedy Showcase episode They Went Thataway.

Morris was first married to tobacco heiress Leonora Schinasi; the couple later divorced. He subsequently married Patricia Ann O'Rourke on February 25, 1942, at the Long Beach, California Naval Air Base. The couple had two daughters and a son.