From the Battlefield to the Big Screen: Audie Murphy, Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh and Dirk Bogarde in WW2

Explores the lives of three stars who appeared in a host of legendary war films and discover how memories of their real-life experiences in the armed forces were often haunted with heartbreak and yet filled with extraordinary heroism

Format: Hardback
Length: 248 pages
Publication date: 10 October 2022
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books Ltd

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941,Audie Murphy joined the US Army aged just 17. He went on to fight at Anzio,the Colmar Pocket,and Nuremberg. And for single-handedly holding off an enemy attack he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. But Murphy's military and celebrity stardom did little to extinguish the pain of his private battle to fit in to a new post-war world he perceived as disappointing,shallow and unfulfilling. Tormented by PTSD, Murphy was a man unable to escape from his past. Only the great director and decorated wartime documentary maker John Huston gained Murphy's true respect.

When war broke out on 3 September 1939,a number of British stars,including Laurence Olivier,his future wife Vivien Leigh,and David Niven,were in the United States under contract to the Hollywood Studios. Keen not to shirk their duties at home,and against advice from the British Consul,they made their way back to Blighty.

Olivier joined the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm as a pilot. Then with Churchill's approval he directed and starred in powerful propaganda films,including Shakespeare's Henry V. In 1943,the beautiful Vivien Leigh ruined her health by enduring the brutalities of the North African climate to entertain the troops in the desert. Meantime,Dirk Bogarde was a British Army intelligence officer seconded to the pioneering RAF Medmenham where he studied.

Weight: 572g
Dimension: 240 x 166 x 31 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781526737717