Vic Morrow Bad News Bears
Vic Morrow (February 14, 1929 – July 23, 1982) played Roy Turner, the Yankees' manager, in The Bad News Bears (1976). By 1976 Morrow had been a working actor for two decades, best known for his five-season run as Sergeant Chip Saunders on the ABC World War II series Combat! (1962–1967).
Roy Turner is the film's externalized villain
Roy Turner is the Yankees' manager and the league's ideological apex. He counts his team through fifty push-ups and twenty sit-ups in the cold open, suggests that Buttermaker and the Bears "just drop out" after the 26-0 forfeit, and slaps his own son on the mound in the championship game for not throwing at a hitter cleanly enough. The slap is the apex of the film's escalation sequence — the externalized form of the win-at-all-costs ideology Buttermaker himself has drifted into.
Morrow plays Turner without softening. There is no warm beat — no scene where Turner reveals an underneath, no concession to the audience that he might secretly be likable. He is exactly what he plays, and the film needs him to be exactly that for the slap to land.
Morrow came to film through Blackboard Jungle
Vic Morrow (born Victor Morozoff in the Bronx to Jewish immigrant parents) studied at the Actors Studio and made his film debut in Richard Brooks's Blackboard Jungle (1955), playing Artie West, the leader of a gang of inner-city high-school students opposite Glenn Ford. The role typed him for tough urban roles for the next decade. (wikipedia)
His best-known work is Combat! (1962–1967), the ABC World War II drama in which he played Sergeant Chip Saunders for all five seasons and 152 episodes. The role made him a familiar television face for an entire generation of American viewers.
Morrow's career
| Year | Production | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1955 | Blackboard Jungle | Film debut; Artie West |
| 1957 | Men in War | Korean War drama |
| 1962–67 | Combat! (TV) | Sgt. Chip Saunders; 152 episodes |
| 1971 | A Man Called Sledge | Western with James Garner |
| 1974 | The Take | Crime drama |
| 1976 | The Bad News Bears | Roy Turner |
| 1977 | Twilight's Last Gleaming | Robert Aldrich |
| 1979 | 1941 | Steven Spielberg WWII comedy |
| 1979 | The Evictors | Horror |
| 1982 | Twilight Zone: The Movie | Final film; died during production |
His death on the set of Twilight Zone: The Movie
Morrow was killed on July 23, 1982, on the set of Twilight Zone: The Movie, when a low-flying helicopter crashed during a night shoot of a Vietnam War sequence directed by John Landis. Morrow and two child actors, Renee Shin-Yi Chen (age 6) and Myca Dinh Le (age 7), were killed by the helicopter's main rotor. The accident triggered one of the most consequential criminal trials in Hollywood history; Landis and several crew members were charged with involuntary manslaughter and acquitted in 1987. The deaths led to substantial revisions of safety regulations governing the use of children and aircraft on film sets. (wikipedia, latimes-archive)
Morrow was 53 at the time of his death.