10 More War Movie Actors Who Were Actually There

8. Tyrone Power - An American Guerrilla In The Phillipines

American Guerilla In The Philippines Poster
20th Century Fox

Tyrone Power had one of the most intense gazes to have ever graced the big screen - never mind just Hollywood's Golden Age. Synonymous with the adventure genre pre-war for his starring turns in The Mark of Zorro and The Black Swan, Power's most iconic post-war roles were in film noir, namely as Stanton Carlisle in Edmund Goulding's Nightmare Alley (later remade by Guillermo del Toro with Bradley Cooper in the same role) and as Leonard Vole in Billy Wilder's peerless courtroom drama, Witness for the Prosecution. Power also starred in the occasional war picture, both of which revolved around the threatre in which he served during World War II - the Pacific.

Already an established screen presence by the time the United States declared war on Japan following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Power enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in 1942, advancing to the rank of Second Lieutenant after completing flight training. Power, a civilian pilot before the war, soon found himself in the cockpit of a Curtis Commando, delivering supplies and extracting wounded servicemen in the battles of Iwo Jima and Saipan. He ended the war with three campaign medals, and resumed his film career in 1946.

Prior to his deployment, Power had actually starred in two World War II pictures. The first, A Yank in the R.A.F., saw Power portray an American volunteer fighter pilot in the British military before the United States' formal entry into the war. The second was Crash Dive, a navy picture where Power played an officer aboard a submarine hunting Japanese targets in the Pacific. Neither truly reflected the actor's coming wartime experience, but it is intriguing to see him in that pilot role years before he enlisted.

The final World War II film Power starred in (and arguably the strongest) was American Guerilla in the Philippines, directed by the legendary Fritz Lang. Power again plays a torpedo boatman, only this time the action takes place during the Japanese invasion of the Philippine islands and Power's character (Chuck Palmer) joins the Filipino Resistance. Again, it doesn't come close to reflecting Power's actual wartime activities, but it remains an intriguing if not forgotten effort in the actor's filmography.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.