10 More War Movie Actors Who Were Actually There
5. James Garner - Sayonara
Noir and Western staple James Garner actually served in two wars prior to his acting career, joining the Merchant Marines as a 16-year-old at the tail-end of WWII and then enlisting in the army during the Korean War as part of the National Guard. Garner's division was deployed to Korea as the fighting escalated, which the actor described years later as "fodder to stuff up the gap."
Garner saw heavy combat in Korea, finishing his service with two Purple Hearts (one awarded belatedly decades after). After his honourable discharge in 1952, Garner made the move into acting, becoming a TV fixture in the late fifties before transitioning to the big screen, starring in seminal classics like The Great Escape and Darby's Rangers. In his later years, he also dabbled in voice acting, playing the role of military strongman Rourke in Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Shazam in two DC animated movies.
Garner's war films largely didn't stray close to his wartime record, but there were a couple that landed near-ish. 1957's romance-drama picture Sayonara cast Garner as a USMC officer opposite Marlon Brando during the Korean War, with the duo stationed in Japan, while Garner took to the seas once more in Up Periscope, in which he played a Navy Frogman.
One other WWII film of note in Garner's filmography is 36 hours. More of a spy thriller than a war picture, the film sees Garner's character - an army Major tasked with ensuring the false intel fed to the Nazis before the Normandy landings has been bought - get abducted by the Nazis, who attempt to convince him that the war is over so they can determine the Allies' invasion plans. It's a really tidy thriller, but also noteworthy for it marking an uncredited appearance by James Doohan of Star Trek fame. Doohan served with the Canadian Army in World War II, taking part in the landings at Juno Beach on D-Day.