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

From the Battlefield to the Big Screen - Audie Murphy, Laurence Olivier, Vivien

Leigh and Dirk Bogarde in WW2 written by Melody Foreman and published by

Frontline Books - £22 - Hardback - Pages 248

Look closely behind the lives of the stars who appeared in a host of legendary war films

and discover how memories of their real-life experiences in the armed forces were

haunted with heartbreak and yet filled with extraordinary heroism. Just what did America’s

most decorated soldier Audie Murphy go through in battle which led him to star as himself

in the classic war film, To Hell and Back?

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, 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 aerial photographs and pinpointed enemy targets for Bomber Command. As Lieutenant van den Bogaerde he was posted to France just after D-Day. He went on to star in many leading war films such as Appointment in London (1953) and King and Country (1964). Years later in 1991 Sir Dirk Bogarde was interviewed by the author of this book. He had witnessed the horrors of Belsen in April 1945 and said it changed his attitude to life forever.

In this book, the author honours the real-life stories of some big screen idols who showed true grit behind the glamour.

This book takes a look at four individual film stars and their lives as military figures and and their roles as Hollywood film stars. The book takes a look at all four people Audie Murphy, Laurence Oliver, Vivean Leigh and Dirk Bogarde, and they all come into the war at various times and hold different roles in  different arms of the forces. The book was an interesting one and it was nice to read about their experiences, but the book didn’t really grab my interest, I think this is maybe because I don’t really have much knowledge of the four stars and this book might be aimed more at older readers.