Hollywood Goes to War: John Russell’s Journey from Marine to Movie Star

00:00:10
Speaker 1: This is Lee Habibe, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people, coming to you from the city where the West begins, Fort Worth, Texas. And now it’s time for another Hollywood Goes to War Story with Roger McGrath. McGrath is the author of Gunfighters, Highwaymen, and Vigilantes: Violence on the Frontier, a U.S. Marine, and former history professor at UCLA. McGrath has appeared on numerous History Channel documentaries, and he’s a regular contributor here at Our American Stories. Take it away, McGrath.

00:00:53
Speaker 2: John Russell had a forty-year career in Hollywood, appearing in fifty movies and more than two hundred episodes of television shows. It was in a wide variety of movie genres, but more often than not, it was Westerns. Standing six foot three and a half with a square jaw, chiseled features, and a lean, athletic body, he was a perfect lawman or a fearsome hired gun. Clint Eastwood used him in the latter role in Pale Rider.

00:01:24
Speaker 3: I don’t know how to dance. It’s easy, you just move your feet to the rhythm.

00:01:36
Speaker 2: Despite his decades of fine work in movies, John Russell is probably best remembered for a starring role as Marshall Dan Troop in one hundred and fifty-six episodes of Lawman, which aired on TV from nineteen fifty-eight through nineteen sixty-two.

00:01:54
Speaker 4: There’s not going to be one kind of law for decent citizens and another for gunfighters.

00:01:58
Speaker 5: It’s going to be one law for all. Your right hand when you get angry.

00:02:05
Speaker 2: John Lawrence Russell was born in nineteen twenty-one in Los Angeles to parents John and Amy Russell. The father was a graduate of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. He survived the sinking of the cruiser San Diego during World War I. By the time his son was born, he was a highly successful executive in insurance. The family had a large home with a cook and a servant. John Lawrence Russell was the firstborn. He would soon have a sister and a brother. John had an ideal childhood, doing well in school and excelling in sports. He grew into a strapping young man, and after graduating from high school, went to UCLA for theater arts because he was interested in acting, and for sports because he was an outstanding half let. Russell was into his third year at UCLA when the Japanese launched their sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on December seventh, nineteen forty-one. He dropped out of college and joined the Marine Corps. In February nineteen forty-two, he excelled in boot camp at Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego. Because of his outstanding performance in his two years of college, he was selected for Officers School. He continued to excel in OCS and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant early in October nineteen forty-two. Lieutenant Russell was assigned to the Sixth Marine Regiment, Second Marine Division, which surparts for Guadalcanal in mid-October. The Marines had been on Guadalcanal since August seventh, when the men of the First Marine Division waded ashore. Marine landing took Japanese by surprise. Within days, the fighting became brutal and intense. Japanese poured thousands of fresh soldiers onto the island until they had thirty-six thousand cracked troops in the fight. At the same time, the U.S. Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy were slugging it out in the waters surrounding Guadalcanal, resulting in dozens of ships going to the bottom and thousands of sailors dying. Among the sailors who died were the five Sullivan Brothers, whose sacrifice became legendary on land and sea. The Battle for Guadalcanal was a blood path. After a brief stop in New Zealand, Lieutenant Russell and the Sixth Marines, mayan the on Guadalcanal, enjoined the battle early in January nineteen forty-three. The Japanese forces had been greatly depleted, with thousands of men lost, but they were still fighting fanatically. The Sixth Marines were at first tasked with cleaning the Japanese out of a series of jungle-clad ravines on the northern coast of Guadalcanal, west of the Matanikau River. Previous efforts to dislodge the Japanese from these strongholds met with fierce resistance, so the Sixth Marines devised a new tactical plan. Instead of attacking from the coast and working their way up the ravines, the Sixth Marines climbed over ridges and attacked from the high ground, allowing them to fight their way down the ravines. Lieutenant Russell was in his first combat, and he quickly learned Japanese do not surrender. The only way to defeat them was to kill them. He also learned there was no surrender for Marines. Occasionally, Marines were captured; they suffered unspeakable torture at the hands of the Japanese before being in the jungle-clad ravines. The fighting, this close quarter, occasionally hand to hand, its vicious, bloody exhausting. By January seventeenth, the Sixth Marines reached the beach at the mouths of the Ravines Lavanta. The Japanese Sendai Division was decimated. The Marines left the bodies of six hundred and forty-three dead Japanese in their wake. Only two Japanese were captured. The next mission for the Dan Russell and the Sixth Marines was an advance along the coast to Cape Esperance, which the Japanese were using as an evacuation site for their troops. Resistance was fierce, but day by day the Marines advanced towards their objective. By February, Eighth Army units from further inland and the Sixth Marines along the coast reached Cape Esperance before nearly two thousand Japanese were evacuated by the Storiers.

00:07:06
Speaker 1: And you’ve been listening to Roger McGrath tell the story of John Russell. He appeared in countless movies, well over fifty, but it was his real-life experience in war that was more harrowing than anything he ever did on the screen. When we come back, the rest of the story of John Russell, our “Hollywood Goes to War” series, continues here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here again. Our American Stories tries to tell the stories of America’s past and present to Americans, and we want to hear your stories, too. They’re some of our favorites. Send them to us. Go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the “Your Stories” tab. Again, please go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the “Your Stories” tab, and we continue with Our American Stories and our “Hollywood Goes to War” story with Roger McGrath, this time featuring the life of John Russell. Let’s pick up in the Pacific Islands during World War II. Here’s McGrath telling the story of John Russell.

00:08:27
Speaker 2: This was the end of the Battle of Guadalcanal. Behind them, the Japanese left nineteen thousand dead; disease taking perhaps half of them. Another twelve thousand Japanese died in naval battles offshore, with Japan losing one carrier, two battleships, four cruisers, eleven destroyers, six submarines, and thirteen transports. Japan also lost six hundred and eighty airplanes. The Guadalcanal Campaign was a disaster for the Japanese. Japanese Major General Kawaguchi, evacuated from Guadalcanal and lying on a cot suffering from malaria, remarked to a Japanese war correspondent, “We lost the battle and Japan lost the war.” The American victory at Guadalcanal marked a turning point. From Guadalcanal on, Japan will be on the defense. However, the cost of the U.S. victory is a deer. Five thousand American sailors died and another three thousand were wounded. The U.S. Navy lost two carriers, eight cruisers, and fifteen destroyers. The U.S. also lost six hundred and fifteen airplanes. The Marines lost twelve hundred men in combat, and the Army another six hundred. Another five thousand Marines and soldiers were wounded, but that’s not the whole story. More than Marines were knocked out of combat by malaria. Some men died, and nearly all of those who contracted malaria suffered recurrent bounce of the disease. By the time the Sixth Marines left Guadalcanal at the end of February nineteen forty-three, Lieutenant John Russell was one of those suffering terribly from malaria. With many other Marines from Guadalcanal who had severe cases of malaria, he shipped to the Naval Hospital at San Diego. He spent months fighting the disease and could only return to limited duty. His war was over. In June nineteen forty-four, he was discharged from the Marines.

00:10:59
Speaker 2: Back home in Los Angeles, John Russell was spotted by a talent scout while dining with his wife at a posh restaurant in Beverly Hills. He soon signed a contract with Universal Studios, appeared in three movies in nineteen forty-five and another three in nineteen forty-six. His roles were minor, and all about one were uncredited. He was in three movies in nineteen forty-seven and forty-eight in more substantial roles and was becoming a well-recognized actor. Nineteen forty-nine was a breakout year for Russell. He co-starred in three of the four movies he was in, moving into the upper ranks of Hollywood. In thirteen movies from nineteen fifty through nineteen fifty-five, he either co-starred or had strong supporting roles. Most of the time he’s casting good guy roles, but he occasionally plays villainous characters. In nineteen fifty-five, Russell did his first work on television and even got his own series, Soldiers of Fortune.

00:11:55
Speaker 5: I’m Tim Kelly. This is Tibo Smith, my party.

00:11:58
Speaker 2: He played Tim Kelly, a war veteran who was now available for hire. Every week, he and his sidekick were offer a new adventure in Africa to bet India or some such exotic location. The series took advantage of stock footage from these locations, which helped transport the viewer to far-off lands during its fifty-two episodes. In many ways, Soldiers of Fortune set the stage for John Russell’s more successful second television series, Lawman, which ran for one hundred and fifty-six episodes from nineteen fifty-eight through nineteen sixty-two.

00:12:42
Speaker 4: I wanted what happened to Sam?

00:12:44
Speaker 3: Well?

00:12:45
Speaker 5: They got hung for horse Team. That’s what. Is your way to break the habit?

00:12:51
Speaker 2: Lawman, starring John Russell as Marshall Dan Troop and Peter Brown as Deputy Johnny McKay.

00:13:26
Speaker 2: John Russell’s two TV series didn’t stop him from appearing in movies, mostly Westerns. He played typical Old West characters: a lawman, an outlaw, a gambler. However, in one of them, Yellowstone Kelly, starring Clint Walker, Russell played Sioux Indian Chief Gall.

00:13:47
Speaker 5: My nephew is young. His heart as bad total all whites.

00:13:51
Speaker 2: Russell continued appearing in movies and on various television shows throughout the nineteen sixties, seventies, and eighties. He appeared with John Wayne in Rio Bravo. “Just What Have I Done?”

00:14:04
Speaker 6: You’re a rich man, Burdette: big ranch, pay a lot of people to do what you want him to do. And you got a brother. He’s no good, but he’s your brother. He committed twenty murders. You try and see didn’t hang for him. I don’t like that kind of talk. Are you’re practice accusing me of this strait you don’t like? I don’t like a lot of things. I don’t like your men sitting on the road, bottling up this town. I don’t like your men watching us, trying to catch us with our backs turned. And I don’t like it when a friend of mine offers to help; twenty minutes later he’s dead. And I don’t like you, Burdette, because you set it up.

00:14:47
Speaker 2: And with Clint Eastwood in The Outlaw Josey Wales.

00:14:50
Speaker 5: Wales, name’s Anderson, Bloody Bills what they call me. You’ll find them up in Kansas with the Union. We’re going up there and set things up right now.

00:15:11
Speaker 2: I’ll be coming. William Honky talk man and Pale Rider. Russell’s role as Marshall Stockburn and Pale Rider is John Russell had his intimidating him, villainous best.

00:15:26
Speaker 3: Yes, Stockburn. Yes, these are my deputies. Gentlemen, say hello to His Conway.

00:15:41
Speaker 2: Well late nineteen eighties, John Russell was suffering from emphysema, and his acting days were over. He died in nineteen ninety-one from the disease, leaving behind two grown daughters from his marriage to Renata Titus. He was given a military burial at Sawtelle Veterans Cemetery in West Los Angeles. Despite his long career in Hollywood, on his tombstone, as per his wishes, nothing was said about his movie and television stardom. Instead, engraved on his tombstone were only the Christian Cross, the dates of his birth and death, the phrase “Precious Liberty,” and “John L. Russell, Second Lieutenant, United States Marine Corps, World War II.”

00:16:41
Speaker 1: And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Greg Hangler, and his special thanks to Roger McGrath, who is himself a Marine, also a former history professor at UCLA and a frequent contributor on the History Channel as well as here at Our American Stories, of what a story he told about John Russell volunteering for the Marines, and there he landed in Guadalcanal, some of the toughest fighting on either the Pacific or Atlantic sides of battle. The European Front and the Pacific Front were brutal. But nothing is tough, is what happened to Guadalcanal. But it changed the Pacific Battle forever, and from that day forward it was the Japanese who were on the defense. And then out came Russell to star in some of the great Westerns of all time, and also lots of TV shows. But you’ve seen him in Pale Rider, The Outlaw Josey Wales, and of course Rio Bravo if you’re any fan of Westerns. And of course that last note on his tombstone: nothing about his Hollywood career, his service to the U.S. military, and the sign of the Cross and his name and date of birth. The story of John Russell here on Our American Stories.