Audie L. Murphy Memorial Website Message Boards

I GOT THE MAN ON VIDEO ABOUT 15 YEARS AGO FROM VIDEO YESTERYEAR AND THIS CARD CAME WITH IT.

Thank you for posting this Dave. I needed a description of this particular appearance on the "appearance" page and this finally took care of that need.

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Richard L. Rodgers
Webmaster
Audie Murphy Memorial Website

Hello everyone,

I have waited several years to finally come on the Audie website and post on the message board. My life is at a point now where I can indulge in this kind of activity so I am looking through some topics that are not too old and when I saw this one I had to comment on it. I have this show on a DVD. I had read that Thelma Ritter had been terrified of Audie (I believe it was Joseph Campanella that brought that out in an interview) and once I saw this show and looked at his eyes I could totally understand what she was talking about. I do not know where Audie channeled his character from but it was more than effective. That was one of the scariest performances I ever saw on TV and it was a live production to boot!! How could anyone watch The Man and say Audie had no acting talent?? He was brilliant in the revelation of the madness of the character. Then when the show was over and he came out and thanked the audience and was so pleasant and soft spoken it is like getting hit in the face with a pie there is such a shocking difference at how quickly he could turn it off. I just think his performance in that show was one of the acting highlights of his career and showed that he could have made the transition and been successful on television if he had only decided to go that route instead of continuing in film where his genre was dying out and left him really no where to go. Whispering Smith was so good and ahead of its time that if he had just gone back and not let what happened with that show color his perception of TV altogether I think he could have become a really good character actor on all kinds of shows.

Sharon

Hi Sharon! Welcome aboard!

I haven't seen "The Man" yet, but I've seen a few scenes in other movies that showed why people found Audie Murphy profoundly frightening when he wanted them to. I do like Whispering Smith; some of it is a bit wobbly but there's some remarkably strong episodes (ironically I think some of the episodes that didn't air on tv are among the best, like Prayer of a Chance and String of Circumstances).

I think he was a bit negative on tv for several reasons: all the problems around Whispering Smith for one thing, and the fact that it is very much a "grind"-you're getting up in the morning every day and going to work in the same sets with the same people, with long shooting days with no room for error. I suspect that Murphy enjoyed the location shooting and travelling for publicity that went with his films.

He also may have had a belief that he couldn't get anywhere playing supporting roles; his career had failed to launch until he held out for lead roles in b-movies, and the three or so cases where he took supporting roles in big movies all underperformed at the box office. I think that may have prejudiced him against taking guest roles on shows like Bonanza or whatever.

Welcome to the board Sharon. I must say I fully agree with your analysis of Audie's performance in "The Man". He went from soft spoken to mad man and back again flawlessly and it was so real. He was truly a gifted actor in my opinion. I wish he could have been given an opportunity to do more of this type of acting in the movies. He would have had a great career for a long time.

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Betty

Betty,

Glad to be aboard finally. I think Audie was way underrated as an actor and I just wish he had given TV another chance after Whispering Smith. Even Spec McClure was trying to push him towards TV but he did not take his advice and it was a real missed opportunity.

Tonight on American Masters on PBS there will be a 90 minute documentary of Phil Ochs the folk singer from the 1950s and 60s. He was a huge Audie fan and is the one who asked Andy Wickham to come over from England and watch Audie's dog trainer trial and Wickham wrote "The Return of the Quiet American----The Trial of Audie Murphy" for Coast magazine. I believe that Ochs and Wickham were at the trial everyday. So it will be interesting to see if his admiration for Audie is mentioned in this documentary that will be shown tonight at 10 p.m. eastern and 9 p.m. central time. I read that Audie's trial was one of the most covered ever in Los Angeles up to the OJ Simpson trial in 1994/95 sort of like how To Hell and Back was the biggest grossing movie ever for Universal International until it was surpassed by Jaws in 1975.

Sharon