For decades, official records, movie studio bios, and even his own obituary told the same story. Richard Jackekal, the tough guy actor from The Dirty Dozen [music] and Sands of Ewima, served in the US Navy during World War II. It made sense. He played soldiers and sailors his whole career.
Newspapers repeated it. Fan sites copied it. Nobody questioned it. But after his death in 1997, [music] researchers digging through military and studio records found something different. The real story wasn’t about the Navy at all. It involved one of the most dangerous, least celebrated branches of American service during the war.
The mail room boy who became a marine on screen. Richard Jackekal’s biography begins far from any shooting range. He was born R. Hanley Jackekal on October 10th, 1926 in Long Beach, New York. His father was in the family fur business while his mother had been a stage actress. The family moved to Los Angeles when Hanley was 8 and his father opened one of the [music] West Coast branches of the family business.
Jackekal was about to enter Hollywood High School located in the heart of Tinsel Town. At the age of 17, he had [music] no acting ambitions. He was working as a mailroom boy at 20th Century Fox, distributing scripts and memos, and generally serving in an entry-level position [music] that many aspiring actors at the time had to start with.
In those [music] days, the movie studios were vertical monopolies, controlling every aspect of the production process. [music] There were plenty of low-paying jobs for young people at the studio lots, and recruiters could spot promising candidates for supporting roles. Thus, when a casting director noticed Jackal, he decided to invite him for an audition.
Jackal, in his own [music] words, did not want to do it, but talked himself into this idea. However, [music] the studio executives convinced the young man that this was a great opportunity. The audition was for the film Guadal Canal Diary, released in 1943, was based on a novel by a journalist who had covered the war. It was about the US Marines fighting on Guadal Canal and one of the bloodiest battles fought by the US Army in the Pacific theater during Wii Bun.
Jackal played a young private [music] nicknamed chicken Anderson and according to his biographers portrayed a typical American hero of that period. He was 17 when Guadal Canal Diary was released and he played a 17-year-old marine during the war. The film was a hit, setting the mold for the actor’s subsequent roles.
A year later in 1944, he appeared in Wing in a Prayer, a film about Navy pilots who took part in the crucial battle of Midway, [music] which took place two years earlier. Thus, by the age of 18, Jackal had played a marine and a Navy pilot, [music] having served in the US military forces long before he actually joined the Army.
This fact, [music] among other things, could explain why the public thought he had been in the military for much longer than he actually had. The story everyone repeated for 50 years. When Richard Jackekal died in motion picture and television hospital in Woodland Hills, California on June [music] 14th, 1997, the tributes appeared in the New York Times in the leading [music] newspapers.
The article mentioned a durable movie tough guy and a few other articles written shortly after Jackal’s death noted that he served in the US Navy during W heaven before returning to acting. The articles were not the work of tabloid [music] journalists. The New York Times is one of the most reputable newspapers in the United States.
Biography reference works copied the [music] error and memorial web pages and early internet bio sites repeated the claim [music] nearly verbatim years later. For decades, anyone searching for information about Richard [music] Jackekal’s military service would find the passage stating that he served in the Navy during Wu. It seems that nobody had a problem with this information as Richard Jackekal’s military service was featured in his filmography.
He played a marine in Guadal Canal [music] Diary and appeared in Sea of Lost Ships as a Navy Enen and the gallant hours as a Navy lieutenant commander. Battleground, [music] Sands of Ewokima, The Naked, and the Dead Attack. The Devil’s Brigade, and The Dirty Dozen all starred him in various roles as soldiers. Therefore, it seems logical that Richard Jackekal, [music] who played soldiers for 50 years on film, was actually one himself during [music] we fail.
It took years to refute this, and it is still not as widely known as the initial false information. This illustrates issues with old Hollywood biography. A single error in a trustworthy source can be much harder to refute than a [music] blatantly obvious lie. what the records actually show. The correction resulted from later biographical research done on a full-length biography of Jacel to be published [music] years after his death as well as updated genealogical records.
Those sources revealed that Richard [music] Jackekal had not served in the US Navy, but rather the United [music] States Merchant Marine from 1944 to 1946. Though a small phrase, it represents a vast [music] difference in the kind of military service Jackekal provided to the US. The merchant marine was not a part of the traditional armed forces as the navy, [music] army, and marines were.
Rather, it was composed of civilian mariners who operated the cargo ships, oil tankers, and troop transports that carried the fuel, weapons, [music] provisions, and materials necessary for the war effort. Without the merchant vessels fairing across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, none of the Navy’s firepower or the Army’s manpower would have been able to reach the battlefronts.
While Richard Jackekal may not have worn the Navy uniform aboard a vessel engaging enemy aircraft, he most certainly contributed to the war effort, serving in an organization that was statistically even more dangerous than the one [music] the public believes he served in. This is the part of the story that went unconled for 50 years.
The public’s version of it likely making him a Navy man for the sake of name appeal for an actor best known for playing soldiers and sailors. The truth is a less glamorous and less interesting version for most people skimming a biography, [music] but a far truer reflection of what it meant to serve in uniform for countless American youth at the time.
To understand why getting this specific part of research right is so important, [music] it helps to know what the job of the merchant marine was during the Second World War. These weren’t safe, comfortable voyages taking place behind friendly lines far away from the conflict. Merchant ships traversing the Atlantic and Pacific theaters were regular targets for German yubot and Japanese submarines throughout the duration of the war.
The threat of being torpedoed was ever [music] present from the time cargo ships crossed the open seas starting even before the attack on Pearl [music] Harbor. On the morning of December 7th, 1941, just hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a Japanese submarine sent a torpedo toward the hull of the merchant vessel SS Cynthia [music] Olsen, which was traveling from the Washington State coast to Honolulu, carrying its cargo of lumber for the army.
The attack sank the vessel with no survivors, marking the first American casualties of World War II, as those aboard the Cynthia Olsen were [music] the first to die after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Also that day, another merchant ship, the SS President Harrison, was fired upon by a Japanese submarine while trying to evacuate an entire unit of Marines from China with more than 160 mariners taken as prisoners of war.
Throughout the war, the merchant ships were often only lightly armed or [music] even unarmed, making entire crews vulnerable to enemy fire and attack. A torpedo [music] strike could spell instantaneous doom for an entire ship’s crew, as the vessel would take minutes to sink after being struck. It took days in many cases [music] for other ships to arrive on the scene to rescue surviving mariners if the attacker or friendly forces [music] hadn’t already arrived.
The National Labu Tuda Museum has calculated casualty figures for the merchant marine with approximately 243,000 men having served its ranks and 921 dying [music] in the line of service. This means roughly 4% of all merchant marine enlistes [music] lost their lives. A figure far exceeding the casualties of the Marines, the Army, the Navy, and even the Coast Guard during the same period.
By any measurement compiled by historians, the merchant marines suffered the greatest loss of life of any American organization during the [music] Second World War. Not even the ceasefire between the United States and the Axis powers marked the end of dangers for the merchant ships and their crews.
In the months following the surreners of Japan and Germany, dozens of merchant vessels were lost to uncharted naval mines [music] with several mariners losing their lives to the continued dangers of the job. even after the official end of hostilities. This was the world Richard Jackal served in when [music] he enlisted in 1944 and the world he continued to work in as the conflict drew to its close in 1946.
Decades of fighting just to be called veterans. [music] Here’s a detail that makes the Merchant Marine story even more striking and helps explain why so few people, [music] including reporters writing Yakal’s obituary, fully understood what that service actually [music] meant. For over 40 years after the war ended, the US government failed to formally recognize World War II merchant mariners as veterans at all.
Roosevelt signed the GI Bill in June 1944. He proposed that similar benefits would one day be granted to the merchant mariners. But FDR died the following spring and those promises never [music] made their way through Congress. When the mariners returned from service in the branch, they found themselves shut out of unemployment assistance, medical treatment [music] for service related injuries, and benefits like education grants enjoyed by their peers in the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps.
For several decades, [music] these sailors petitioned, testified, and fought and were met with polite refusals. A federal review board created by the Department of Defense to hear these claims noted more than a dozen [music] other groups in its initial findings for veteran status before those who served in the merchant marine.
[music] Despite far less casualties during the war, it wasn’t until 1988 [music] a lawsuit by a group of mariners against the government forced a US District judge to rule the Department of Defense’s [music] position on the issue was arbitrary, and the way was cleared for most World War II merchant mariners to officially receive veteran status.
By the time it finally came, many of those who had served and earned it through some of the most dangerous, least [music] protected war work in the entire conflict had already passed away without it. For the men who had survived and who lived to see 1988, they still had to wait [music] decades more for benefits, medical care, coverage, the simple public recognition of what a soldier or sailor who had served the nation would receive the moment he or she had come home in 1945, 1946.
This explains why Merchant Marine carried so little weight in the public imagination. [music] Despite the actual danger and sacrifice involved were comparable, if not greater. It wasn’t a lesser branch of service. It was simply one that the country failed to properly credit for nearly 50 years. And that likely made it easier for writers [music] decades later to casually replace it with a more familiar sounding term when summarizing an actor’s career.
Piecing together’s actual timeline, the dates are [music] telling. The merchant marine service of Jekck ran from 1944 1946, which places him as having entered the service when the war was at its peak [music] in both Europe and the Pacific, and as having served until about a year after Japan’s official surrender in September 1945, which no doubt involved the massive logistical operations required to return troops and material from across the Pacific.
The evidence [music] is also telling. He was in films in 1944, as evidenced by his appearance in Wing and a Prayer, but his next film, Jungle Patrol, wasn’t until 1948, a hiatus in his film career long enough to suggest that he could have been drafted or enlisted during that time. [music] He didn’t merely slow down his film appearances, as he could have easily done as a working actor during that period.
Instead, he disappeared from films altogether for nearly 4 years. a span that fits a standard tour of duty for someone serving in the military. Upon his return to films in the late 1940s, he was in two of the most prominent war films of that era. Battleground, [music] 1949, a critical Hollywood favorite about the Battle of the [music] Bulge, in which he appeared as a private soldier, and Sands of Ewima, 1949, in which he shared screen time with John Wayne in one of the most popular Marine Corps films ever made.
There’s almost a kind of poetic justice in the fact that a young man who had helped support the war effort as a merchant mariner for about 2 years [music] was able to come home and immediately step back into a part as a soldier or marine as soon as he was available. Parts the public had no idea he had previously performed in real life [music] as a civilian in the Navy.
Hollywood’s complicated relationship with the war. Jackal’s case is a part of a larger context which shows how the Hollywood movie studio system dealt with the challenges of World War II. The draft began in 1940 and it impacted the movie [music] industry since many actors and directors were drafted soon.
Hollywood representatives requested deferment [music] for their best stars, arguing that it would be better to keep them in the United States rather than send them to war. Others decided to enlist immediately [music] and some of the most famous actors and actresses served in various units for extended [music] periods.
At the same time, movie studios continued to make war related movies because they were popular among viewers and helped boost the morale of people at home. They needed young men to play the soldiers and those who were not yet eligible for the draft were perfect for the role. This was how a 17-year-old maleman got a job as a marine in one of the largest movie producer studios.
He was [music] not drafted in 1943 and he acted in several films. However, after five decades, [music] it was discovered that the young actor did not serve in the Navy contrary to his public image. It was only one of the many conflicts between the actor’s public image and their real life path, [music] which was more eventful and in some cases less honorable than the actor’s film biography.
In most situations, people outside the industry [music] were not aware of the details of actors lives and service, which is why they accepted their biography’s highlights without question. The public perceived actors military service and career similarly, but the actual service records of the stars [music] were more diverse and complicated than their movie biographies.
How the myth persisted so long? It is worth asking yourself, how could such a simple mistake be [music] made and repeated by so many different sources over such a long period of time. One reason for this mistake [music] being so deeply ingrained into the public consciousness is simply a lack of due diligence on the [music] part of many.
Once newspapers with good reputations began to say that he served in the Navy, [music] other less reputable newspapers, fan sites or books did not bother to do their own research into the matter. Most [snorts] biographers and historians would accept readily [music] the words of a national paper of record in an area like military service and would be unlikely to fact check it.
Another reason for its longevity is simply that the more attractive [music] version is more appealing to the public. Someone who served in the Navy fits better with the war hero image [music] than someone who served in the merchant marines. Additionally, the merchant marines are a less known organization requiring more explanation.
They did not have the same sort of public appeal as the Navy and for the first half of the 20th century were not widely known at all due to the events as discussed previously. [music] The more simple, more publicized and more appealing version of events was accepted [music] for decades despite the facts.
It took multiple biographers and historians to finally uncover the correct list of his service [music] using more detailed records provided by the studios or his family. The correction was made due to extensive research on the part of some biographers who [music] used more detailed military records to confirm the correct branch of service.
This sort of instance [music] is not uncommon with regards to older biographies. As many biographers and historians in previous times [music] accepted the same articles and references as previous biographers, many errors in regards to earlier figures were made. [music] It is not uncommon for historians to find later in their career that previous historians have made errors which they [music] then proceed to correct.
A career built on playing the war he actually lived through. What makes this story worth telling isn’t just the [music] correction itself. It’s what that correction reveals about the relationship between Richard Jackekal’s real life and the fictional lives he spent decades playing on screen.
After returning from his merchant marine service, Jackal built an entire career largely out of war films and military roles. Beyond Battleground [music] and Sands of Euima, he appeared in Attack in 1956, [music] The Naked and the Dead in 1958, and The Devil’s Brigade in 1968. Most famously, [music] he played Sergeant Clyde Bowen in 1967’s The Dirty Dozen, serving as Lee Marvin’s Able Second in Command in one of the most successful war films of its decade.
He reprised that same role nearly two decades later in the 1985 television sequel, The Dirty Dozen: Next [music] Mission. His range extended well past the military genre, too. In 1971, he earned an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor for sometimes [music] a great notion, a film with no wartime connection at all, playing a logger in a strike torn milltown.
Decades later, audiences knew him from very different work entirely, including a recurring role as Lieutenant Ben Edwards on Baywatch in the early 1990s, one [music] of the most watched television shows in the world at the time. But it’s the war films that shaped the public’s image of him most strongly.
And that’s exactly why the Navy myth took hold so easily and [music] lasted so long. Audiences watched him die in foxholes, storm beaches, and give orders in uniform across decades of [music] movies and television. It made emotional sense, even though it wasn’t factually accurate, for people to assume the man behind those roles had [music] lived something similar in real life.
Richard Jackekal passed away in 1997 after a career spanning more than 200 film and television roles across six decades. It was only in the years following his death through more careful biographical research that his actual wartime record came into focus. It’s a small correction in the grand scheme of film history, but a meaningful one.
It shifts him from being remembered simply as a Navy veteran who happened to spend his career playing soldiers [music] to something a little more layered and frankly more interesting. A young man who spent roughly 2 years supporting the war effort aboard merchant vessels in one of the most dangerous, least celebrated branches of American service at a time when that service went almost entirely unrecognized [music] by the country it helped save.
He then came home and spent the rest of his life playing the kinds of soldiers and marines he had once served alongside. Not from the [music] deck of a warship, but from the deck of a cargo ship most people never think to ask about at all. If you enjoyed learning the real story behind Richard Jackekal’s new film service, [music] hit that like button and subscribe for more untold stories from classic Hollywood.
Drop a comment below if you’ve heard the Navy version before today and check the links pinned in the description for the full sources behind this video. Thanks for watching and I’ll see you in the next one.
