Alan Alda
For Alan Alda, who served in the U.S. military and played Hawkeye Pierce in the TV series “M*A*S*H,” it seems as if art imitates life. In real life, Alda joined the U.S. Army Reserve after graduating from Fordham University. He served for six months as a gunnery officer in Korea just after the Korean War. As Captain Hawkeye Pierce, he played a medic stationed overseas during the Korean War. Alda was nominated for 21 Emmy Awards for his role on “M*A*S*H” and won five.
Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston enlisted in 1941 around the time the U.S. entered World War II. He was stationed in Alaska as a radio operator and aerial gunner on the B-25 Mitchell bomber, but he never saw combat. Later, after he became a Hollywood star, the military asked Heston to lend his distinctive voice to the narration of Department of Energy films about nuclear weapons. Because these films were classified, for this work Heston needed to hold the highest security clearance level in the U.S. at that time.
James Stewart
James Stewart initially enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps before the United States entered World War II. While in training, he took college courses with the goal of obtaining a commission, which he received after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He went through basic flight training and was trained in several different types of aircraft before being transferred to England as the commander of a B-24 bomber squadron. Stewart had flown 20 combat missions by the end of war, and after his active service was complete, he stayed in the U.S. Air Force Reserve. In July 1959, he was promoted to brigadier general.
Steve McQueen
“All in all, despite my problems, I liked my time in the Marines,” Steve McQueen once said. After a rough early life, he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1947. But McQueen was inclined toward disobedience, to put it mildly, and he was demoted seven times. After a weekend pass turned into a two-week “vacation” of his own making, he was arrested, which earned him some time in the brig. During that period, he decided to reform himself. Later, McQueen was training in the Arctic when the ship he was on hit a sandbank. Several tanks and their crews were thrown into the water and many drowned, but McQueen was able to rescue five men.
Pat Sajak
Before “Wheel of Fortune,” Pat Sajak worked as a DJ on Armed Forces Radio — and he sometimes felt bad for how easy he had it. “I used to feel a bit guilty about my relatively soft duty,” he said. “After all, I was billeted (lodged) in a hotel, and there were plenty of nice restaurants around. But I always felt a little better when I met guys who came into town from the field and thanked us for bringing them a little bit of home.”
Bill Cosby
Long before Bill Cosby played Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable, the funny-yet-firm TV dad, and even longer before his April 2018 conviction for sexual assault, he was a U.S. Navy hospital corpsman. From 1956 through 1960, Cosby served aboard ships and at the Bethesda Naval hospital where he worked with Korean War casualties. He was honorably discharged, and in 2011 he was given the title of honorary chief petty officer. The Navy has since revoked the title, citing the allegations that led to Cosby’s court troubles and stating that they conflict with the Navy’s core values.
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