Audie Murphy and Wanda Hendrix

They were two tempestuous Lilliputians who had bad tempers, full enemy camps, unexceptional Hollywood careers, a brief marriage and short lives.  Audie Murphy gathered some fame for his decidedly B westerns but it was based on a greater fame as the most decorated war hero of WWII.  Wanda Hendrix, ever the southern belle, was gorgeous and sexy but is barely remembered at all.  Let's visit.

The baby-faced Texas farmboy, the seventh of 12 children, who grew up to become an American legend was born in 1924, the son of sharecroppers.  He dropped out of school in the fifth grade to work in the fields and help support his family.  Unfortunately, both  parents would die when Murphy was still in his teens.

He dreamed of joining the military and when he tried he was rejected by more than one branch because he was too young and likely too short (5' 5.5").  Finally, at 17 and lying about his age, he was accepted into the infantry.  

To say his military service is exemplary is a powerful understatement.  For his bravery he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the Medal of Honor and over 30 more medals, some more than once, and all by the time he was 22 years old.  He is credited with killing over 240 Germans.  

He was released from the service in 1945.  Not sure what he wanted to do with his life, he was sure that horses would somehow be involved.  He was right on that score.  Americans wanted to hear more and more about him.  At odds with his astonishing war record were his looks and demeanor.  He was slight, soft-spoken, boyish, ill-at-ease, uneducated and never without his yes, Ma'am and aw, shucks manner.  What people weren't going to know too much at this point was that his lack of formal education gnawed at him and is likely partly responsible for his inferiority complex and short temper.  This guy could go OFF.

He was also at odds with his fame.  He never wanted to be famous, much less a national hero.  It was a lot to embrace and he didn't have many coping skills, certainly not at that age, but really, not ever.  He thought he could never measure up to the heroics, although he would try.  Serious self-examination would not be a part of his life.  Luckily he didn't add booze to his toxic mix but he did with sleeping pills.  Soft-spoken and boyish, yes, but he was also edgy, ready to spring and able to terrorize.

America wanted to celebrate him so Life Magazine put him on its cover.  James Cagney saw the article and was impressed enough to invite Murphy to Hollywood.  One diminutive tough-guy/song and dance man was sure he saw the same in the other.  Cagney put Murphy through specialized training and quickly came up with a conclusion... can't sing, can't dance, maybe could one day become a so-so actor.  Murphy wasn't as discouraged as he was elated... it seemed he had found something he'd like to do.  He thought he'd just hang out around Hollywood and see what developed.  If he came up empty, he knew he would always consider Texas his home.

Speaking of magazine covers, in 1946 Coronet Magazine had a beautiful face on its cover.  Murphy was transfixed but also perplexed because there was no article on the girl.  He asked his new pal Cagney to find out who she was.  Cagney said her name was Wanda Hendrix and, get this, he crowed, she's an actress working at his home studio, Warner Bros.   When they met, Murphy and Hendrix agreed on one thing... it was love at first sight.  

Dixie Wanda Hendrix was born in 1928 and hailed from Jacksonville, Florida, the daughter of a logging camp boss and a housewife.  She was especially close to her mother who indulged her adorable little girl in every way she could.  They would play dress-up and Mama would load up little Dixie with costume jewelry and lipstick, dresses and high heels that were way too large.  They would act out little scenarios which always starred the youngster doing something flamboyant.  It didn't take long before she had stardust in her eyes.

With her family's approval, she decided to not go on to high school after graduating from junior high.  Instead she joined the Jacksonville Little Theater becoming involved in a number of productions and chased by all the cute guys. Her mother, who likely wanted to be an actress herself, was dizzy with excitement.  Hendrix was noticed by a passing Warner Bros talent scout, as was so often the case, who offered her a 6-month contract.

By age 16, Hendrix, at her full height of 5'2", was in Hollywood, studying her craft and being groomed to be the new, hot, young actress.  Her screen debut came in 1945 opposite Charles Boyer and Lauren Bacall in Confidential Agent, some cloak and dagger mayhem about the Spanish Civil War.  Bacall got most of the attention.

Murphy disregarded some of his feelings about fame when he met Hendrix because she craved it.  She loved being photographed and soon pictures of the WB beauty and the most decorated soldier were everywhere.  They got swept up in their own publicity and soon announced they would marry.  Her mother and her new studio, Paramount, wanted them to wait and they, two people who rarely obeyed, did so.

While he took what scattered jobs he could get (I suspect at least one was at a racetrack, a place he would come to love at every possible level), she went on to make more films.  Of the 25 she would make, clearly the best and the most famous is 1947's Ride the Pink Horse, an attention-grabbing film noir directed by and starring Robert Montgomery.  He was not an actor I cared for but even he had his moments in this one playing an American private investigator in Mexico looking for a mystery man.  Everyone is cloaked in mystery and not always what they appear to be, including Hendrix as a lovely señorita.

She made some noise in a little romantic comedy with John Lund and the wonderful Monty Woolley in 1948's Miss Tatlock's Millions.  I found her merely decorative with Tyrone Power and Orson Welles in The Prince of Foxes (1949) but adorable opposite Alan Ladd in the war drama, Captain Carey, U.S.A. (1950).  

It turned out that 1949 would be quite a year for both of the Murphys but especially him.  After having a couple of bit parts, he secured the lead in Bad Boy, a contemporary western.  It caused not much more than a few ripples but publication of his military memoir, To Hell and Back, caused some tidal waves.

The lovebirds thought they'd waited long enough and were married in 1949.  She was 21 and he was 25 but from the day they signed the license, they were on their way to a divorce.  Perhaps they were both pooped from putting their best feet forward during the dating period.  Both were pig-headed and given to bullying and unkind if not wounding remarks.  It seemed all they could do was fight.  Murphy clearly was suffering from what would today be considered PTSD.  He had terrible nightmares and slept with a gun.  Things got really scary when he held her at gunpoint several times.

He probably thought The Kid from Texas (1950) was his life story but it was some hazy fiction about Billy the Kid and never mind that The Kid was born in New York City.  What is perhaps notable is that it started Murphy on his career under contract to Universal-International, home of the colorful, routine western.  They likely concluded that westerns don't require Oliviers... they require action stars who fill out a mean buckskin and can stay on a horse.  Murphy and Universal... a match made in heaven.

The battling Murphys decided to do a film together... it may help mend their cracking marriage... which is how Sierra (1950) came to be.  Hendrix is top-billed as a lawyer who fights to help a man wanted for murder while falling for his son.  The Murphys were enjoyable but not more than two splendid character actors, Burl Ives and Dean Jagger.  She immediately went into another good B western, Saddle Tramp (1950), with Joel McCrea, about a cowboy who looks after a family of orphans.

In 1951 John Huston badly wanted Murphy to star as a reluctant Civil War soldier in a version of Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage.  Murphy was loaned out to MGM to make the film, although they didn't want him, citing his mediocre acting.  But Huston stood firm.  Perhaps it was seeing a real-life hero of Murphy's dimensions playing a soldier who doesn't want to be one that kept the film from being a success.  Actually, it was a bomb but has claimed a seat among the best Civil War films as time has passed.  I think it contains his finest acting... thanks to Huston.

As if the Murphys' problems weren't bad enough, they were played out weekly in the newspapers.  Gossip columnists were constantly writing about them but Hendrix seemed to get the worst of it.  She was portrayed as the nagging, shrew wife of a war hero.  It wasn't pretty and it didn't help maintain the momentum of her career.

Finally she could take no more.  He was constantly critical of her and his gambling got out of control, including his losing her entire savings.  After two years, they were divorced.  It was said she was heartbroken.

Four days after his divorce, Murphy married a flight attendant and they remained so for the rest of his life.  They would have two sons.  Hendrix, on the other hand, dated with abandoned fury, making sure she was photographed at the Hollywood hot spots.  In 1954 she married wealthy sportsman Jim Stack, brother of actor Robert, but that union was also fraught with problems and lasted only four years.

In 1954 Hendrix made her last decent movie, Highway Dragnet, with Richard Conte and Joan Bennett.  A taut film noir, it concerns a man on the run from the law for a killing he didn't commit.  He  mysteriously links up with two shady women, a photographer and her young model.  

Murphy popped up in a few obligatory war films, including starring as himself in the film version of his memoir.  There was a boxing movie.  Clearly, however, most of his work was in westerns.  You can thank me later for not delving into most of them.  Let's just 
mention some titles that will tell you all you need to know... The Cimarron Kid, Tumbleweed, Ride Clear of Diablo, The Guns of Fort Petticoat, No Name on the Bullet, Hell Bent for Leather, Seven Ways from Sundown, Six Black Horses, Apache Rifles.  Need I go on?  That's not to say I didn't see most of them... I probably did.  Remember, for about five years I went to Saturday matinees every week... no matter what.  If there were two Audie Murphy movies, I hunkered down.

His movies were the same because he was almost always the same.  He never really became much of an actor although I confess to liking to watch his face as he silently boiled.  With all this said, I did like him in a few films and/or they were simply better films than he usually appeared in.

Stepping in for Jimmy Stewart in the remake of 1939's western comedy gem Destry Rides Again seems a tall order but Murphy pulled it off in the 1954 remake, simply called Destry.  More on these later.  He played Stewart's bad-boy brother (that was quite a stretch) exceedingly well in 1957's Night Passage.  

The supposed butchering of Graham Greene's novel for the screen version of The Quiet American (1958) caused the film to be not very popular.  But the story of turmoil in 1952 Vietnam put Murphy in a white dress suit for most of the production and he'd never looked more dapper, before or since.  Unfortunately, his acting was no less wooden.

Continuing with his modest westerns and some television, he was elated when his Red Badge director, Huston, offered him the second male lead in the 1960 western about racial prejudice, The Unforgiven.  Burt Lancaster and Audrey Hepburn were the leads and while Murphy got to be in more of an A western, his character is absent for most of the time.  It was not only the last decent movie he would make but his final films he could have phoned in.  At the same time, Universal had decided, by and large, to stop making Murphy's kind of films as it moved into television.

One might wonder why Murphy just didn't move into the television arena with them.  My guess is that they didn't extend the invitation.  He was not an easy man to get along with and temper tantrums didn't exactly endear him to Hollywood or encourage anyone to go to bat for him.  Nonetheless, by 1961 he was appearing in his own TV series, Whispering Smith, which lasted just one season.

He focused more on his ranching, which he'd been involved in for years.  He had places in California and Arizona where he raised quarter horses.  The public didn't hear much about him until he filed for bankruptcy in 1968.  He would have money problems for the rest of his life.

In 1970 he made the newspapers when he allegedly pulled a gun on a dog trainer and then beat him up over an unpaid bill.  

In 1971, Murphy and five business acquaintances were on their way to some hoped-for prosperous venture when their private plane slammed into the side of Bush Mountain outside Roanoke, Virginia.  Murphy was 46 years old.  He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Hendrix attended his funeral, looking sad and visibly upset.  She appeared infrequently on television and made a few unmemorable movies.  She went from being one who was always in the limelight with her men to being a near recluse.  In 1969 she exchanged vows with an oilman and at 11 years was in her longest marriage before divorcing.  She had no children.

She hadn't been heard from in years when in 1981 it was reported that she died in Burbank, California, of double pneumonia.  Hendrix was 52 years old.



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A great 50's western