Vic Morrow

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Vic Morrow
Born	February 14, 1929 New York City, USA
Died	July 23, 1982 (aged 53) Indian Dunes, Ventura County, California, USA

Victor Morrow (February 14, 1929 – July 23, 1982) was an American actor.

1 Biography
2 References
3 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

Morrow was born in the Bronx, New York to a middle class Jewish family.^[1] His father was an electrical engineer. Morrow dropped out of high school and joined the U.S. Navy at age 17.

[edit] Career

Morrow's first movie role was in Blackboard Jungle (1955). After this movie, he went into television and was cast in the TV series Combat! (1962-1967), in which he also worked as a television director. After Combat! ended, he worked in made-for-TV movies and several films. Morrow appeared in two episodes of Australian-produced anthology series The Evil Touch (1973), one of which he also directed. He memorably played the homicidal sheriff alongside Martin Sheen in the 1974 TV film The California Kid, and had a key role in the 1976 comedy The Bad News Bears.

[edit] Death

Morrow, along with two children My-Ca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen, died on the set of Twilight Zone: The Movie. At the time of his death, Morrow was playing the role of Bill Connor, a bigot who was taken back in time and placed in various situations where he would be a persecuted victim: a Jewish Holocaust victim, a black man about to be lynched by the Ku Klux Klan, and a Vietnamese man about to be killed by United States soldiers. Morrow was 53, Le was 7, Chen was 6.

[edit] The Twilight Zone: The Movie controversy

Vic Morrow, My-Ca Dinh Le, and Renee Shin-Yi Chen were shooting a scene for the Vietnam sequence of Twilight Zone: The Movie. They were running from a pursuing helicopter. The helicopter was flying at a low level when pyrotechnic explosions caused the helicopter to lose control and crash on top of the three.^[2] Morrow and Le were both decapitated by the blades; Chen was fatally crushed underneath the helicopter's landing skid. The helicopter crew received minor injuries. Due in part to the deaths of Morrow, Le, and Chen, the children's illegal hiring to circumvent child labor laws, and the nighttime schedule during which the children were worked without supervision, child labor laws were reformed, as were safety regulations on movie sets in the state of California. Litigation over the deaths lasted well over a decade. Director John Landis and other defendants, which included producer Steven Spielberg and pilot Dorsey Wingo, were ultimately acquitted of involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment. The parents of My-Ca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen sued and settled out of court for $2 million each. Vic Morrow's children, Carrie Morrow and actress Jennifer Jason Leigh, also sued and likewise settled for an undisclosed amount.