What Happened to the WWII Type of Movie Stars

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE WW II TYPE OF MOVIE STARS

Hope you find this as informative as I did. In contrast to the ideals, opinions and feelings of today's "Hollywonk" the real actors of yester-year loved the United States. They had both class and integrity. With the advent of World War II many of our actors went to fight rather than stand and rant against this country we all love.

They gave up their wealth, position and fame to become service men & women, many as simple "enlisted men".

This page lists but a few, but from this group of only 18 men came over 70 medals in honor of their valor, spanning from Bronze Stars, Silver Stars, Distinguish Service Cross', Purple Hearts and one Congressional Medal of Honor.

So remember; while the "Entertainers of 2006" have been in all of the news media lately I would like to remind the people of what the entertainers of 1943 were doing, (63 years ago).

Most of these brave men have since passed on.

"Real Hollywood Heroes"


Alec Guinness (Star Wars) operated
a British Royal Navy landing craft on D-Day.



James Doohan ("Scotty" on Star Trek)
landed in Normandy with the U. S. Army on D-Day.


Donald Pleasance (The Great Escape) really was an R. A. F.
pilot who was shot down, held prisoner and tortured by the Germans.


David Niven was a Sandhurst graduate and
Lt. Colonel of the British Commandos in Normandy.


James Stewart Entered the Army Air Force
as a private and worked his way to the rank of Colonel.
During World War II, Stewart served as a bomber
pilot, his service record crediting him with leading
more than 20 missions over Germany, and
taking part in hundreds of air strikes during his tour of duty.
Stewart earned the Air Medal, the Distinguished Flying
Cross, France's Croix de Guerre,and 7 Battle Stars during World War II.
In peace time, Stewart continued to be an active
member of the Air Force as a reservist, reaching
the rank of Brigadier General before retiring in the late 1950s.


Clark Gable (Mega-Movie Star when war broke out)
Although he was beyond the draft age at the time the
U.S entered WW II, Clark Gable enlisted as
a private in the AAF on Aug. 12, 1942 at Los Angeles.
He attended the Officers' Candidate School at
Miami Beach, Fla. and graduated as a second lieutenant on Oct 28, 1942.
He then attended aerial gunnery school and in Feb. 1943
he was assigned to the 351st Bomb Group at Polebrook
where flew operational missions over Europe in B-17s.
Capt. Gable returned to the U.S. in Oct. 1943 and was relieved
from active duty as a major on Jun. 12, 1944 at his
own request, since he was over-age for combat.


Charlton Heston was an Army
Air Corps Sergeant in Kodiak.



Ernest Borgnine was a U. S.
Navy Gunners Mate 1935-1945.


Charles Durning was a U. S.
Army Ranger at Normandy
earning a Silver Star and
awarded the Purple Heart.

Charles Bronson was a tail gunner
in the Army Air Corps, more
specifically on B-29's in the 20th
Air Force out of Guam, Tinian, and Saipan



George C. Scott was
a decorated U. S. Marine.


Eddie Albert (Green Acres TV)
was awarded a Bronze
Star for his heroic action
as a U. S. Naval officer aiding
Marines at the horrific battle on the
island of Tarawa in the Pacific Nov. 1943.



Brian Keith served as a
U.S. Marine rear gunner in
several actions against the
Japanese on Rabal in the Pacific.


Lee Marvin was a U.S Marine
on Saipan during the
Marianas campaign when he was
wounded earning the Purple Heart.


John Russell: In 1942, he
enlisted in the Marine Corps
where he received a battlefield
commission and was wounded and
highly decorated for valor at Guadalcanal.

Robert Ryan was a U. S. Marine
who served with the O. S. S. in Yugoslavia.


Tyrone Power (an established
movie star when Pearl Harbor
was bombed) joined the
U.S. Marines, was a pilot
flying supplies into, and wounded
Marines out of, Iwo Jima and Okinawa.



Audie Murphy, little 5'5" tall 110 pound
guy from Texas who played cowboy parts:

Most Decorated serviceman of WWII and earned: Medal of Honor, Distinguished Service Cross, 2 Silver Star Medals, Legion of Merit, 2 Bronze Star Medals with "V", 2 Purple Hearts, U.S. Army Outstanding Civilian Service Medal, Good Conduct Medal, 2 Distinguished Unit Emblems, American Campaign Medal, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal with One Silver Star, Four Bronze Service Stars (representing nine campaigns) and one Bronze Arrowhead (representing assault landing at Sicily and Southern France) World War II Victory Medal Army of Occupation Medal with Germany Clasp, Armed Forces Reserve Medal, Combat Infantry Badge, Marksman Badge with Rifle Bar, Expert Badge with Bayonet Bar, French Fourragere in Colors of the Croix de Guerre, French Legion of Honor, Grade of Chevalier, French Croix de Guerre With Silver Star, French Croix de Guerre with Palm, Medal of Liberated France, Belgian Croix de Guerre 1940 Palm.

So how do you feel the real heroes of the silver screen acted when compared to the hollywonks today who spray out anti-American drivel as they bite the hand that feeds them?� Can you imagine these stars of yester-year saying they hate our flag, making anti-war speeches, marching in anti-American parades and saying they hate our president?

I thought not, ...... neither did I!

Holy Cowbell, Blip Update, and Journalistic Integrity Part II

The first big story for Rizznites today is Holy Cowbells! Yesterday’s article about the Christopher Walken Hoax was picked up by a number of bloggers, including the National Review Online, and traffic spiked incredibly! The residual traffic is still well above my average daily traffic.  I can only hope I amuse the viewers enough to keep up this trend.  <capitalism> While you’re here, folks, buy a cd! </capitalism>

I do take particular satisfaction in having the story right a full 24 hours before the mainstream media had it right, although Paul Brewer has a good point: “I would advise skepticism about Buxbaum's denial. After all, presidential contenders are notoriously coy at this stage of the process.”

One blogger actually picked up (and later disagreed with) my commentary a little later in the post where I said: “most of us bloggers imitiate Mainstream Media most of the time to get past the gatekeepers.”

Au contraire, mi amor! Whenever I've called a government office or any other entity (including the Crawford newspaper that published the endorsement of John Kerry), I always say I'm a blogger. And you know what, I always have been given the same access to press briefings or answers to questions as any other media person, for what it's worth.

I guess I’ve been doing the sneaking into press briefings and restricted areas a little longer than blogging has been chic, because my early experience in independent journalism from a young age (around fourteen or fifteen) taught me that you’ve got to social engineer your way into the places you want to get the story.  This still strongly applies to entertainment gigs, in my opinion, although political gigs are pretty open to allowing indymedia in, as they have other ways of keeping the little guy down beside simply denying access (and most of the time, they don’t want process stories).

I’m still working on the big BlipMedia update.  I wanted to keep my users abreast of what’s going on with that, so here’s the dirt: I’m doing a three part upgrade, and it’s taking a bit longer than I thought.  The first major hurdle is that there are some minor memory leaks in the system I’ve got to track down.  I’ve not done a serious code review since I started the system six months ago, so it’s taking a bit to comb through the code and root out all the inefficiencies.  Once that’s done, our directory service will become available, which will increase everyone’s podcast popularity by quite a lot.  The next step is to finally finish statistics.  Statistics are vital to the overall project’s potential, and must be completed, but they cannot be done until the memory leaks have been plugged.

Lastly, I begin work on revenue system.  Blip is finally garnering the right amount of attention that we have a regular stream of people wishing to advertise on your podcasts.  That’s right, my dear users, people want to hawk their goods and services using your voices as product placement.  Last week we began the discussion on what that does to our journalistic integrity, and we’re going to continue that discussion here today.  I’ve had a lot of feedback from interested parties on that, so we’ll begin with that.

A lot of it started right here on the blog in the comments section. Elisa Camhort, the lady I cited from the BlogHer convention, chimed in with her personal policy on problogging:

“I have a sponsored blog. The title of the blog indicates it is sponsored, and I run their two ads under a banner that say "Our Exclusive Sponsor." If I mention them in a post I always preface it with a "my sponsor xxx." That's the easy part really.”

But she comes back with the obvious question:

“How about affiliate links when I review a book I just read? Am I really supposed to disclose I could make $.50 if you actually buy a book from the Amazon link (which I was providing anyway before I ever signed up for the affiliate program, just as a convenience?) That seems like overkill.”

Good point.  I think it’s a fairly obvious distinction to make between the two types of sponsorship. One should be disclaimed, and the other is probably so obvious that it doesn’t need it.  This, however, isn’t really the type of sponsorship I am puzzling over.

Elisa continues:

“What I do know is I rankle at the idea of a "blog ethics committee" or some such. Blogs are just tools for some form of expression. I believe there is already a code of ethics for journalists. Same for PR practitioners. Your ethics should be guided by what you're using the blog for.”

I don't believe there necessarily should be an ethics committee for blogging - that just smacks of the kind of bureacracy that blogs are good at circumventing.

On the other hand, I think the "blogging ethics committee" is the same group of people that serve on the "mainstream media ethics committee" - the same people that called out Dan Rather for Memogate called out Mr. Daily Kos for taking Howard Deans money and being really quiet about it. The blog-o-sphere is a fickle lover, you cross those invisible lines, and you’re dogmeat, regardless of which side you came from.  Don’t believe me?  Witness this response I recieved from the Yahoo Group “Podcasting Innovations”:

Rizzn Do'Urden, you are scum.  Your suggestion is not advertising.  You are suggesting that people take bribes to endorse products. 

Do you have a personal system of ethics?

If you wish to sell your name to hawk merchandise fine.  It definitely shows your character.

Scum.

Of course, I’m well versed in the art of the forum, and I know not to take such bile personally, however, it is indicitive of a feeling in some bloggers and indy journalists (the ones I try to appeal to, honestly). In response to such sentiment, I think Matthew Wayne Selznick had the best response:

As for "paid placement" reviews... get the money up front, and have the product in question agree that you get paid no matter what you write, whether it positively or negatively views the product.

How else can you maintain your independence and integrity? How else can people trust your opinion?

You might find you get many fewer offers from companies to review their products. But the ones who are willing to do it probably have a level of integrity that approaches your own, and that's good.

This is probably the closest thing to a policy I had in mind for this type of endeavor.  As a broker for such deals, it would entail me disclaiming myself to potential advertisers in saying that “I cannot promise you a certain kind of review, however, if your product/service/site is good, your product will speak for itself, and they will simply help to spread its good word.”  Additionally, as a broker, I can help the client cherry-pick their reviewers by feeling out the blogger/podcaster by feeling them out before hand. “Have you ever had a bad experience with with such and such company?” 

As much as I hate to admit it, a broker has a responsibility to both parties, the client and the blogger/podcaster, not just the medium of journalism.

On a larger scale, viewing the Blip community as a whole, I’ve decided to adopt a stance similar to Google on this, as their gimmick of blind keyword bidding seems to be the most fair and least bias-inducing method of advertising.  Let me propose this to you, the user base of r.Podcaster, and get your responses on it.

This system would incorporate thirty or sixty second audio spots in the podcast feeds from advertisers hand-picked by BlipMedia.  Participation in the advertising program would be completely voluntary and opt-in (this means I’m not going to automatically assume you want ads in your feed, you have to go into the system and turn that option on yourself). Ads will be assigned by keyword and category… meaning the categories your podcast falls into (and designated by you in the options) as well as keywords you define in your ID3 and RSS tags will help determine which advertisers show up in your feed.

From the advertiser’s perspective, the system will work a lot like Google’s AdSense.  Advertisers will be responsible for creating their own spots, and they will bid on keywords.  They will be charged based on a budget they set for themselves (how many times the ad will run), and how much the particular keywords they are bidding are fetch at the moment.

On the whole, the bulk of the revenue will go back to the individual podcasters, and Blip will keep a portion of the take for providing the service.  I think it’s a fair trade on everything, all things considered.  It protects the interests of keeping things bias free, as a podcaster has little control over which ads show up in their stream, and with Blip acting as a buffer, we fairly divvy out the rewards of being a content provider.

As always, I’m keenly interested in your thoughts on this.  Comment here, or send your mail to me.

/rizzn

On the Turntables Currently: mc chris - Bad (dd) Runner

Walken for President 2008 is a CONFIRMED Hoax

I spoke in semi-excited tones yesterday about a celebrity I thought might actually be running for president with a campaign platform that I could get behind. It turns out that it was all untrue – a cruel hoax played on gullible bloggers like myself

I spoke with Mara Buxbaum at ID PR today; Mara is Christopher Walken’s publicist.  She said that she’s been innundated with calls all day about Christopher Walken’s ‘bid for public office,’ but she did in fact confirm that the site is a hoax.

“Mr. Walken has no intentions for public office,” said Buxbaum. “Perhaps one of his fans got a little excited seeing him play Secretary Cleary with presidential aspirations in Wedding Crashers.”

Ms. Buxbaum was very quick to return the phone call. If you’re a high-powered Hollywood star in need of publicity, call her.  She seems real on the ball.

Now the fun begins – Who is behind this hoax?  I’ve only seen Wedding Crashers one time, so I don’t remember if the quotes from the website are from the movie – they could be.  There’s a part in the film where Owen Wilson’s character is speaking with Walken’s character about politics.  The statements could be extrapolations on that conversation.

Mara asked that I spread the word that this site is a hoax so that the calls might dwindle down about her office.  I find it interesting that the story is indeed generating this much interest for Walken.  I suppose it is telling how much we bloggers dictate in the news cycles these days, and that the Mainstream Media is learning how to fact-check.

She didn’t mention if the calls were mostly from bloggers or news organisations.  I suppose it’s hard to tell from her end, as most of us bloggers imitiate Mainstream Media most of the time to get past the gatekeepers.

So, faithful Rizznites, our search continues for who we might endorse in the 2008 presidential election.  Keep your ears to the ground.

/rizzn

Walken for President 2008

This is a bit late, but it’s getting some buzz in the indy-media, so I caught wind of it.  Christopher Walken has announced he’s running for President of the United States in the 2008.  Rizznites, we may have found our man.  Maybe. 

Long-time Rizzn fans will remember our unsuccessful bid to draft Ric Flair for president in 2004 and of course, our unsuccessful bid to reverse Hulk Hogan’s decision not to run for president in 2000.  This time, I think it’s time to choose a candidate that actually wants to run, so I’ll showcase Christopher Walken’s profile for you so far, and hopefully get your input on it.

So far his planks seem to be campaign finance reform, better military funding, and stem cell research.

Campaign Finance Reform:
   "I believe that campaign finance is a very tough issue, with good points on both sides; but I feel, as a wealthy American, that I should have no more say than even the least fortunate American citizen. Free speech in politics is about the voices of all those who support you, not who supports you with the biggest voice."

Military Funding:
   "I am a huge supporter of the military. I have always thought of them as our guardians, and when our guardians are making less than the poverty line, and children are suffering because their parents decided to join the military, well, I get very upset. I feel that instead of sending billions to the Pentagon's pet projects, it should go to the troops."

Stem Cell Research:
   "I'd met Chris Reeve several times before he died, and after having met him it is tough to be against [stem cell research]. I am for human knowledge and expansion of human life. If stem cells are one way to do that, I cannot support legislation to restrict this potentially life-saving research."

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this sort of a libertarian platform? The libertarian party platform has a few things to say about the military.  In fact, the libertarian party is one of the few independent parties that isn’t a dyed in the wool dove party. Likewise, the libertarians are staunch supporters of campaign and election reform.

Finally, libertarians are very admittedly split on the morality issues of the day, much like the rest of the country.  In their charter, they state on abortion:

Recognizing that abortion is a very sensitive issue and that people, including libertarians, can hold good-faith views on both sides, we believe the government should be kept out of the question. We condemn state-funded and state-mandated abortions. It is particularly harsh to force someone who believes that abortion is murder to pay for another's abortion.

Given the tone and intent of the paragraph, one can only assume that you could interchange the words “stem cell research” for abortion in that paragraph, and it would work for most libertarians.

Do I think Christopher Walken will run on the Libertarian ticket?  I’m not sure.  Should he?  I think so.  Howard Stern did so well on the LP’s ticket in his joking bid for the New York gubernatorial race that he had to back out of the race for fear of winning (as he really didn’t want to win, he just wanted to get the LP’s on the ticket the next year, and get some publicity).

The LP’s should do what we can to get Walken on our ticket – if it’s not a hoax.

The technologist has some circumstantial evidence that this might be a hoax.  I’ll have a definitive answer for you this Monday, as I’ve put a call in with Mr. Walken’s publicist, and she’ll be able to confirm or deny these rumors.

/rizzn

On the Turntables Currently: MC Frontalot - Indier Than Thou