The Price of Valor: The Life of Audie Murphy, America's Most Decorated Hero of World War II by Smith David

Author:Smith, David [Smith, David]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781621573845
Publisher: Regnery Publishing
Published: 2015-04-19T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

THE MAKING OF A STAR

Early in 1949, Audie Murphy was starting to rebound from the doldrums in which his fledgling career had languished only a short time before. With much fanfare from the press, if not in the modest ceremony itself, he and Wanda Hendrix were finally married early in January, and honeymooned in and around Dallas.

In May, filming began for the second movie in which Murphy would be the star. The Kid from Texas was the first film under his new contract with Universal-International and was a fresh, as well as historically inaccurate, retelling of the story of Billy the Kid with Murphy in the title role. “As a youngster, I read everything about Billy I could get my hands on,” he said. He wanted to play Billy “as a quiet guy, a real human being who made mistakes at times, instead of a swaggering superman.” Murphy showed off his skill with pistols (shooting squirrels out of trees to entertain the crew), but was rather less successful at portraying emotion. But if his acting was on the wooden side, he performed well enough. He was still finding his way as an actor, though he had already found the genre that suited him best—westerns.1

More importantly, however, that year saw the publication of To Hell and Back in February. Unlike his acting, his book won nearly universal praise. On March 10, it appeared on the New York Times bestseller list where it remained until the middle of June, peaking at number eight. He characteristically hoped that it would “remind a forgetful public of a lot of boys who never made it home.” Two of those boys had their name on the dedication page: Lattie Tipton and Joe Sieja.

Murphy’s pre-war life story is told in brief flashbacks and, purposefully, these do not add up to an autobiography. The book was meant as a memorial to his buddies and a testament to the price of their valor. “You would never know from his book that he is the most decorated soldier of the war,” Charles Poore wrote in the New York Times, because To Hell and Back focuses little on the events for which Murphy won fame and medals.2

In early March 1949 as part of the ongoing publicity for To Hell and Back, Murphy appeared on NBC’s weekly radio program This Is Your Life. His childhood friend Monroe Hackney was on the show, as was one of his first teachers from Celeste. Walter Weispfennig, who in 1945 was Murphy’s forward artillery spotter in the battle at Holtzwihr and filed one of the eyewitness accounts that led to his Medal of Honor, was there as well. The most surprising guest on the show was Claudine Tipton, the daughter of his war buddy Lattie. Her appearance left him nearly speechless with emotion. He later presented her with the Distinguished Service Cross he won on the day her father was killed in action.3

By the next year, Murphy claimed he had given all his medals away. “I’ve been fed up with that ‘most decorated’ business for a long time,” he said.

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