I'll try a Burt style trivia question. This man is very well known in his field, but his field was not boxing. He was a good amateur boxer who was approached by Jack Kearns himself to turn pro, but declined. He was a veteran of WWI, WWII, the Korean War, and Vietnam. Who is he?
I know Kearns discussed boxing possibilities with Joe DiMaggio, believing he could make a champion out of him. Joe D told him "I like my nose just the way it is." But I don't know if Joe D was an amateur boxer, and he could not have been a veteran of all of those wars mentioned. It's as close as I can come right now.
I have another guess - (I call it a guess because I'm not sure about the amateur boxing or Kearns proposition) - he was an outstanding athlete in football and baseball and his military career stretched from 1915-1981: General Omar Bradley.
It is not Bradley. I don't know if he was active during the Vietnam era. Another clue--this man was a famous actor in the 1920's.
We have not seen Edward in a few days now, but it has to be George O'Brian. Here is why I think so. George O'Brien was born in April, 1899, making him 18 in 1917 when WWI started for the US. In 1917 O'Brien enlisted in the United States Navy serving on a Submarine chaser. He volunteered to act as a stretcher bearer for wounded Marines and was decorated for bravery. Right after the war O'Brien became Light Heavyweight champion of the Pacific Fleet. Jack Kearns--Jack Dempsey's manager--wanted to manage him in a pro career but when his mother objected, O'Brien went into the film industry instead, his entry being a friendship he struck up with Tom Mix who got him work as an assistant cameraman for a while, and as a stuntman later. Getting in front of the camera was his big break in film and he went on to have leading roles. O'Brien would spend the remainder of the 1920s as an extremely popular leading man in films, often starring in action and adventure roles alongside such popular actresses of the era as Alma Rubens, Anita Stewart, Dolores Costello, Madge Bellamy, Olive Borden (with whom he was linked romantically during the 1920s) and Janet Gaynor. With the advent of sound, George O'Brien became a popular star of Westerns and rarely took parts outside of the Western film genre. Throughout the 1930s, O'Brien was a consistent Top Ten box-office draw appearing in scores of Westerns, often atop his horse named Mike. For his contribution to the motion picture industry, George O'Brien was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6201 Hollywood Blvd., in Los Angeles, California. O'Brien was in WWII and saw combat and was wounded. O'Brien joined the naval reserve after the war and was recalled to active duty during both the Korean and Vietnamese Wars. So George O'Brien was a veteran of WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam as he was 63 years of age in 1962, when he was filming Training shots and PR stuff For the Navy in Southeast Asia during the time of the beginning of the involvement of the US in the Vietnam conflict. He retired as a Captain and I think he would have made a good Admiral, but it seems the Navy was afraid to have a famous actor as a man of high rank and he was passed over for promotion to Admiral 4 times. A man of many and varied talents, brave, skilled in many arts including Boxing and from everything I have found out, one who never sought conflict but also never sought to escape from it when it came and always gave a good account of himself in any scrap from the bar room brawl to the boxing ring to the battlefield.
As a desperate guess, I was about to venture Popeye the Sailor, but Vockerman has given a very convincing argument for George O'Brien.
V, I am sure you are right, George O'Brien...Even in the movies playing with John Wayne, O'Brien into his 60s had a powerful build of an athlete.
Thanks FM... That was a fun research project, I couldn't sleep anyway Have you seen the "best of these 4" thread? I'd like to hear your take on that... They beat each other in so many different ways and combos I had to look at the overall record and leaned toward Evangelista - mostly for depth but do not feel good about it
