Vic Morrow

            On Tuesday morning I finally memorized “Les Millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg and the monologue in the performance of the song by Zizi Jeanmaire. That took several weeks. I started working out the chords for the instrumental intro. 

            I weighed 89.25 kilos before breakfast. 

            During song practice I played my Martin acoustic for the last of four sessions. It stayed in tune less than half the time. 

            Around midday I applied Frog tape to the frame and front of my bathroom exhaust fan to isolate the vent area so the lines will be straight when I paint it pink tomorrow. 

            I weighed 89.7 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I tried to take a bike ride but only pedaled about three times before slipping and going home. Tomorrow I have to at least go along Queen as far as Freshco and back. 

            I weighed 89.45 kilos at 17:05. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 17:54. 

            I recorded from cassette tape through audio interface to Audacity and then extracted to my hard drive, side 1 of a tape marked “part 2”. It’s one of my 20,000 Poets Under the League slams and it’s hosted by Sahara Spracklin. I was sure I had all the tapes from the fourth year of the slam and I don’t remember if Sahara hosted more than once. Maybe on side 2 someone will mention what year it is. 

            I finished editing my Photos folder and deleted a lot but kept several images. Next I’ll move most of the saved pictures to my solid state drive. 

            I grilled four chicken legs and had one with two small potatoes and margarine while watching season 1, episode 2 of Combat.

            Sgt. Saunders’ squadron gets three new recruits but finds them very disappointing. Gainsborough was a used car salesman, Crown was a radio DJ, and Temple was a ballet dancer. Neither of them have combat experience. Gainsborough has been serving as a cook since he joined the army and has gained considerable weight. Crown has an attitude problem and he’s a coward. Temple is very uncomfortable with the idea of killing people. Saunders tries to teach them how to thrown hand grenades but when Crown tries he accidentally drops his after pulling the pin and then runs away, leaving Saunders to grab and throw it. 

            The squad is sent to investigate an apparently abandoned village. They split into groups of three to explore sections of the village and Crown is with Saunders. Crown is frightened and just says he checked out the streets he was supposed to. We see that the street he ignored has a house with German soldiers and a big, mounted machine gun. 

            Saunders’ squad sets up headquarters in an abandoned dress shop and venture from there to go house to house. When Saunders tells Crown to explore a house he catches him just standing in the doorway afraid to go any further. He gets him to confess that he didn’t reconnoitre the streets he was supposed to. Saunders takes him back to the dress shop. 

            All of the new recruits are left in the dress shop while Saunders, Caje, and Kirby explore the town. Crown is eating some rations and finds them disgusting cold and so he decides to build a fire in the fireplace to heat them up. The men see the smoke from the chimney and go running back to put out the fire. The Germans see the smoke too and aim the machine gun at the dress shop then open fire. Kirby is hit. Saunders crawls out and drags him inside the shop. 

            The Germans reposition the machine gun to the upper floor. Saunders takes Crown with him on a mission to get close enough to toss a grenade into the window. But Saunders gets shot in the leg and so he and Crown are stuck taking cover behind the wall of a front stairway. Gainsborough runs out to try to help and is killed. Temple comes with a plan to use his dancing skills to climb to the rooftops and make his way along the rooftops to the point above the window where the machine gun is to lob in a grenade. Considering his inexperience the next part is pretty unrealistic. He dives into the canal and draws machine gun fire. He gets a rope from a boat, climbs up a building and makes his way across. The Germans know Temple is on the roof . One of them goes out on the street with a rifle to get a better shot at Temple but Crown kills him. Temple jumps rooftops and hangs from a broken drainpipe before getting back on the roof and finally tossing in a grenade to take out the Germans. 

            Saunders is played by Vic Morrow who started studying law but participated in a school play and got the acting bug. He went to New York and studied at the Actors Workshop. He made his film debut in Blackboard Jungle. I watched it last year and his was a great performance. It typecast him however as a bad guy and so he left MGM. He studied directing at USC. Then he became the star of Combat and directed some episodes. The series lasted 5 years. He co-starred in The Bad News Bears, King Creole, Hell’s Five Hours, Message from Space, Humanoids from the Deep, The Last Shark, The Bronx Warriors, Wanted: Babysitter, and Wild and Wooly. He starred in Portrait of a Mobster, Target: Harry, and The Evictors. He wrote and directed the spaghetti western A Man Called Sledge in 1970. He directed the movie Deathwatch and several episodes of Quincy. He co-starred in Twilight Zone: The Movie but died when a helicopter being used for a scene lost control and crashed on top of him and two child actors. He was the father of Jennifer Jason Leigh.