The wild and tragic life of Audie Murphy, the war hero who became a movie star

About a year before Audie Murphy died, he told his life story to a reporter from San Antonio. The interview became a profile titled “A Different Kind of Hell.”

Murphy was in rough shape. Heavyset and bloated. Sad, with bursts of hope that bordered on mania. Washed up and broke, recently divorced, he spilled his guts to the interviewer. He spared no one, least of all himself.

Later in life, Murphy admitted, 'The only thing I’ve ever found I was any good at was war, which is a terrible thing.'

“I had one hang-up as an actor,” said Murphy. “I had no talent. I didn’t hide that. I told directors that. They knew. I didn’t have to tell them. They protected me. I made the same movie 20 times. It was easy. But it wasn’t any good. I never got to be any good. No one helped me. No one cared if I got any good or not. They used me until I was used up.”

Courage under fire

Audie Murphy began life with nothing.

His childhood was bleak, as one of 11 children on a dirt farm in Texas. His father abandoned them; then his mother died when he was 16. He only achieved a fifth-grade education.

Then Pearl Harbor was attacked, plunging America into World War 2. Murphy was short and scrawny and only 16, but he managed to sneak his way into the U.S. Army.

Coincidentally, Murphy was first sent to Casablanca, the setting and title of one of the greatest films ever made.

His battles spanned from North Africa, where he puked in the mud out of fear, to the beach invasions of France and Italy, then into Hitler’s shrinking stronghold. He said that his rifle was “beautiful as a flower and more trustworthy than your best friend.”

He fought in scorching heat and lifeless cold, killing men with his bare hands.

Once, he leaped into an abandoned tank, manned the machine gun, and fended off 250 Nazi soldiers and six tanks. Over the course of his combat, he killed at least 100 enemy soldiers, captured 100, and wounded 500, though he never wanted to know those numbers.

His bravery earned him 24 military honors, more than any other WWII soldier. He remains one of the most decorated soldiers in American history.

"I never liked being called the 'most decorated' soldier,” Murphy later said. “There were so many guys who should have gotten medals and never did — guys who were killed.”

Youth and ignorance

Murphy witnessed unimaginable horrors. "You never forget these things," he later said. "They etch themselves in your brain, and you keep seeing them. You try to put them aside, but they’re always there.

He fought until May 1945. He kept getting wounded, only to bounce back and return to the battlefield.

He often reflected that being a good foot soldier required youth and ignorance — qualities he had in abundance. At first, he believed he was doing the right thing and saw himself as a noble killer. But by the end of the war, he was hounded by doubt. When news of peace came, he stopped killing, even though the fighting continued. His aim faltered; his heart was no longer in it: “The desire was gone.”

It was all over before he turned 21. Returning home to a hero’s welcome, he told his story in a memoir, “To Hell and Back” (1949). James Cagney discovered it and invited Murphy to Hollywood. Murphy played himself in the film adaptation, and from there he became a Hollywood fixture.

Co-starring with Jimmy Stewart

Audie Murphy starred in 40 films, but I want to focus on “Night Passage” (1957) — one of his rare villain roles. “Night Passage” ranks among my top 10 Westerns — maybe higher. Critics hated it. Audiences didn’t care. Even with Jimmy Stewart and Murphy sharing top billing, the film faded into obscurity.

It’s mostly known for the drama behind the scenes. Murphy allegedly punched a horse in the face. Anthony Mann, the original director, hated the script’s stale brother rivalry and thought casting Murphy and Stewart as siblings was absurd. When Stewart insisted on playing his accordion, Mann quit, ending his creative partnership with Stewart — a collaboration that had shaped the Western genre.

But I think it’s a heck of a film. The story is simple: Grant McLaine (Stewart), a drifter with an accordion, returns to his railroad job to stop payroll robberies.

The film opens with whiplash credits, Stewart guiding his horse Pie through the Colorado mountains as Dimitri Tiomkin’s “Follow the River” plays. It’s a gem of an opening, followed by a massive, hilarious brawl.

Chaos builds until Murphy’s Utica Kid enters, revealing the two men as brothers — a Cain-and-Abel dynamic echoing “Winchester ’73” (1950). Dan Duryea, with his sharp laugh and perfect villainy, brightens every scene, especially his exchanges with the nonchalant Utica Kid: “You’re a funny man. You’ve always gotta be laughing inside. Well, go ahead, laugh. But get this, kid — I’m a better gun than you. Or would you like to try?”

My favorite scene is 11 minutes in, when McLaine (Stewart) guides his horse through a mountain tunnel. The light glides through darkness as he pauses, leaning over his horse, before riding into the Silverton woods.

Filmed in Technorama widescreen, it’s an unnecessary 40-second shot — but it’s enormous. It sets the pace, as any good Western should, embracing the underrated act of lingering. In that stillness, beauty emerges — raw, fleeting, unforgettable.

It’s a perfect representation of the goodness hiding in the Utica Kid, stealing moments in his quiet, calculating way. Villain or hero, Murphy holds the screen like few others could. Even in a flawed film, his presence lingers, much like the Western itself: full of contradictions, rugged charm, and something timeless that refuses to fade, even when flying headfirst into a mountain.

The ravages of PTSD

The 1950s were Murphy’s era. He played the soft-spoken hero, reactive, small, and almost frail; handsome, with a boyish face. But then you remember his war stories.

Later in life, Murphy admitted, "The only thing I’ve ever found I was any good at was war, which is a terrible thing."

For years, he couldn’t sleep, tormented by PTSD. He always kept a pistol under his pillow. His doctor prescribed Placidyl, a powerful and, it turns out, highly addictive sleeping pill.

In an Audie Murphy biography, a close friend described the damage: "Some people who saw him on Placidyl presumed he’d been drinking. The drug had the same outward effect as alcohol. Audie never drank." Murphy eventually locked himself in a hotel room to break free from the drug's grip.

He was terrible with money and fond of betting on horses.

'Washed up'

Everything changed for Murphy in the 1960s. His brand of hero had been replaced by the anti-Western antihero rebelling against conventions, apathetic to the great wars. The acting jobs vanished. Friends abandoned him.

“When word gets around you’re washed up, no one will touch you with a 10‐foot pole,” he said in the interview.

You take a little tumble, and suddenly they can pass you in the street without seeing you. When you call, they’re never in, and they never return your calls. They’re afraid you’ll ask them for a job. Even the hangers‐on move on. People who used to invite you to parties stop inviting you. The good tables in the swank restaurants go to others. Soon you’re lucky if you’re eating.

At 45, he was living in a furnished garage attached to his former home, $1 million in debt, and reeling from his second divorce. All of his miracles had disappeared. So he jumped at an opportunity in Virginia to be an ambassador for a company that sold pre-constructed houses.

Then, in May 1971, he and five others from the firm flew from Atlanta on a twin engine Aero Commander to Martinsville, Virginia. They got caught in a thunderstorm. Their plane crashed into a mountain in a wooded valley near Roanoke, Virginia.

All six died.

Murphy’s Hollywood friends didn’t show up for the funeral. He had been expelled.

"Life in Hollywood is not my idea of living, but it’s the only life I know," he once said. "Sometimes I think it might have been easier if I’d died on one of those battlefields. I wouldn’t have been unique. Lots of good boys died back there. I’m no better than they were. Who knows what they might have come to? A lot of 'em might have come to a lot more than me."

For one Irish fan, a glimpse of America

My dad grew up in Thurles, a small town in County Tipperary, Ireland, in a family unimaginably poor. One winter, they tore steps from their stairway to feed the fire. Movies, especially Westerns, were his escape. Like countless kids around the world, he found a hero in Audie Murphy.

Every time Murphy emerged on the screen, my dad and his friends would cheer and shout, “The boy!” (The boy was always the good guy.)

“There was no one else like him,” he’d say as we watched Westerns together when I was a kid.

It wasn’t just the movies; it was the posters that always caught his eye — towering images of Murphy hanging on the walls of Delahunty’s Cinema, the one everyone called “the one below.” The Capitol, “the one above,” was fine, but “the one below” was magic.

Even now, when he sees Murphy on the screen, something in him glows — a young boy, believing in heroes. Those Sunday matinees feel closer somehow, as if the years don’t matter.

For him, Murphy wasn’t just a movie star; he was the glory of America — the country my dad fell in love with through the silver screen.

Freedom, for him, wasn’t an abstraction. It was Murphy riding across the screen, six-shooter in hand, standing for something unshakable. It was America: distant, mythical, yet somehow close enough to touch.

Murphy’s story — the poor boy who became a war hero, a movie star, a symbol of American grit — spoke to him. It’s part of what drove him to move to America, part of the reason I’m here today.

And it was not an act: Audie Murphy described himself as a “super patriot.”

In the book “Audie Murphy: American Soldier,” Murphy talked about a visit to a French schoolyard at the end of World War II. He heard children singing and felt something bigger than the moment. It reminded him of his home.

“The true meaning of America, you ask? It’s in a Texas rodeo, in a policeman’s badge, in the sound of laughing children, in a political rally, in a newspaper. In all these things, you’ll find America. In all these things, you’ll find freedom.”