The Rick Jason Centennial

Not being a baby boomer, I was unaware of Rick Jason’s most famous role and learned about him in the most unlikely way possible — I got interested in investigating who he was after seeing him in Matt Cimber’s super-low-budget The Witch Who Came From the Sea (1976) with Millie Perkins. And before we get to the meat of his limited career, a handful of interesting other credits. He starred in Orson Welles’ 1957 TV pilot The Fountain of Youth, and was in a couple of ’80s comedies: James Burrows’ Partners (1982) and Peter Bogdanovich’sIllegally Yours (1988) — one wonders if Ryan O’Neal, the star of the former, had connected him with the latter.

Born Richard Jacobson (1923-2000), he was the product of Manhattan prep schools, and was purchased a seat on the New York Stock Exchange by his father. Being of the proper age, he opted to serve in World War Two. He then attended the Academy of Dramatic Arts on the G.I. Bill. In 1950, Hume Cronyn cast him in the play Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, with Fredric March, Florence Eldridge, and Charles Chaplin Jr. (May I intrude here the opinion that I find the stage name “Rick Jason” terrible? I mean, is it “Rick” or is it “Jason”? It’s a good name for someone in an ’80s bar band, or perhaps a stunt man, or a porn star. But it sounds sort of sub-actor, if you know what I mean? You could be the best actor in the world, but the name makes you sound like a kid in your geometry class).

Despite the handicap of that screen name, he was cast in his first movie Sombrero, with Ricardo Montalban, in 1953. Jason was Jewish but he was cast in Latin roles more than once. He was cast with Montalban once again in TheSaracen Blade (1954), an early William Castle picture. His other early pictures include Frank Tashlin’sThe LieutenantWore Skirts (1956) with Tom Ewell,Sheree North, and Rita Moreno; and The Wayward Bus (1957) with Joan Collins and Jayne Mansfield (va va voom!); among others. In 1960 he starred in his first series, The Case of the Dangerous Robin, in which he portrayed an insurance investigator who retrieved stolen goods.

Then came his most famous role, that of 2nd Lt. Gil Hanley in the hit tv show Combat! (1962-67). I’d long known about this seminal tv show, because the better remembered Vic Morrow was his co-star on the program, Sgt. Chip Saunders, and because Robert Altman had directed many episodes of the show. Combat! followed a unit of American infantryman in France in the weeks and months after D-Day (thus it surely must have been on the many models for Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan). It was the longest running American tv series with a World War Two setting, with each hour-long episode approximating the experience of a movie (relative to its time). It was an expensive show to produce, which speaks to its popularity with audiences, for it lasted six years. Much like The Longest Day, nearly every male actor of fighting age seems to have guest starred on the show at some point — over a hundred famous actors were on the show at least once. Besides Altman, other future notables who directed episodes were Richard Donner and western auteur Burt Kennedy. Best, the show was created by Robert Pirosh, who’d been one of the ‘writers on the Marx Brothers’ A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races.

After Combat! wrapped, Jason worked mostly in television. He was a principal in the first season of The Young and the Restless (1973) and guest starred on The Virginian, Get Christie Love, Police Woman, Wonder Woman,Fantasy Island, and Murder She Wrote. He was also in a films besides those we mentioned in the first paragraph, Color MeDead (1969) and The Day of the Wolves (1971), and the tv movies Who Is the Black Dahlia? (1975) and Around the World in 80 Days (1989), his last.

After this, he acted in live theatre and did voice-over work in commercials. It’s sad that he was bedeviled by a bad back from his war service. Like many of the characters he played in films, he seems to have been a bit of ladies man; he was married five times. In 2000 he published a memoir called Scrapbooks of My Mind. Later that year he attended a reunion of Combat! cast and crew in Las Vegas. One week later, he shot himself. Dead by suicide at age 77.

The timing leads me to suspect that neither the book nor the reunion were good experiences. His life and career had peaked decades earlier. Interestingly his Combat! co-star Vic Morrow had also died by violent means, during a helicopter accident during the making of Twilight Zone: The Movie, which is of course how and when I had first learned about the show Combat! I was two years old when it went off the air. It wasn’t re-run in syndication where I lived. But one of its copycat show was — Rat Patrol. I was super into World War Two movies when I was a kid, and still am, and so I will surely catch up with Combat! at some point. Right now it seems to be available via streaming and on Youtube.